Most small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) think about individual customers when it comes to their marketing. But with business-to-business (B2B) marketing, your company could be selling directly to other businesses instead. Although it’s common to leverage many of the same tactics that business-to-consumer (B2C) companies use, some aspects are different. Let’s look at what your B2B marketing strategy will need to focus on.
What Is a B2B Marketing Strategy?
A B2B marketing strategy is a plan that outlines how a business will reach other businesses to form a sales partnership, where that business sells its products and services to the other. Buyers in B2B are typically higher level executives, usually C-Suite or, at minimum, director level positions.
One of the biggest differences between a B2B and B2C marketing strategy that must be accounted for is the longer sales cycle. While consumers may impulse purchase or buy after little research, the opposite is often true of B2B. Companies looking for solutions to their problems can take months, even years, to make a decision. This is often due to both budget considerations and multiple stakeholders being involved, along with comparisons being made to other companies that offer similar options.
Another aspect that differs in B2B and B2C marketing is the focus. For the average consumer, return on investment on their purchase isn’t necessarily a factor. But with businesses, money is everything: Decisions made about purchases often result from long-term relationships built between the sales team and the stakeholders, with rational and carefully thought-out research driving the ultimate decision to purchase.
A Look at the B2B Marketing Process
Awareness
Like a B2C marketing process, the awareness stage is the top of the funnel. This is when potential customers realize they have an issue that needs solving. They may not be aware of your brand yet, so marketing efforts at this stage should be focused around getting the brand name out to the relevant potential customers.
The goal here is to attract as much attention from the right people as possible. Marketing approaches like search engine optimization (SEO), paid advertising, and industry reports with proprietary research or data are some of the best options for this early stage of B2B marketing.
Interest and Consideration
The middle of the funnel is the interest and consideration stage. The potential customer is aware of your brand but they’re still in the process of researching the different options on the market. This is your opportunity to position yourself as a trusted expert in your field: Email marketing, webinars, case studies, product demos, and retargeting ads are all great options for keeping your business top of mind.
Decision
The bottom of the funnel is the decision stage, where the customer makes a purchase decision. Continuing to build trust here is essential for closing the sale. Testimonials, personalized outreach, and offers like free consultations can all help nudge the prospect into converting.
Retention
Your marketing isn’t finished because the customer has moved forward with your business over a competitor. Retaining that customer is just as important, especially in B2B where there may be a smaller pool of prospects than a B2C business has. A clear onboarding process, along with referral programs or other loyalty incentives, are good options for turning these new customers into brand advocates.
How to Create a B2B Marketing Strategy in 6 Steps
1. Define Your Audience
Understanding who your ideal target is means you can craft the right messaging and tone when you start actually marketing your products and services. Develop an ideal customer profile and identify the key decision-makers that your ideal business partner likely has. Include information in your research like company size, specific identifiable pain points, and any information you can gather about the internal decision-making process.
2. Set Clear Goals
Establishing clear, measurable goals means you can more effectively track the success of your marketing strategy. Some examples of the type of goal you could set as a B2B business are generating a certain number of leads per month, or improving customer retention by a fixed percentage year-over-year.
3. Choose Your Marketing Channels
Once your customer research is complete, you can begin deciding which marketing channels will likely be the most effective in reaching these people. At the awareness stage, choose the platforms where your audience spends the most time, and where you can demonstrate your expertise. For performance marketing, with goals focused on consideration or transaction stages, choose channels which will deliver actions by targeting users based on behavioral patterns and intent, rather than simple demographics. Content marketing, SEO, paid ads, and email marketing are often the most effective digital marketing channels for B2B businesses.
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Learn More4. Develop a Lead Generation Plan
Once you start attracting potential customers, nurturing them to become leads is how you’ll start helping the sales team close those contracts. Nurture your prospects through personalized content and strategic follow-up conversations. While lead generation could look like paid ads or downloadable resources for the prospect’s industry, lead nurturing is more personal and focused on tactics like email sequences and retargeting ads.
5. Align With the Sales Team
Due to the long nature of the sales process, marketing and sales must continue to work together to convert qualified leads into customers. Understanding who is responsible for what is important here, as is sharing information between teams. Using a customer relationship management (CRM) software can help with this, tracking any calls or email outreach that each team works on.
6. Track Performance
Continually tracking and assessing performance is essential for developing and refining your B2B marketing strategy over time. Key performance indicators (KPIs) like conversion rates, customer acquisition rates, and return on investment are essential for determining what’s working well and where improvements need to be made.
Top 5 B2B Marketing Strategies
1. Keep Your Positioning Specific
When stakeholders are comparing your business to your competitors, you want to make sure you stand out. Having a unique value proposition (UVP) that sets you apart from the rest means that your brand is more memorable when conversations are happening and decisions are being made.
2. Have a Deep Understanding of Your Target Audience
Not every company in the same industry will have the same problem, but many of them do. Simplify your marketing by getting to the core of what exactly are your audience’s pain points and you’ll likely find that, while businesses say they’re the only ones struggling with something, what they actually need help with is similar to other prospects. Knowing this information and getting to know each prospect on a deeper level can help you build relationships long term and nurture those prospects into leads.
3. Offer Valuable Information for Middle and Bottom of Funnel Visitors
One of the most effective lead-nurturing tactics is content marketing. This means creating written or visual content that not only demonstrates your expertise but also helps your prospect in some way. White papers, e-books, even informational videos can all provide education to your prospect while reminding them why you’re the best choice. Another benefit? Content is great for your SEO!
4. Use Automation to Your Advantage
Where you can, use automated features in your CRM to send follow ups, streamline data-gathering and research, and send your lead generation and nurturing emails. Whenever you can save time through automation, this frees up more time for personalized communication with prospects or opportunities for testing new marketing channels.
5. Invest in Thought Leadership
Stakeholders want to know that the people they’re buying from are experts in what they do. Providing thought leadership, where your executives and directors share their insights through content, can help build trust and position your team as industry leaders.
4 Examples of Strategies for Effective B2B Marketing
1. Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
ABM focuses on targeting high-value prospects with highly personalized marketing efforts. This approach narrows targeting onto specific businesses and their decision makers. To create an ABM strategy, extensive research should be conducted on the company being targeted, before tailored messaging is sent to them to address their specific pain points.
2. Email Marketing
Even with hundreds of messages coming into inboxes each day, email marketing remains one of the highest ROI channels for B2B marketing. Leads can be nurtured with personalized content, which can be automated on your end for a more streamlined approach. Email lists can be segmented by industry, company size, or even level of engagement with your business.
3. Paid Advertising
Paid advertising also offers a number of different options for lead generation and nurturing as a B2B business. For new prospects, ad targeting can be set to broad or narrow categories, depending on the type of strategy you’re using. Once you have enough data, you can also set up retargeting ads that re-engage those who have already interacted with your brand.
4. LinkedIn Social Media Advertising
While social media marketing as a B2B company can seem more difficult, the most obvious channel to connect with prospects is on LinkedIn. Ads on this platform can be targeted directly at key decision-makers within prospective companies, while organic posts on the platform can help you build a network over time.
Key Takeaways
A strong B2B marketing strategy can quickly open doors to new opportunities and long-term partnerships with new prospects. With a strategic, relationship-driven approach, your brand can ensure sustainable growth in competitive B2B spaces.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What are the best B2B marketing platforms?
Some of the best marketing platforms for B2B companies are LinkedIn and Google, both organically and with paid advertising.
What are some current B2B marketing trends?
Personalized content has always been important for B2B marketing, but the introduction of AI and automation has made streamlining lead generation and nurturing much easier.
What are the best B2B marketing tactics for 2025?
Account-based marketing using interactive and AI-generated content is on the rise for 2025. Thought leadership is still a highly effective tactic, particularly when combined with other interactive content like webinars or virtual events.
