How to Build a B2B Marketing Strategy in 4 Steps

While the number one priority for any brand is to do good for the community or their audience, you cannot do any good unless you are making a profit. These profits ensure that your brand can effectively bring the needed solutions to your audience and when they need it the most. To make this profit, you need to invest in your B2B marketing strategy and keep it updated to ensure you continuously reach the right people at the right stage in their customer journey. Before you can learn how to build a B2B marketing strategy, you must take a moment to define the term.

What is a B2B Marketing Strategy?

A B2B marketing strategy stands for a business-to-business marketing strategy that is designed to reach an audience that is primarily made up of business decision-makers. These decision-makers oversee making crucial decisions in what tools and services they invest in to help them increase their day-to-day workflows or otherwise help them reach their ideal audience.

For example, here at CadenceSEO, our audience consists of business professionals looking for help with their digital marketing efforts. These individuals typically include marketing leaders, business owners, etc.

What Makes a B2B Marketing Strategy Different from a B2C Marketing Strategy?

It is essential for those who are just venturing into the marketing atmosphere to understand that a B2B marketing strategy is not interchangeable with a B2C marketing strategy. Here’s a quick recap on what makes these two marketing strategies so different:

• B2B Marketing Strategies — focus on marketing to other businesses who will utilize the products/services to reach their customer base.
• B2C Marketing Strategies — stands for business-to-consumer and focuses on marketing to individual consumers who will use the products/services for their personal use.

How to Build a B2B Marketing Strategy in 4 Simple Steps

Approximately 41% of B2B businesses conduct their marketing activities in-house. If you’re researching how to build a B2B marketing strategy, then you’ll want to consider taking these four steps:

1. Conduct B2B Competitor Analysis

Before you can begin building your B2B marketing strategy, you must take the time to conduct a B2B competitor analysis. This is crucial because it will help you understand who your competitors are, what they are doing right with their marketing efforts, and areas that may need improvement.

To create successful B2B marketing strategies, you don’t want to simply imitate what your competitors are doing right. You want to make sure you are using your strategy to address any gaps or areas of improvement that your competitors are not addressing. That’s how you’ll stand out from the crowd.

2. Identify Your Target Audience

The next step in creating an innovative B2B marketing strategy is to take adequate time to identify who exactly your target audience is. While this may be alluded to as part of your competitor analysis, you want to take things a step further.

You want to take a moment to think about what services/products you are offering and then identify who exactly these services/products will benefit the most. Once you’ve got a basic outline, you should take it even further and start designing ideal customer personas, as this will help you identify the best ways to reach them with your marketing efforts.

3. Set SMART Goals

With your competitor analysis done and your customer persona’s complete, you need to start setting marketing goals. You must make these goals as specific as possible, and one of the best methods to do this is by creating SMART goals.

SMART goals are goals that not only outline your desires but how you’ll accomplish them and in what timeframe. Here’s how you want to break each of your goals down:

• Specific — Make goals as detailed as you can. Have answers for who, what, when, where, why, and how.
• Measurable — How will you measure success or failure?
• Attainable — All goals should be reasonably achievable in a defined period.
• Relevant — Your goals should align with your brand’s values/mission and long-term objectives.
• Time-Based — When will this goal be met?

4. Identify Proper Marketing Channels

With your SMART goals set, it’s time to identify what marketing channels will benefit your strategy the most. Again, this may be alluded to as part of your competitor analysis; however, it’s vital to understand that the best indicator is your target audience.

You need to know where they are spending their time and receiving their information from. One of the best ways to do this is to conduct digital marketing channel research. This will help you identify where your audience is, why they are there, and whether they use specific channels for product/brand research and engagement.

Learn How to Build a B2B Marketing Strategy with CadenceSEO

Learning how to build a B2B marketing strategy isn’t nearly as challenging as you may think. However, if you don’t have the staff or resources to take all the necessary steps outlined above, then you may want to consider investing in the help of an outside digital marketing team.

If you need some help with your B2B marketing strategy, then contact us today! Our team of digital marketing professionals will get your brand on track!