B2B Marketing, how to make money in 2023’s economy

Author

Elka Adams

There are 6 main strategies that we recommend to create a successful and profitable B2B Marketing strategy.

1. Research your target market.
2. Build a strong brand that is attractive to your target market.
3. Ensure you have an excellent, highly converting website.
4. Invest in ongoing SEO.
5. Content marketing.
6. Network and build partnerships.

Research

Firstly, to increase B2B sales, start by creating a list of the industries and businesses that you want to connect with. Research what your competitors are doing and examine what they are doing well. It’s an effective way to find gaps in the current 2023 market.

Highlight opportunities and create a strategy for growth using metrics, data, and other company information. There are a variety of avenues to engage with your target market, such as SEO, social media engagement, and running targeted ads.

(Your target marketis a specific, defined segment of businesses that your business plans to serve/solve a problem for with its products or services.)

Also, assess all marketing avenues to create an effective B2B marketing strategy to connect with the decision makers in your target audience. This includes researching your brand message and presence in your market and industry.

Your target audienceonly impacts decisions related to specific marketing messages. Your business should be presented clearly in front of your target audience, in a quality manner.

The next step is to ensure that your message and brand connects with this audience.

Develop a Strong Brand

It’s important that the right people understand the benefits of your offer and want to engage with it. Good branding ensures that your business and brand is presented in a better way than your competitors.

• It sets the tone for all strategy, plans, and implementation. 
• It helps clearly define what the company stands for and assists in decision-making.

You can work on improving lead generation, but if your brand doesn’t resonate with your target market, the prospects are unlikely to engage.

Website

Similarly, you can improve your brand, but if your website doesn’t reflect your business or brand accurately, your prospects may be unlikely to convert.

Here are some of our tips to make a highly converting B2B website:

1. Make sure that your website has a strong and inviting UX (User Experience) that feels good and is easy to navigate UI (User Interface – includes visual elements, icons, buttons, etc.).
2. Ensure that your website shows multiple, strong CTA’s (Calls to Action) on pages that are well designed and speak to your target B2B audience.
3. Your website should have well thought out content that speaks to your target audiences.
4. Your website should be SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) friendly.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

Once you know your target audience, have assessed your competitors, and improved your brand and website, SEO is an ideal ongoing avenue for lead generation.

SEO services are important because you need to make it easier for potential businesses to find your business. Most businesses, and their decision makers are using the internet, specifically search engines, when looking for products and services. Therefore, in the B2B space, effective SEO can generate new leads and increase your sales year over year.

SEO is a resource-based strategy, and a long-term ongoing approach. On average, Google crawls websites every three months. Consequently, any improvements that are made are only recognised at about three month intervals.

Your ongoing B2B SEO Strategy should include the following

1. Technical optimisation: Schema auditing and implementation helps Google define your site. Site speed optimisation ensures you appeal to Google’s algorithm updates, and internal linking optimisation ensures that authority is prioritised to the right pages.
2. Content creation: Ensuring that an ongoing intentional blog strategy is implemented monthly on your website helps with Google’s understanding of your business and tells a vital story to the B2B market. This content must be authentically written with search volume and SEO best practices in mind. 
3. Off Site SEO (backlinks): It’s important to have a strong, authoritative backlink profile to give your website a chance at success, whilst also ensuring that your links don’t violate Google’s algorithms. 

Content Marketing

As mentioned above, ongoing Content Marketing is a great way for businesses to spark the interest of other businesses.

Content Marketing is a strategy for creating and sharing online, relevant, and timely content designed to appeal to a business audience. This is an effective avenue for increasing brand awareness, and ultimately an avenue to connect with new clients.

A few examples are as follows:

Network/ Partnerships

Finally, we have found that networking and building partnerships is still a relevant strategy in 2023. In the B2B space, this can be a fantastic way to build long-term relationships built on trust, which can lead to new business opportunities. By developing a strong network of connections, B2B businesses can gain access to new markets and business.

Depending on your industry, events such as trade shows and B2B networking events are a great way to showcase your business. The B2B sales cycle is generally longer. The “touch points” required are normally greater, and the trust required is usually deeper. Face to face connection is always an effective way to break down barriers and develop deeper trust in the sales process. 

The B2B sales cycle is generally longer. The “touch points” required are normally greater, and the trust required is usually deeper. Face to face connection is always an effective way to break down barriers and develop deeper trust in the sales process.