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How to Transform your B2B Marketing from Bust to Boom [INFOGRAPHIC]

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The ABCs of Marketing B2B

Looking to step your B2B marketing performance up a notch? This infographic reveals the strategic must-haves and marketing essentials you need to have in place to secure marketing success. Central to it all is bringing in the right marketing resource to pull it all together. Read on to find out how to transform your B2B marketing…

transforming your B2B marketing from bust to boom

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You can also download the ABC of Marketing B2B infographic>>

And if you’d like to talk to one of our co-founders about how to transform your B2B marketing, get in touch by calling 0203 137 3343 or sending an email to hi@YourAllies.co.uk.

Your essential guide to making B2B marketing work

If marketing investment is on your mind chances are you’re considering how to best improve your marketing performance ovDownload essential guideerall. For business leaders of growing SMEs we’ve developed an essential guide to making B2B marketing work. From identifying where to start and finding good marketing resource, to assessing investment requirements and getting the right building blocks in place – our guide takes you through, step by step.

More inspiration to transform your B2B marketing

There’s a lot of foundations and elements to consider when it comes to building a high performing marketing function. Read on for more steer to set you on the right path…

How to grow your B2B business with professional marketing

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Transform your business into an engine of growth

So you’re in B2B, focused on serving other businesses. It’s possible you’ll be a small manufacturer, but it’s more likely that you’re a service business, in IT, marketing, property or professional services like management consultancy, finance or law. How’s it for you? How are you dealing with the post-Brexit vote, post-Trump, post-financial crisis world? And, in particular… how are your sales holding up? Not easy, is it?

Up to now, perhaps you’ve placed too much reliance on your sales team or account managers to find and retain clients. You exhibit at conferences, issue the occasional press release, tweet now and then. You might even have someone in-house who does a bit of marketing when they can find the time around their real job. So far so good, but is this low B2B marketing impact enough to cut through the endless noise from your competitors?

Passionate founders and skilled sales people can always find early adopters for new services. But there comes a point in your growth cycle when you need to create B2B brand awareness to reach a wider pool of new clients. And cold calling isn’t going to cut it.

Just think. Given the competitive pressure on your business, and current market uncertainty, isn’t it time to build a bolder and more impactful presence – so you’ll be more visible when your prospects are on the hunt for solutions. That’s where targeted, effective professional marketing is your best bet.

Introducing professional B2B marketingHow to grow your b2b business into an engine of growth

Professional B2B marketing is the well-planned and structured variety normally found in larger corporates. A dedicated, quality resource – all focused on you and your brand. Too expensive? Think again.

Easier market access through digital and mobile channels, and more plentiful choice of skilled self-employed marketers has now leveled the playing field… assuming that forward-thinking SMEs play their cards right and use the playing field. Few do. And that’s your opportunity.

Of course resources, time and budget can get in the way. Or SME founders can’t find the right people to fit with a growth-stage business. But left ignored, it can lead to the creation of a growth gap. Referrals slow. The B2B sales pipeline is empty. Stagnation sets in.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Professional B2B marketing: transforming prospects into customers

Without dedicated professional marketing support, websites go out of date, social media gets patchy, PR opportunities are missed and there’s no-one to produce relevant content for potential customers.

All of which slows down the process of getting your word out there. Slows down educating customers about your expertise. Slows down building trust in your quality. And slows down turning the goodwill of existing, happy customers into referrals. In a 24/7 world, you feel like yesterday’s 9-5 brand.

Today, 24/7 is everything. Long before the decision stage, your prospects are out there, educating themselves about the challenges they face. It’s an overwhelmingly online task. Then, they’ll go on to find solutions – and assess suppliers. So much so, it’s said that by the time a potential customer gets in touch with you, as much as 70% may have already decided to buy (Source: Survey by Consumer Executive Board (CEB). In other words, you only need to push the remaining third of the way.

A professional marketing team will give you the strategy, talent and systems to make you more relevant, visible and helpful all the way through the buying cycle. So that when customers are ready to buy, you’ll be front of mind. And beat larger B2B competitors.

Professional B2B marketing: driving your sales

Sales people should sell. Get on calls, jump on planes, organise demos and attend meetings with potential customers. Yet all too often they spend far too much valuable time rectifying your lack of sales leads: sourcing contact details, cold calling, building Powerpoint decks and trying to deliver the most basic information about who you are and what you do. What a waste.

One of the most valuable (and quantifiable) effects of professional B2B marketing is time – the time your marketers give back to your sales team, by providing them with a sales toolbox so they don’t have to spend time on building sales materials.

Professional B2B marketers work hand-in-hand with Sales, identifying and profiling your buyers to understand their questions and business challenges, and stamping out poor lead management. Properly targeted B2B marketing investment will produce articles, videos, infographics and more – in formats that suit your target market – that get you found early in the buying cycle. All of which helps to add qualified leads to your sales funnel.

Professional B2B marketing: growing your business

From the outset, dedicated B2B marketers use the right tools from the marketing box to get you better known by your most relevant audiences. They develop persuasive case studies, shout about your successes, keep your digital channels current, stimulate referrals and more – increasing your presence and reputation in the market while enhancing sales leads and efficiency. In short, the net effect of fully resourced professional B2B marketing is growth. See how Your Allies has helped professionalise other B2B businesses’ marketing.

Set your marketing free to perform

Is your B2B marketing an engine of growth in your btake the B2B self-assessment to learn how to grow your b2b businessusiness? Time to find out. Our quick Self-Assessment tool  is a tailored B2B marketing audit that’ll help you see where your B2B sales challenges could be lurking.

Three steps to ensure your B2B sales pipeline never gets empty

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You’re in B2B and guiding your business towards another big growth target. Fantastic. So your sales engine needs to fire on all cylinders. But what’s happening upstream in your sales pipeline?

So far, your growth might have come organically, through positive word of mouth and referrals. But you know that won’t last forever. After all, there’s only so much you can do with your personal network. So you’ve dipped your toes into campaigns to reach out to new audiences and increase B2B sales leads.

Maybe it’s made sense to focus on the more immediate short-term appeal of cold-calling, direct marketing and telemarketing. However that well-trodden route is expensive and won’t always talk to prospects when they’re ready to buy. Indeed, some won’t be looking at all. Some won’t respond because they don’t know you. Some might want a call back months down the line. Perhaps a few might be open to talking. But it can feel rather like looking for a needle in a haystack.

So there comes a point when you need to invest in the medium to long-term game, as well as knowing what to do if your B2B sales pipeline is empty in the here-and-now. But how?…

Route 1: The short, the medium, the long term

For a short-term sales pipeline fix, running well-targeted and carefully crafted outbound lead generation campaigns – to thoroughly researched prospect lists – can buy you time and give you breathing space. See our blog for tips on how to ensure campaign success.

Over time, if you can get clarity on what your buyers are looking for (and when), then you’re in a luxurious position. Understanding who’s seeking-out your products and services at any one time can be a game changer.

Work that one out then you can build a new business marketing programme that always ensures you’re having relevant conversations about the right stuff, tailored to your prospects’ position in the buying cycle. It also enables you to set more realistic expectations about the leads your campaigns are likely to generate. Our 9 step guide will help you successfully create each campaign.

Route 2: Getting inbound marketing in place

Mid to long-term plans to address poor lead generation should always include inbound marketing – where you draw your prospects towards your brand and your services by using content marketing and social media – not to mention fine-tuning your website with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

Rather than ramming your messages down your prospects’ throats, this technique takes a helpful and relevant approach to interaction with your customers, as the basis of a dialogue, not a one-way diatribe.

Unsurprisingly, it takes time and talent to do well. You’ll need to build a range of buyer personas and structure engaging content around the three key buying stages: awareness, consideration and decision. Then you’ll need a robust process to structure and support campaign management – take a look at how Hubspot makes it happen.

Patience and investment will pay-off in the form of higher quality enquiries, because the people who engage with you are more likely to be further down the sales process, and more likely to convert. Bingo.

So much for the ‘how’ and the ‘when’. What about the ‘where’?…

Route 3: Multi-channel, multi-savvy marketing

It’s tempting to focus all your marketing efforts in one or two places, or be seduced by the ‘appointment setting’ agencies who’ll reel you in with ‘no meeting, no fee’ offers and tales of tantalising conversion rates. Sounds good on paper. But it’s no strategy for a lack of sales leads in the long haul. Instead, a multi-channel approach will put your eggs in many different baskets.

Start by considering how your buyers stay informed and where they go for industry information. As consumers we get our news from a variety of sources, and the B2B space is no different. So find out where your prospects go and how you can best reach them. Make it meaningful, timely and engaging and you’ll generate quality leads.

Today’s switched-on B2B marketeers will choose from a diverse mix of channels including social media, events, network marketing, public speaking, thought-leadership, partner marketing, PR and awards. And with dedicated marketing support, you’ll see how these channels fit together and understand the part each plays in cultivating the best B2B leads.

Professional marketing will choose the optimal marketing mix for generating quality leads, nurture them through the sales process, and hand them over when they’re ripe for Sales to convert into new business.

One goal: filling your sales pipeline

Professional B2B marketing is no game of smoke and mirrors. It draws on tried-and-tested techniques to build a B2B sales pipeline, from inbound marketing to a multi-channel strategy, not as an end in itself, but with one clear objective in mind – to keep your sales team busy with quality leads.

Set your marketing free to perform

My b2b sales pipeline is empty - Take the B2B self-assessmentIs your B2B marketing an engine of growth in your business? Time to find out. Our quick Self-Assessment tool is a tailored B2B marketing audit that’ll help you see where your B2B sales challenges could be lurking, so you can recognise the symptoms and tackle the causes head-on.

Three marketing tips to beat your B2B competition

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Competition is part and parcel of running a B2B business – a healthy sign of thriving markets. It focuses the mind, is a crucial motivator, and encourages ever better customer service. There are benefits as well as pressures: a competitive market can help drive input costs down by keeping your suppliers on their toes.

No market is perfect, and the level of competition you’ll face depends on a whole range of factors, from the number of buyers and sellers, to the transparency of pricing information – not to mention your own status; from new entrant to established player.

If you’re active in B2B, as an IT or management consultant, IT/software professional services specialist, you’ll already know your competitors – and know how competition affects business. They’re ones you come up against time and again in pitches, online searches, events and the trade press. And, rest assured, they’ll know you.

So how can you go beyond merely competing, to thriving and winning? If your competition is keeping you up at night, professional B2B marketing can drive your performance in a number of vital ways. Here’s how…

Tip 1: Get the basics right3 steps to beat B2B competition

Sounds obvious, right? Creating market leading product and services takes constant attention, work and investment. The competition never sleeps, either…

So if you’re continuously improving your offering, great. The next best place to start is honing your customer experience. From the very first point of contact, through to building ongoing relationships, it needs to be competitive and in-tune with your customers at every step.

Ask yourself how your prospects find you. What impression does that experience give them? How does your website stack up against your competitors? How are your prospects greeted when they call? Does your sales information and collateral genuinely help them understand, evaluate and appreciate your offer?

Work on your response

Next, consider your responsiveness. How quickly do you respond, compared to your competitors? Do you act on complaints? Do you engage customers in a dialogue and make them feel valued, not taken for granted?

Think through all your touchpoints – the places where customers experience you and your brand. Do you bring your brand personality to life? Do you live out your values? And does the left hand know what the right is doing? If the experience feels instinctively joined-up, you’ll build a solid base from which to impress.

Tip 2: Promote your strengths (and don’t hide your weaknesses)

It’s only natural to ‘big up’ your strengths. But be careful not to go overboard or put up a front. If you’re boutique, don’t pretend to be a vast conglomerate. It’ll come back to bite you where it hurts.

In fact, this might sound counter-intuitive, but resist the temptation to hide your weaknesses. There’s no need to shout about them on your website – but, rather, be open about what you offer over and above the competition, as well as the things that you won’t (or don’t) do, and the areas where you’re a generalist, not a specialist. This is especially important in the final stage of the buying cycle when your prospects are evaluating your business against others. Honesty matters.

Beware the curse of over-sell and under-deliver

Let’s face it, over-selling (then under-delivering) is a curse that’s hard to come back from. Instead, show how you’re working to get rid of potential flaws in your process (from product roadmaps and customer service initiatives to best practice standards like PRINCE2 and ISO). Your customers will discover your weaknesses soon enough – perhaps even from your competitors. Better raise the bar at the outset and eliminate your weak spots rather than hiding them.

To make the most of your B2B marketing investment, turn-up the volume on all the good stuff that showcases your prowess. Enter awards. Display wins on your website. Use positive PR about new clients and pitches. Build engaging content that shows off your expertise. And use testimonials from your current customers that really sing your praises. Showcasing a potent mix of your capabilities, innovation and customer value will really work in your favour.

Tip 3: Show what you stand for – and the value you bring

Competition is at its harshest in a price war. When a competitor cuts its price, it’s a race to the bottom that puts you on the back foot. All of a sudden, you’re in a scramble to justify your pricing, or respond in kind.

This is one of the key challenges facing B2B marketers – and there’s no silver bullet. However, in your relentless quest to stay ahead of the competition, differentiation works wonders. So if you’ve got your basics right, you can change the conversation by talking about the benefit of value over price by showing what you stand for – and, crucially, by the added value you bring your customers.

Learn to live your valuesThe strategy to beat B2B competition

Being known for solving your customers’ problems (rather than just ‘shifting boxes’ or ‘delivering services’) gets you a long way. And living your values – being clear about why you do what you do – can give you a compelling reason to do business… and a competitive edge.

Look wider. Do you work to improve your community? Do you empower your people to solve problems in ways others don’t? Are you dedicated to a cause or two? In a highly competitive environment, being a ‘people business’ separates market leaders from narrow price-based competitors.

How professional B2B marketing grows your business

Whether you’re defending market leadership with competitors snapping at your heels, striving to get to the top or focused on building basic trust in your business, professional B2B marketing enables you to take on and beat larger B2B competitors.

Applying the insights, talents and creativity of teams who are usually only found in corporates, professional B2B marketeers can create B2B brand awareness: refining and targeting your messaging, applying it in all the right channels and working with Sales to generate leads and turn prospects into customers.

Set your marketing free to perform

Take the B2B Self-assessment to beat b2b competitionCan your business beat the B2B competition through marketing? Time to find out. Our quick Self-Assessment tool is a tailored B2B marketing audit that can help you identify your roadblocks and make the most of your investment.

8 Crucial SEO Must-Haves for B2B Business Leaders

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Dealing with SEO providers: Patience & Accountability

Cultivate a good relationship with your SEO team or provider for better SEO results.

Choosing your SEO provider and creating a good working relationship can take its time. The first hurdle you need to face is what kind of SEO delivery method will best work for your business.

  • Agency SEO: Working with an agency should mean you have access to a team of experts under one roof. You may get preferential rates or turnaround times for other web services like web design or development. Sometimes working with an agency can mean working with their internal politics – you may not always get 100% out of their SEO service.
  • In-house SEO: Internal SEO resource can sit within a marketing, digital or IT department; or exist on its own. Bringing SEO into your organisation is a great idea when the time is right, but finding the right talent can be challenging.
  • Freelancer SEO: Freelancers can offer more budget-friendly SEO rates. As they are working for themselves, you’ll often find that they are very dedicated and motivated. However, as with recruiting finding talented freelancers can take time and they may not be the best fit for long-term ongoing work.

SEO can take its time

SEO doesn’t always yield immediate results and it isn’t a good idea to hold SEOs or SEO agencies accountable for immediate rankings benefits. It’s called ‘organic’ for a reason – it takes time. Fast results are often a tell-tale sign of bad SEO mistakes & practices that you will want to avoid.

  • SEOs that claim they can guarantee instant rankings improvements are often using cheap SEO that may harm your business in the long run. Avoid any suppliers who try to reel you in by promising fast results.
  • On the other hand, good SEO should, and will, improve website rankings, engagement metrics, and overall site quality. If you aren’t seeing any measurable results, something’s wrong and it’s time to review.

SEO specialisation – what does it mean for you?

SEO is becoming more complex and sophisticated, meaning that we are seeing more and more SEO specialists – whether that be in local SEO, mobile SEO, content SEO or B2B SEO. Seek out advice and find out what SEO your business should focus on. Then find SEO resource with sound experience, and testimonials to back that up, who can help.

Play the long SEO game

SEO is a long-term investment, you won’t get away with just paying for an audit and leaving it at that. The best type of SEO takes into account:

  • Channel prioritisation – where can the biggest wins be had right now, you can’t do everything at once
  • Overall organisational goals – integration with long-term business strategy
  • Capacity – what can be realistically achieved within the budget and timeframe

SEO Priorities for B2B Businesses in 2017

What do you need to prioritise for your B2B business right now?

Invest in great B2B copy & content

Investing in great B2B content is extremely worthwhile. Great content forms a central tenet of the inbound marketing methodology and helps you connect with your audience in wider sense. Great content helps build up your SEO and brand profile.

  • For B2B, it’s very important that your experts get involved in content production so that good content can be created cost-effectively. Especially when it comes to covering complex B2B subjects – SEOs can’t do it on their own.
  • B2B businesses often deal with a wide range of stakeholders and customers with different pain points, so it’s important to conduct accurate customer segmentation for the purposes of SEO content creation. You don’t want to be sending out the wrong messages and messing up your sales funnel.
  • Great content should form part of your lead generation and sales strategies as well – don’t just create content and then let it sit on your domain. Make it pay its way by proactively pointing people to it. Here’s some tools to kick start your content marketing.

Websites need constant pruning

Consider investing in frequent SEO audits and optimisation blasts – SEO is no static craft. As sites age, their code gets less sharp and errors like broken links creep in.

  • Investigate any speed issues – they can have an immediate negative effect on conversions. Here are some common reasons why websites slow down.
  • Issues that are likely to affect user-experience must be addressed fast. You can often diagnose usability issues by looking through your analytics or site search logs. What pages are people exiting at? Are there any web questions that customer services have to deal with? Does your online customer journey break down somewhere?
  • Get to know your customer and web data intimately – the more information you have, the better decisions you can make.

Think about your keywords thematically

Optimising your website for your primary, secondary and longtail keywords is a complex business. Get fully immersed in a vertical to do this kind of research properly, so work closely with your SEOs to make sure you you’ve got access to quality B2B keyword research.

Set out a clear purpose for every page on your website to help you avoid any keyword competition or crossover.

Branch out with your keyword research and think about the bigger picture – explore keyword themes and user questions to help you create compelling landing pages.

Mobile UX

Aim to provide a great mobile experience for your users – don’t make the mistake of seeing it as a lesser, secondary platform.

  • Mobile usability is all about speed and clarity. Use the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project to help speed up your mobile website.
  • Explore the opportunities of mobile for your business in the form of apps and gamification.
  • Ensure your menus are optimised for mobile and that your pages load well and fill the screen.

Enhanced search

Give search engines as much information as possible about your website’s content to make your business a more attractive search candidate.

  • Implement structured data to give your site a better chance of appearing in the rich snippets box. This can help you communicate key information like ratings and reviews to the user, and can improve click-through rates and conversions.
  • To maximise your search power, format your site’s content well, and have clear and unique page titles and well-written meta descriptions. Step away from old hat techniques like keyword stuffing and focus on quality content instead.

For more SEO tips, check out our article How to do B2B keyword research and increase leads in 2017.

Gareth Simpson - expert on SEO for B2B business leadersGareth Simpson – Technical SEO & Startup Founder
Gareth has worked as an SEO for almost a decade now and has recently started freelancing as a technical SEO in Bristol. His SEO specialisms are content and blogger outreach…and he likes green tea.

Quality is a B2B marketing budget’s best friend

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When it comes to marketing, these preconceptions are very common amongst business leaders. Especially in the small and medium sized business (SMB) space.

But I want to show you a new side to quality and what it could mean for your business – and its positive (yes positive!) impact on your marketing budget – and in fact the bottom line of your business.

So if you’re a SMB business leader putting together your B2B marketing budget recommendation for 2017 open your mind to a new perspective on quality.

Scale-up B2B marketing budget recommendation = lean

It’s not surprising that you may equate quality with high costs.

You’ve made it beyond the first two painful start-up years on a shoe-string marketing budget. However, during the scale-up years that follow it’s likely you’ll still need to generate demand with careful investment.

Business comes in via referrals and you use your contacts to generate those early results. Marketing may also be in the mix using your website to generate leads, possibly some Google Adwords campaigns, and email marketing. It’s not perfect and you suspect that some of it is a waste of money but times are good and you are busy.

Using this ad hoc, tactical approach to marketing you manage to keep demand coming in at a reasonable pace, whilst keeping up with the demands of actually running the business. The business has expanded and headcount is growing – yet marketing costs are still minimal. Happy days you think.

Then one day you hit the plateau. Demand is not growing exponentially anymore and you come to the realisation that if the business is to continue to grow you need to get serious and strategic about marketing.

B2B marketing budget recommendation = quality marketing

SME B2B marketing budget recommendation = quality

At this point you have a choice to make about marketing. A kind of crossroads. (One day you may even look back and wonder what would have happened if you had chosen the other path.)

  • You can choose to remain in start-up mode.
  • Or you can make the shift towards the quality of marketing your SMB now needs.

The point here is not the cost of either path but its effectiveness in generating incremental revenue.

If an activity is not costing much but is not bringing in leads then this low quality marketing activity has a high cost to the business – and vice versa.

 The impact of quality on….

Strategy

From the outset, marketing activity should be the product of a clear strategy. A strategy that supports the business objectives and drives towards achieving longer term goals.

Marketing strategy definition is not a skill that every business has in-house. It’s more common than you think. But recognising the need for help may save the business thousands in wasted ad hoc marketing tactics that produce no tangible results.

Execution

Every business needs quality leads that convert. Good quality marketing means that targeting is accurate and that leads generated are a good use of time for marketing to nurture and sales to follow up on.

Content

Content says everything about your business. Through content your prospects form an opinion about your products and services, your company intellect, your integrity and thought leadership, your influence and reputation in the market.

Content drives that wheel of marketing activity so there will always be a huge demand for new, valuable, unique content to fuel it. Quality vs not-so-great content? It’s a big risk to take when the opportunity to elevate the business is open to you. Here’s some tools that will help you to get started.

The customer journey

What does a customer experience when they interact with your business? What touchpoints do you have and how do you make these better? The quality of the customer journey impacts on customer perceptions about how easy it is to deal with you and your reaction times in response to their needs.

Visual appearance

Design quality pays dividends. Every piece of your company’s visual identity is involved in how the outside world forms a picture of your brand. And in how it makes assumptions about your worth and professionalism. From websites to exhibition stands, emails to brochures, printed manuals to case studies. This is an area where quality is of paramount importance.

PR exposure

Allocating very little or nothing to your B2B marketing budget recommendation for PR for the year may seem like an obvious place to save money. Perhaps you plan to send out a few press releases yourself. However the power of a short, sharp high quality campaign and a well targeted piece of PR is not to be under estimated. And it may actually cost less than continual, plodding PR activity.

PR can save reputations, take an idea viral or hit a nerve within the industry that sees your firm as the expert in a given situation. Just the growth hack you’re looking for.

Marketing support

Time is short to generate demand. The competition are snapping at your heels and there’s always a new market entrant waiting to snatch your customers. It’s certainly too short to lose on managing junior marketers who lack experience and poor suppliers who don’t deliver what you need, when you need it.

Inject quality resources into your organisation and fast results and incremental revenue will be the prize.

In summary…

Quality marketing means choosing to spend your budget in a way that will produce best results for your business. It means having a big picture of how you are going to achieve your goals and then using money in a smart way to carry out supporting activities.

Quality is reputation enhancing

Quality is taking pride in appearances

Quality is quite simply your B2B marketing budget’s best friend.

For more ideas, check out our five recommended ways to invest your B2B marketing budget. Or to assess how well your current marketing efforts are performing sign up for a Marketing Capabilities Review.

Contact

hello@yourallies.co.uk