In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, many marketing managers and their teams found themselves at a loss on how to effectively navigate B2B Marketing and sales.
The situation was further complicated by the lockdowns and other restrictive measures that had to be imposed to stem the spread of the pandemic.
It has thus been necessary for businesses that heavily rely on traditional B2B marketing methods to incorporate new techniques and strategies.
Thankfully, there are various contemporary B2B marketing strategies that make your business thrive despite the pandemic.
For the most part, unlike traditional marketing strategies, which had to be birthed through personal pitches or physical meetings, these tried and tested ideas do not require physical sessions for the most part.
They are digital marketing strategies that you can remotely execute no matter where your sales team happens to be located.
Also, they are budget-friendly yet highly effective strategies, thus giving you better value for money and return on investment.
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Email marketing
Email remains one of the more excellent ways through which you can reach your B2B prospects during this post-pandemic period.
According to a study conducted by OptinMonster in 2020, 99% of business email users open their inboxes daily. Some of these check their emails up to twenty times a day!
Email remains the most preferred business communication method due to its speed and efficiency.
It is an ideal tool for businesses to cultivate long-term relationships and keep their clients and prospects informed of new product releases, offers, and discounts.
A successful email marketing campaign begins with picking the right Email Service Provider (ESP).
The ESP will handle your email outreach by providing you with verified email contacts of critical decision-makers and players in your target market. These are the people responsible for the purchase decisions within your prospective companies.
The services of a professional ESP can therefore never be overstated, more so for new companies and brands whose products are yet to be known.
The services of an ESP also include structuring your prospecting emails in a way that ensures they are not relegated to the spam folder.
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Cold calling
Gone are the days when cold calling or telemarketing involved a recital of products in a monotonous voice and simply asking a prospect to buy.
Anyone who attempts that kind of strategy today is guaranteed to fail.
Modern cold calls are more about engaging with your prospects and highlighting what value addition your product brings to their table.
That also means understanding the prospects’ needs and preferences and how the products on offer can meet those needs.
While every marketer’s dream is to have quick conversions, cold calling today goes beyond making an instant sale. It involves cultivating long term lead generation by establishing a rapport with your B2B prospects and learning why they prefer certain products over others.
In other words, even if a cold call fails to materialize an instant sale, today’s cold caller will go beyond the rejection and courteously seek to understand why the prospect chose not to buy.
Therefore, cold calling services serve as lead generation tools for B2B sales.
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LinkedIn outreach
Coupling your cold calling efforts with a LinkedIn outreach strategy allows your business to achieve a higher level of conversions in its sales campaign.
LinkedIn is the largest online professional and employment network globally. Most key industry players can be found on this web-based platform.
According to the LinkedIn marketing solutions page, 4 out of 5 LinkedIn members drive business decisions within their areas of operation.
In addition, compared to the rest of the web, LinkedIn audiences carry two times more buying power.
With such statistics, it only stands to reason that incorporating a LinkedIn outreach strategy in your B2B sales campaign yields better leads and higher sales in the long term.
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Optimized websites
Post covid-19, every business worth its salt would want to have a dedicated website.
That is because a website is the first point of call for most B2B clients.
Data availed by Google indicates that B2B consumers prefer to make comparisons before buying and can conduct up to 12 searches before committing to a specific brand.
However, simply having a website is not enough. You must optimize your brand’s website.
That includes having dedicated and concise landing pages with informative material and captivating visuals to welcome your online visitors.
Also, the website should have informative content about the business’s products and services, including helpful and well-researched articles that your clients might need.
Website optimization also involves making sure that your website is easily discoverable online by people searching for your kind of product. That is achieved through several methods, such as ensuring that your website ranks highly with search engines.
Optimization also involves prioritizing your reviews and testimonials.
Having past clients validate your products through positive reviews and testimonials will win tremendous brand confidence within your market.
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Leverage social media
Use different social media to market your brand. Have consistent handles across multiple media where you can be posting sound bites about your products and services.
Leveraging your brand’s social media presence can help you acquire a more significant following, and in the process, a boost in sales.
To leverage your brand’s social media presence, you need to post engaging content without disrupting your audience constantly. The content should be tied to smart, quantifiable goals that you hope to achieve within a given timeline.
For instance, to grow your Facebook page audience to a given figure, setting a time frame within which you want to achieve this helps you determine which content to post, whom to target, and when to post it.
Social media is also an opportunity to demonstrate your engagement with your clients by offering a responsive online customer support system.
