Building an effective B2B marketing strategy that drives leads and revenue growth can seem like a monumental task. You have so many options — content marketing, events, email marketing, social media, advertising, partnerships, the list goes on and on.
How do you know what will work for your unique business and audience? The truth is, the best approach is an integrated one that combines multiple marketing channels. But you have to start somewhere.
In this article, we’ll walk you through the key steps to building a B2B marketing strategy that generates a steady flow of high-quality leads for your sales team. By the end, you’ll have an actionable plan to attract your ideal customers, boost brand awareness, and take your marketing to the next level.
Step 1: Understand Your Target Audience for B2B Marketing
To build an effective B2B marketing strategy, you need to get inside the minds of your target audience. Who are they? What problems do they face? What solutions are they looking for? Understanding these key details about your potential customers will help you create content, messaging, and offers that truly resonate.
Your target audience is made up of the companies and decision-makers in your total addressable market (TAM) that are most likely to buy from you. In B2B, 20% of customers typically drive 80% of sales, so focus on those high-value accounts. Look at factors like:
- Industry: What fields are your customers in? Manufacturing? Technology? Finance?
- Company size: Do you sell to small businesses, mid-market companies or large enterprises?
- Location: Are your customers concentrated in certain cities, states or regions?
- Buying committees: For larger deals, who else besides the main point of contact is involved in the buying decision? Appeal to all relevant stakeholders.
Once you’ve defined your target audience, create detailed buyer personas that represent your most valuable customer segments. Give each persona a name and backstory, note their key demographics, pain points, goals and how your solution can help them. Refer back to these personas often as you develop your B2B marketing strategy.
With a clear picture of who you’re selling to, you can now start building a comprehensive marketing strategy to reach them. Focus your efforts on the channels, content, and messaging that will resonate most with your target audience. And remember, in B2B marketing, quality over quantity is key. Target the companies and contacts that are the best fit, and your strategy will generate high-quality leads.
Step 2: Set Measurable Goals for Your B2B Marketing Strategy
To generate leads with your B2B marketing strategy, you need measurable goals. SMART goals provide a framework to track your progress and make changes as needed. Some examples include:
- Increasing organic traffic to your site by 15% month over month. More traffic means more potential leads. Measure traffic with Google Analytics and see how content upgrades, social sharing, and SEO improvements boost numbers over time.
- Improving landing page conversion rates by 10% per quarter. Pick a few key landing pages and optimize content, layout, calls-to-action, and forms. Then watch conversion numbers climb as you make improvements. Measure using analytics tools like Google Optimize.
- Generating 50-100 marketing qualified leads (MQLs) per month. Define what makes a quality lead for your business and build campaigns to attract good fits. Track lead numbers and quality in your CRM to make sure you’re on target. If you’re not getting enough leads, re-evaluate your personas, messaging, and channels.
The key is choosing goals that motivate your team yet are achievable with effort and persistence. Start with your priority metrics, set targets, and revisit goals quarterly to make adjustments. Measure, analyze, optimize, and never stop testing and improving. With time and experience, you’ll gain insights to boost your B2B marketing strategy and crush those lead gen goals.
Keeping your goals SMART—specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound—provides the framework to build a B2B marketing strategy that generates leads. What goals will you set to take your lead generation to the next level?
Step 3: Choose the Right B2B Marketing Channels
To generate high-quality B2B leads, you need to leverage the right marketing channels. Some of the top channels for B2B marketers include:
Social Media
Social platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook are ideal for building brand awareness and engaging your target audience. Post relevant content, join industry discussions, and connect with like-minded professionals. While social media may not directly generate many leads, it strengthens your brand and credibility.
Content Marketing
Creating and sharing valuable content is one of the best ways to attract B2B leads. Useful content like blog posts, ebooks, webinars, and videos position your company as a trusted resource. Promote your content on social media, your website, and email to drive traffic and capture leads.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
With SEO, you optimize your website to rank higher in the search results for key terms your target customers are searching. Higher rankings mean more visibility and traffic to your site. Include important keywords in your page titles, content, image alt text, and internal links. As your rankings improve over time, you’ll see an increase in organic leads.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising
PPC ads on search engines like Google Ads allow you to show up prominently in the search results. You bid on keywords relevant to your business and only pay when someone clicks your ad. PPC leads tend to convert at a higher rate since these visitors are actively searching for your products or services. However, PPC can be expensive if not optimized properly.
Email Marketing
Email is one of the most effective tools for lead generation and nurturing. Build your list by offering gated content like ebooks or webinars in exchange for a subscriber’s email address. Then, send a welcome series and regular updates to educate subscribers about your offerings and promote content or events. Timely, relevant emails keep you top of mind and convert subscribers into leads.
Events
Industry events are a prime opportunity to generate in-person leads. Host a speaking session or sponsor an event to increase your exposure. Have a booth where you can showcase your products, capture contact details, and start meaningful conversations. Follow up with anyone who expresses interest to stay on their radar. In-person connections made at events often lead to the warmest, highest-quality leads.
Step 4: Create Valuable B2B Content That Converts
To generate leads, you need to provide valuable content that speaks to your target audience. Create content that educates and helps solve their problems. Some of the most effective types of B2B content include:
Pillar Pages
These cornerstone content pieces cover a topic in depth. They establish your authority and credibility on important subjects for your audience. Pillar pages should be highly comprehensive, with statistics, examples, images, videos, and actionable advice.
Visual Storytelling
Using graphics, photos, infographics and video in your content helps bring your message to life in an engaging way. People process visual information 60,000 times faster than text, so including visuals is key. Create content like video tutorials, animated explainer videos, photo essays, and infographics.
Webinars
Hosting live or recorded webinars, podcasts or video presentations is a great way to generate leads. You can share expertise, announce new offerings, and build rapport. Have attendees register to get their contact information, then promote your webinar across social media and your email newsletter.
Case Studies
Share stories of how you solved problems for other clients. Case studies build trust and help prospects see the value in your solution. Describe the client’s situation, goals, the strategies you implemented and the results. Include data, quotes and visuals to bring the story to life.
Online Courses
Develop a multi-part course on a topic important to your audience. Release lessons on a set schedule to keep people engaged. Courses position you as an expert and give you a chance to demonstrate your knowledge. Many people will register just to get the content, giving you their information as a lead.
Following these tips will help you create high-quality content that attracts, engages and converts your target B2B audience into valuable leads for your business. Focus on solving their problems and being as helpful a resource as possible.
Step 5: Measure and Optimize Your B2B Marketing Strategy
Once you’ve implemented your B2B marketing strategy, it’s time to start measuring and optimizing your results. Some of the key metrics you should track include:
Website Traffic
Monitor how many visitors are coming to your website and blog. Look for trends to see if traffic is increasing over time. Pay attention to the source of traffic to determine which marketing channels are most effective.
Conversion Rate
Your conversion rate shows how many website visitors end up becoming leads. A good B2B conversion rate is 5-10%. Make improvements to your content and lead capture forms to increase conversions.
Lead Quality
Not all leads are equal. Grade your leads based on factors like job title, company size, and intent to buy. Focus your sales efforts on the highest quality leads.
Cost Per Lead
Calculate how much you’re spending to generate each lead. Lower costs per lead over time by optimizing your marketing spend and improving conversion rates.
Once you have baseline metrics, look for ways to optimize your B2B marketing strategy. You might improve your:
- Content – Refresh and update your content, especially blog posts and resources. Add more in-depth content for high-level decision makers.
- Lead capture – Make sure your forms are simple, mobile-friendly, and provide value. Offer content upgrades or discounts in exchange for contact information.
- Targeting – Refine your targeting to focus on specific job titles, company sizes, and other attributes of your ideal customers.
- Messaging – Test different headlines, copy, images, and calls to action to determine what resonates most with your audience.
- Channels – Double down on the marketing channels driving the most traffic and leads. Consider new channels like webinars, podcasts, and video.
By measuring key B2B metrics and continuously optimizing your marketing strategy, you’ll generate higher quality leads at a lower cost over time. Regular analysis and testing are key to success.
In Summary
So there you have it. Follow these key steps to build a solid B2B marketing strategy that will help you generate more high-quality leads for your business. Focus on identifying your target audience and their pain points. Create relevant and valuable content that speaks to their challenges and positions you as an expert in your field. Build a content distribution plan across multiple channels to maximize your reach. And finally, be sure to track your key metrics to see what’s working and make improvements over time.
Implementing a strategic marketing plan may seem like a lot of work, but staying focused on generating leads through useful content and outreach will pay off big time for your company. Start building those relationships, and watch your pipeline fill up.
