Technology is rapidly changing and with it how B2B buyers are accessing and consuming information. Coupled with the vast number of millennials setting up entrepreneurship and assuming decision-making roles means we need to innovate steadily to serve them.

Brands need to brainstorm innovative digital marketing strategies if they are to target and convert new customers in addition to enhancing user experiences. To that end, let’s check out several innovative ways to keep business going.

Elevate Your Inbound Marketing Plans

Of the millions of B2B websites on the internet, just over 90 percent receive no traffic. It’s a sobering statistic that should get every marketing team up and working to get their company website into the under 9 percent group.

But to get there you’ll need a suite of activities to gain audience attention, showcase your expertise and value proposition, and build trust.

Top ways to achieve this include:

• Identifying your target audience. Build customer profiles based on your happiest customers, their common attributes, and lifetime values. It will help you understand who your target customers should comprise.
• Understand the competition. Tools such as Ahrefs and SEMrush allow you to monitor competitors’ strategies for reaching new customers aka keywords, backlinks, etc. You can analyse their strengths and weaknesses to duplicate or improve on.
• Produce content. Case studies, industry reports, podcasts, and video content are credible ways to demonstrate expertise and reach B2B customers. The more valuable and in-depth, the better.
• Pay attention to SEO. From keyword optimization to on-page/off-page optimization and technical optimization work towards improving your search result rankings. While you’re at it, consider optimising your site for local searches to improve visibility.

Mobile Marketing

All around us, people are tied to their mobile devices. They use them to research information, check their email and social accounts, converse and make purchases.

Through mobile marketing, you target specific audiences on their mobile devices using messaging services, email, and your website.

Tips to help you execute this strategy successfully include:

• Mobile-friendliness is a must. Ensure your website adapts seamlessly to various mobile devices. People don’t like swapping left to right just to browse your site or read its content. The same goes for your email marketing campaigns.
• Promote visual content. Since people are attracted to visual content, incorporate images, graphics, and videos to advertise your business, share information, and onboard new subscribers.
• Don’t ignore social media. Your consumers are social and your best bet is to reach them there. Avoid being overly promotional, rather aim to be the go-to informational expert that people can rely on.
• Enhance your value through apps. A mobile app helps you build relationships and loyalty, and drive conversions. They are great for gathering customer insights, sharing deals, and upcoming events, and encouraging industry-wide networking.

Customer Retention Tactics

We mostly focus on bringing in new customers but forget to devise ways to make these customers come back for repeat purchases. After all, every other sale you make from that customer is more profitable.

When you establish strong relationships with your clients, you’re also building brand and social credibility, adding to your trustworthiness. This makes accessing new customers easier.

Best practices include:

• Creating a seamless onboarding process. Develop welcome emails, video tutorials, and educational guides to familiarise your customers with your solutions upfront. It will help them maximise usage and enjoyment of your product/service, earning your loyalty.
• Providing quick resolutions to questions and problems. Users may have plenty of questions about your solutions that require resolutions as they occur. Have dedicated support staff, live chat, and resources (informative blogs, FAQs) to facilitate swift responses.
• Keep an eye on customers. Use predictive analytics to track stock levels, track customer purchases to know when they need replenishment, and know those who no longer buy from you. You can then contact the customer before they run out or figure out ways to get back those who left.
• Surprise your customers occasionally. Milestones, business anniversaries, product launches, and birthdays are great times to surprise clients with gift items. Set aside a budget for this and let your customer-facing teams come up with gift ideas for your customers.

Cold Calling

In previous years, sales reps armed themselves with a broad audience list and phoned every one of them. Thanks to its pushy, interruptive nature that attained little success, teams had to go back to the drawing board and rethink their approach.

Today’s teams see themselves as knowledgeable consultants who want to help businesses achieve their goals and, in the process, also achieve their goals.

They use social and marketing intelligence to determine the best times to reach out to potential customers and interest them in their solutions. 

    Best practices include:

• Define clear objectives. That first call is the first of many touch points you’ll have with prospects, so what do you want the conversation to lead to? A meeting? An attendance confirmation for your event? A demo? Stick to that objective.
• Know your product. Really well, I might add. Go beyond knowing it, to the legislation and regulations that affect it and how it compares to competitor solutions. The prospect might decide to test your knowledge and you want to come across as an all-round expert.
• Qualify your prospect. Open-ended questions can help you identify the company’s pain points, budget, and buying motivation. If the prospect isn’t a serious contender, shelve them. You don’t want to waste time following up deals that won’t pan out.
• Befriend the gatekeeper. They wield the power to let you in or keep you out. Practice sounding senior, speak to them respectfully, and act like you’re already acquainted with the contact person.

You can also outsource your cold calling needs to a lead generation agency to tackle the heavy lifting.

Influencer Marketing

Fostering connections with audiences, generating new prospects, increasing brand loyalty, and the ultimate metric—bringing in sales are all tied to influencer marketing.

With this strategy, you rely on trusted figures in your industry or influencers to talk about your solutions.

These aren’t just simple shout-outs from influencers, but a strategy where you align your solutions with industry influencers who in turn make trustworthy recommendations. While your potential buyers may undertake a longer purchase cycle, the word of a reliable influencer may help sway them your way.

Best practices include:

• Define your goals. Right from maximizing engagement to establishing brand authority or breaking into particular markets, setting clear goals places you and your influencer on the same path.
• Find a suitable influencer. You don’t need a celebrity or social media personality to promote your solutions, but rather someone your target market listens to. They are likely to convince better.
• Co-create content. It’s tempting to create content that the influencer follows to the tee but we recommend involving the influencer. They know their audiences best and will probably have ideas that work for them.
• Track performance. Set metrics like the expected number of people the campaign should reach and how many turned into followers and customers. Give the strategy time since B2Bs rarely shop on a whim—if they are engaging you in conversations, that’s a good thing.