A Beginner’s Guide to B2B Digital Marketing

Business to business marketing doesn’t have to mean countless phone calls and letterbox flyers. Far too often, businesses make the mistake that digital marketing is only for consumable products for the end-customer. Rather, it’s an effective tool for B2B marketing – when done the right way.

Use our guide to start your B2B digital marketing journey and reach out to us at Somer Design for more targeted advice.

B2B vs B2C Digital Marketing

The difference between business to business (B2B) versus business to consumer (B2C) marketing may seem as simple as targeting an organisation rather than an individual. However, the differences between the two require a much deeper understanding of your target audience’s motivations, decision-making processes and buyer’s journey.

For instance, in B2C digital marketing you want to be speaking to a targeted individual whereas B2B requires you to appeal to a whole team of key decision-makers. This often means your customers will have a longer path to conversion than B2C would, as there are more decision-makers and complexities along the way.

Naturally, B2B audiences are driven more by logic in what is best for their organisation rather than emotional purchases. This means that rather than appealing to basic emotions in your digital marketing strategy, you should be demonstrating how your product will achieve the best return on investment.

1. Establishing Your B2B Online Presence

With the tools for an online presence ever-growing in numbers, it’s important to start at the right place and build upwards. Knowing your roots is key here, so ensure you’re conveying these values best through your owned media. Owned media is essentially anything under your organisation’s direct control, such as your branding kit, website, newsletters and social media posts.

Develop Your B2B Branding Kit

Developing effective branding should be one of the first points of call in business development but it’s often found an afterthought. A branding kit can be a useful tool here in defining your brand and maintaining consistency across platforms. This resource should essentially contain all the rules for your brand and how they should be applied, such as logos, colour schemes, tone of voice, imagery and fonts. As a B2B brand, your tool kit should reflect this appropriately and professionally.

Does your business to business branding need an overhaul? Get in touch with us at Somer Design to create a brand identity that connects with your desired organisations.

Wow Your Business Audience with Website Design

Once a visitor clicks on your site, you have just 15 seconds to make an impression. This means every detail counts, from functionality to ideas and aesthetics. In B2B it’s crucial to have a website built for conversion which is integrated with your CRM system. It should be the hive of your digital marketing strategy, where all other platforms link back to in one way or another. Times are changing, which means as a traditional B2B organisation you need to get most of the usual sales process away from the phone and online instead. Think of your website as your number one sales rep; is yours driving sales results?