B2B Internet Marketing Strategies
Business-to-business (B2B) describes commerce transactions between two businesses – that is, a manufacturer and a wholesaler or retailer. Around the world, overall volumes of B2B transactions are much higher than that of business-to-customer (B2C) transactions.
The primary reason for this is that in a typical supply chain, there are many B2B transactions involving sub components or raw materials, and only one B2C transaction, specifically sale of finished products to consumers. For example, a vehicle manufacturer makes a multitude of B2B transactions such as buying tyres, glass for the windows, rubber hoses and engine components for its vehicles. The final transaction, a finished vehicle sold to the consumer, is a single B2C transaction.
As a result of the much higher volumes of sales, your B2B internet marketing strategies needs to be a little different from your conventional internet marketing. Here are five B2B internet marketing strategies that you need to use:
Create opportunities to communicate: How do educate prospective clients and enclose them in framework that places your company in a favourable light? The best way to do this is to persistently communicate with your clients. Create reasons to stay in contact and communicate high-value ideas and information to your business prospects. This information could be on new technological advancements in the industry, the latest whitepaper or research study. Reinforce through this communication that part of the ‘value’ of purchasing from your company is the attention and information that you bring to this partnership.
Discussion forums: An effective way to get product feedback is to engage in discussion forums with current and prospective companies. Ensure that you involve the design engineers, marketers and sales personnel, as this will give them valuable insight into what the customer wants out of the product and how to effectively market it to your clients.
Speak their language: When it comes to communicating to prospective clients, the key is to speak their language – business communication is not a one-size-fits-all type of approach. Research the prospective company’s management style and way of doing business and try to sell yourself via that channel. For instance, if the company is highly driven by target, sell to them via graphs and illustrations of expected profit improvements. However, if the company is more focused on improving their customer’s lifestyle, you need to make an emotional connection between your product and the prospective company’s target market.
Additional information via email: Give your prospective clients a way to receive additional information on your company via a subscription email. Ensure that this information is tailored to the specific client market and highly relevant, as CEO’s do not have the time to read irrelevant and old news. Furthermore, by having them subscribe to this service, you are able to stay in contact with them, without being over-bearing.
Web meetings and presentations: While face-to-face meetings are ideal, they are not always practical. As the business world becomes smaller, you will have to deal with prospects from other cities and countries. Therefore, ensure that you set up regular web meetings and presentations with your clients. All you need to do is give password access to your presentation or to the conference call, and then you can discuss problem areas and potential solutions from the comfort of your own office.
B2B marketing is far more complicated than B2C marketing. You need to understand both your customer and their customers. Therefore, read B2B books on effective marketing and advertising strategies and plans to help market your products and services effectively.