Tell me if this sounds familiar. Your company produces top-shelf solutions, and yet your sales are being limited by a lack of awareness. Or maybe you struggle to communicate the value of your offering in a way that hits the mark with potential buyers?
Advertising has its place, but it’s expensive. And interruption marketing – which bombards your audiences with unwanted messages while they’re busy doing other things – isn’t always effective.
This year, step up your B2B marketing game with a series of strategic tactics that earn the attention of prospective clients and make the most of every interaction.
1. Upgrade Your Presentations
A great place to start is with a long honest look at your presentations. Face-t0-face client opportunities are too precious to waste. Make sure you’re armed with a well-designed presentation that takes your audience on a personalized journey and leaves a lasting impression.
2. Explore the Power of Prezi
If you haven’t already, it’s time for you to explore the dramatic possibilities of Prezi design. Unlike classic PowerPoint presentations, which cycle through slide after slide of information, Prezi lets you pan and zoom over a stunning image to emphasize your ideas. If you use it skillfully and in the right circumstances, your audience will be captivated.
3. Get More out of Your Presentations
Presentations are much more versatile than they used to be. Join the 65% of B2B marketers who use online presentations in their content marketing. I’ve counted at least 9 ways to re-purpose your presentations, but I’m willing to bet there are many more.
4. Appeal to Analytical Types
In your group of potential customers, you can bet there are some analytical types. You know the kind – they are systematic and deliberate in their decision-making. Before they choose your product or service, they need to see the facts, presented in a logical way. So gather data to support your offering and design an infographic that presents it in a way that is attractive and easy to digest.
5. Broaden Your Reach
One of the reasons that infographics are a go-to tactic for content marketers is that they’re highly shareable. In fact, studies have shown that 78% of business-to-business buyers share infographics with colleagues, broadening your circle of influence. Make your infographics easy to share by publishing them on your social channels and having prominent share buttons where you post them on your site.
6. Become a Voice of Authority
Even when you aren’t sharing information about your product or service, infographics can help you promote yourself. Present valuable research data – whether it is original or third-party – that showcases your expertise and makes you a voice of authority in your industry.
7. Tell Your Story
When you’re meeting with prospective customers for the first time, you’ll inevitably want to tell them a little about your company. Unfortunately, nobody finds your story as interesting as you do. This year, design a professional explainer video that leverages the powerful combination of sight, sound and motion to bring your story to life. It’s a great way to break the ice and grab your audience’s attention at the start of your presentation. Take a look at the Exaltus story to see what I mean.
8. Try your Hand at Whiteboard Animation
When you decide to produce an explainer video, you’ll have to choose a style. This year, consider whiteboard animation. The benefits of whiteboard videos are endless. That’s because they command attention, they tell a story in a dynamic and entertaining way, and they stimulate a sense of anticipation. If you need convincing, check out the eye-popping whiteboard animation statistics that resulted from a third-party study of our own videos.
And if you work with the right partner, they’re easy to produce.
9. Get Social with Video
Videos are a powerful addition to your site and social channels. In fact, 76% of business-to-business marketers use videos in their content marketing plan. And because videos can be shared on an increasing number of social platforms – including Youtube, Vimeo, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – videos are an easy way to expand your reach to entirely new audiences.
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10. Make your Site Work Harder for you
Your website has the potential to be your best, 24/7 salesperson – hard at work while you’re doing other things. Is it rising to the challenge? Take the time to study how your site is performing: Are people leaving after seeing the first page, or are they taking the time to visit other pages, and ultimately reaching out to find out more? Consider developing your own powerful content marketing dashboard to find out.
Once you’ve done your research, improve your Web pages to boost your conversion rates and to turn more visitors into customers.
11. Create Quality Content
This year, join 88% of B2B marketers who use content marketing in their marketing mix. Like them, you can earn the attention of potential customers by creating content that is valuable and relevant, and that provides the answers they need on their path to purchasing your product.
12. Drive Traffic to your Web pages
Creating high-performance pages filled with quality content is a great start. Sadly, the Field of Dreams motto ‘if you build it, they will come’ doesn’t always apply to the Web. To drive lasting traffic to your content, search-engine optimize your pages for the right search terms.
Email Marketing
13. Build Relationships
Engage with your prospects and clients. Allow yourself to get to know them. Once someone has provided their email, they’ve started the conversation. It’s in your best interest to keep that relationship going. Stay in touch, and let the relationship help establish the types of emails you send, as well as the frequency. And remember that every touchpoint can be leveraged, including transactional emails (confirmations and announcements), retention emails (newsletters, surveys, and partnership offers), activation emails (upsells and cross-sells), and loyalty emails (advanced purchases, invitations, and limited offers).
14. Leverage Personalization
Personalization allows you to show your customer you care, that you understand their needs and wants. It’s more than just personalizing the email with their name. It’s acknowledging if they purchased in the past, if they’ve reached out to you through customer service or visited your site. Any profiling or behavioral data gathered and analyzed should be leveraged to ensure the right offer is being presented to the right customer at the right time.
15. Onboard your Clients
Don’t assume that because the prospect visited your site or even purchased your product or service, that they understand your complete offering. Onboarding programs, a strategy being leveraged by loyalty programs, allows you to inform, educate and persuade your customers. It does not have to be complicated; a simple series of 3-4 emails can set the pace for a great first impression in building the relationship and creating a positive customer experience.
16. Be relevant and engaging
Tone and manner should be tailored to your audience. Know when to leverage a promotional, aspirational or educational tone. Every communication is part of an exchange, so you must always provide value. Value is not always a price offer, discount or coupon.
Come up with ideas for content that adds value, shares information, includes feedback mechanisms, or encloses survey results. Content can be quite effective at informing and accompanying your prospects or clients along their the path to purchase.
Find The Help You Need
17. Find the Right Talent
Designing these quality content pieces requires more than choosing the right fonts and colour palettes. It will take B2B marketing know-how, the ability to tell a story, as well as technical proficiency with a variety of different tools. If you don’t have these skills in house, contact a company like Exaltus, with the experience and reputation to help.
18. Opt for the Right Type of Service Agreement
Adjust your outsourcing arrangement based on the scope of work you’d like to accomplish. If you need assistance for one or two clearly defined pieces, Exaltus can help you on a project basis to get the work done.
If, on the other hand, you have longer-term needs with a variety of different B2B marketing projects, hiring Exaltus on a retainer basis may make financial sense.
Over to You
How about you? What have you got planned to step up your B2B marketing this year? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!
And if you’re looking for help with your content marketing, check out our content marketing best practices for small business, find out about our Blog in a Box plan, or contact Exaltus today!
