B2B Marketing – Strategies You can Borrow from B2C Marketers

In the world of B2B marketing, one of the fastest ways to get laughed out of the room is to suggest a strategy that only works for B2C marketers.

Try telling a bunch of B2B marketers that they need to start making time for Facebook Live, and you probably won’t find them to be a very receptive audience in the future.

Still, that doesn’t mean B2B marketers have absolutely nothing to learn from their B2C counterparts. The truth is that there are some little-known B2C strategies that can produce major results for the B2B companies that understand how to use them.

3 B2C Strategies to Include in Your B2B Marketing Strategy Right Now

Whether your current B2B marketing strategy is already successful or you’d love some help getting it off the ground, it’s always a good idea to think outside the box every now and then.

One way to do that is to look at what’s been working for B2C marketers.

1. Embracing Influencer Marketing (by Becoming the Influencer)

Among B2C companies, influencer marketing has become old news. Just about every marketer knows that consumers will react positively to seeing their favorite “social-media celebrity” pushing a product. The strategy has become so popular that many of these social media stars command thousands of dollars for mentioning a company’s product or service.

Of course, many companies already know about using influencers for B2B marketing and have long-since adopted this strategy.

The reason we include this tip on our list is because B2B companies should work to become influencers, as well. This doesn’t necessarily mean charging money for their recommendations, but it does mean using social media to actively recommend products, services, and strategies to their markets – not just linking to their own websites. It means reaching out to noncompetitors to partner on and share each other’s posts.

Use social media to become your market’s thought leader, and greater conversions will follow.

2. Investing in Video Marketing

B2C companies have also been doing a fantastic job of utilizing video marketing practically since the technology was first available.

First of all, no matter what industry you’re in or what you sell, video marketing works for B2B companies.

What’s more, for the time being, most of your competitors are probably still resisting all the evidence that proves as much. Taking advantage of the power of video marketing now would be like discovering blogs worked before any of your competitors did.

The more you produce high-quality, informative videos before your competition realizes they need to catch up, the harder it will be for them to do so.

Of course, videos are also great for social media. So, if you decide to implement that last B2B marketing tip, use videos to help immediately grow your influence.

3. Get Busy Building Your Brand

At some point in their careers, every B2C marketer has to learn about the “importance” of branding, a concept that is arguably as confusing as it is popular to tout.

For our purposes, branding simply refers to how a company can stand out from their competitors, aside from the actual products and services they offer. A common example is clothing companies. Most people would agree that all jeans are pretty much the same, but consumers choose different manufacturers based on the story they’ve told with their branding.

You don’t need to go that far with B2B marketing, but branding can be an extremely effective way to draw attention and earn mindshare among your market.

The former CEO of Moz, Rand Fishkin, did a masterful job at using social media to become an influencer (sound familiar) in the world of digital marketing.

Among other things, he invented “Whiteboard Fridays,” where he and his team explain in-depth SEO concepts. It’s not necessarily that the information he provided was different. It was the way he did it (a novel medium, a memorable name, and a regular schedule) that kept companies coming back for more every week.

Does Your B2B Marketing Lead to Conversions

Finally, one thing B2C marketing tends to do much better than the B2B version is land conversions.

To be fair, B2C buying cycles tend to be much shorter and only involve a single buyer.

Still, that doesn’t mean you can’t drastically increase your B2B conversions by borrowing a bit. At Hushly, we’ve designed a platform that can dramatically improve conversions by giving you the power to reach out to your buyers the moment after they visit your website.

It’s true!

To learn why hundreds of companies have added our platform to their B2B marketing strategies, contact us today.