How to Market B2B Products and Build Relationships in 2020

Your leads and customers expect more these days. B2B decision-makers are young, diverse, and grew up with smartphones, internet access, and automation.

Research shows 42% of millennials working in B2B hold managerial positions while 21% are vice presidents or in C-level roles.

They want fully optimized digital experiences from your B2B company.

At the same time, they also demand human interaction and helpful advice to navigate your industry.

7 Ways to Market B2B Products and Build Meaningful Relationships in 2020

Unfortunately, many B2Bs have not kept up with evolving expectations. Use the tips below to market your B2B products and forge meaningful relationships with both your customers and leads.

1. Develop Helpful and Relevant Content

Content is essential for starting conversations with your audience. Producing content isn’t enough though – you need a dedicated content marketing strategy.

69% of B2Bs with the most successful content have a documented content strategy. However, only 16% of the least successful brands have one.

Research is key to creating effective content that stands out from all the noise out there (and there’s plenty of noise):

• Long-tail keyword research to answer queries.
• Reading competitor content to stand out.
• Analyzing the top-three ranking pieces for each keyword and adding nuance to the discussion.
• Following relevant subreddits to understand your audience.
• Following hashtags on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Consistent content can also boost your search engine rankings across the board and increase your chances of website visibility.

2. Give Away Free Trials or Products

Look at Google: one of the most successful companies on the planet. Google offers tons of free – yet extremely useful – products.

Now, you don’t have to follow Google’s lead and open the floodgates. However, it is shrewd to offer free trials so your leads can figure out whether your product is a perfect fit.

Figure out how freebies would work best for your overall strategy. This might include:

• Free trials (of a week or so) of your full premium product.
• Free registration and access to limited tools – like SEMrush and BuzzSumo.

At Hushly, we don’t charge anything to add our AI engine to your website. Our customers only pay for genuine leads they collect through our tools – they never pay just to use our platform.

Freebies are vital for showing leads why your product is so valuable. They can read case studies and talk to your sales team all day but there’s nothing quite like trying something for yourself.

3. Harness the Power of Social Selling

Some industries, particularly those in the tech sector, see over 50% of their revenue coming from social selling tactics. Some research says social selling delivers a 57% higher return than traditional tactics too.

LinkedIn

Social selling isn’t about broadcasting from your company page and waiting for sales to roll in. Instead, focus on using social media for its true purpose: meeting people and having conversations.

That means ditching the cold LinkedIn messages in favor of genuine interactions and questions.

4. Hyper-Personalize Your Website Experience

Research shows nearly half of B2Bs fall short with their personalization efforts. 60% of marketers say they’re not implementing AI or machine learning to improve their website experience.

That’s not ideal because B2Bs expect hyper-personalization.

Instead of sifting through your blog categories and tags to find relevant content, AI should hand-select the most relevant piece of content for each visitor based on behavior.

An adaptive content hub and self-nurturing landing page offer unique solutions. Like Netflix or Amazon, an AI engine uses machine learning to study each visitor’s browsing behavior and provide relevant content. Plus, the AI engine chooses content to gently guide them down the sales funnel.

5. Create Lead Nurturing Email Marketing Campaigns

Aside from self-nurturing landing pages, email marketing is one of the best tools for nurturing B2B leads.

You get a direct line of communication with their inboxes. However, it’s still important to implement AI in your email campaigns as well.

Design personalized lead nurturing campaigns for different accounts, segments, or roles. Each lead should get a unique email series.

Make sure to lead with value here. Focus on highlighting your eBooks, blogs, podcasts, and videos as it fits each subscriber.

6. Take Your SEO Seriously

Search engine optimization is crucial for improving visibility and building an inbound marketing strategy.

No one uses the yellow pages anymore. People type their questions and problems into Google to find answers. Ideally, they should find your content on the first page of results.

Consistent blogging is the best thing you can do to improve your SEO and rankings. Companies with blogs in place enjoy 434% more indexed pages on Google than those that don’t.

Before anything else, however, make sure your website is optimized for mobile browsing. Not only do 70% of all B2B searches happen on mobile devices but Google switched to mobile-first indexing back in 2018. This translates to:

• Making sure your site loads in less than three seconds.
• Removing lead magnet forms and gated content.
• Using CTA buttons instead of hyperlinks.

7. Create an ABM Strategy or Adapt Some Tactics

Account-based marketing isn’t just for landing new leads – it’s also vital for building customer loyalty.

Design custom ABM campaigns for your best clients. This is also a lower-risk way to test your ABM tactics before expanding to new accounts and leads.

Consider ABM tactics like:

• Peppering company names into your blog posts
• Developing case studies for similar companies/a target account’s competitors
• Using LinkedIn’s ABM targeting tools
• Building targeted social media lists

Companies with ABM strategies generate 208% more revenue than those that don’t, so definitely consider ABM if you haven’t already.

Learn How to Market B2B Products with an AI Engine

Your leads see AI-driven personalized experiences everywhere they go online. From Amazon and Etsy to Spotify and Facebook, machine learning delivers optimized content just for them.

They know the technology exists and they expect the same personalized experience from your B2B website. Adding an AI engine to your site is fast, easy, and creates the experience your leads crave.

Artificial intelligence doesn’t have to be complicated. Learn how Hushly makes it simple and easy.