B2B Digital Marketing Agencies
In B2B markets, businesses are the purchasers of services and/or products from other businesses. The goals of B2B digital marketing are to: make your business’s buying-market aware of your brand, and what you offer; educate your target audience on how your products and/or services directly benefit their business; and ultimately, turn leads into customers who become brand loyalists, who’ll provide long-term revenue potential.
B2B marketing is distinguished from B2C marketing by the journey the buyer takes and the marketing channels with which they engage. Multiple decision-makers are involved in the B2B buying process, so it’s important for messaging to target and successfully reach the different pains and segments of audiences within a business’s industry. Even though there are multiple decision-makers in a B2B purchase, the pool of customers is often smaller. Niche industry businesses must market their specific products and/or services to businesses who need—and will ultimately purchase—them. Digital marketing navigates online channels to deliver messaging to various important decision-makers across multiple digital channels. Using technology to inform and execute digital marketing is the goal of B2B digital marketing agencies in their B2B marketing strategies.
Unlike B2C purchases, B2B buying decisions are arrived at after much research, deliberation, and a collectively educated decision. A one-time B2C purchase may be based on impulse or immediate need. But B2B purchases are intended to make money for the purchasing party as well, so the decision is serious, and the marketing tactics must echo the importance and long-term impact of each purchase.
B2B digital marketing strategies involve using technology and data to develop content suited for digital marketing and advertising. Research, data, and analytics—for instance—are critical services offered by digital marketing agencies. The research software and analytics expertise provided by B2B digital marketing agencies helps your business better understand and reach target audiences and connect your marketing goals with sales results.
What is a Digital Marketing Agency?
B2B digital marketing agencies are ideal partners, as they have the expertise and tools to plan and deliver comprehensive marketing initiatives. Effective application of digital marketing data will drive more traffic to your company website, boost lead generation, and improve search engine optimization (SEO) and visibility. B2B digital marketing agencies offer services such as website design and maintenance, email marketing, and pay-per-click (PPC) and paid search ad plans. B2B digital marketing agencies excel at understanding digital marketing channels, developing digital marketing strategies, and executing services to develop and/or improve your business’s online presence and digital marketing.
B2B Examples:
Contractors purchasing materials from a manufacturer who then uses them in construction projects.
Resellers, like department stores, purchase inventory from other businesses.
The Government, as a business, purchases everything from envelopes to airplanes from other businesses.
What does B2B Digital Marketing Entail?
B2B digital marketing agencies are pros at navigating the many, complex channels within digital marketing. Ultimately, there are a lot of opportunities for companies to identify, reach, and convert targeted leads. Understanding the processes by which to accomplish that task is the perfect job for your B2B digital marketing agency.
SEO, organic and paid
Online search listings and ads are a common, and potentially profitable, marketing channel. Organic keywords are words people search that may generate results for your business’s links—all for free. Organic keywords are an important and cost-effective part of SEO. Enough organic keyword clicks can even help your business’s links gain ranking on search engines.
Data and analytics performed and provided by a digital marketing agency can help you harness the power of organic searches and traffic to boost your website’s visibility and brand recognition. Using analytics helps identify which organic keywords are getting clicks on search engine results pages (SERPs) and are therefore driving traffic to your website.
Software like Google Analytics and SEMRush are often provided and used by B2B digital marketing agencies to help identify your business’s organic keyword(s) and perform search results research. It is also possible and useful to evaluate industry competitors’ organic keywords to see what is performing well for them, and incorporate that information into your company’s SEO strategy.
Free, organic searches can drive website traffic and boost brand visibility, but they are less controllable than paid search. Paid search results appear at the top of the page, and usually indicate that they are “sponsored” (or phrased similarly). Paid search results have clickable headlines, but may also include body copy or an ad feature that are not clickable—but glean attention. Paid search is paid for by businesses/advertisers, because they are seen by leads and drive traffic to a website faster than organic searches. In addition to being positioned near the top of a results list, paid search body copy is designed to include popular keywords that address common questions and pain points.
B2B digital marketing agencies will use their expertise and software to help your company optimize its search engine presence in whichever way suits your budget. Searches—both paid and organic—can attract relevant target audiences and ready-to-buy users, as well as increase brand visibility. Even though there are different perks for both, there isn’t a losing option.
PPC
Pay-per-click advertising is a popular paid search method, whereby an advertiser only pays for premium positioning on SERPs when people click on their sponsored link. PPC involves selecting carefully researched keywords to indicate when your ad will appear on a SERP. And then once it is clicked, the advertiser will pay an agreed upon fixed price (per click).
Social media is popular for PPC advertising. Businesses and/or advertisers pay relevant social media platforms to post their ads to narrowly targeted audiences. But once again, they agree to pay a fixed price only for each click the ad actually receives. PPC is the most common paid search marketing tool. B2B digital marketing agencies can help with keyword and SEO data and analytics, as already mentioned, but they can also help write copy and design digital ads that will feature on SERPs and/or social media.
Professional website
Your company’s website should be your hardest-working marketing tool. A strong website that is appealing and easy-to-use makes a positive first—and lasting—impression on visitors and potential customers. SEO and PPC strategies can help drive traffic to your website and generate more qualified leads. Improving search engine visibility bolsters brand recognition and memorability, while clicks help convert leads to sales.
Digital marketing agencies can help you design a website that is accessible on computer or mobile devices. Allowing searchers to successfully engage with your website, however they may be searching, increases search engine rankings and conversion rates.
B2B marketing agencies also employ creative teams that design professional, modernly beautiful websites. Your website is an integral feature of your brand. A website’s design and copy should align with your brand guidelines and strategy. A successful website is both easy-to-use and engaging. The digital and creative experts of a B2B marketing agency will help ensure that your company’s website is both.
Social media
Digital marketing increasingly turns to social media to generate leads and reach target audiences. B2B digital marketing agencies offer services that help clients allocate marketing budgets to social media platforms with the highest, relevant usage, as well as create marketing and advertising content to post on social media.
Many of the most popular social media platforms are used in B2B digital marketing. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn are among platforms that digital marketers use to promote B2B advertising. Each platform has its unique benefits and post etiquette, which B2B digital marketing agency account managers and creatives can help your company navigate.
Creating a strong social media presence is a great tool for building brand awareness and gaining advertising exposure with target audiences. From C-suite executives to end users, social media reaches each audience considered in the B2B buying journey.
Content marketing
Content marketing is a B2B marketing channel effective toward reaching and converting leads. Digital content includes a variety of assets such as articles, blog posts, infographics, white papers, e-books, videos, and case studies. B2B digital marketing agencies will learn the details of your industry and business to help you create and archive digital content. Content creation comes in many forms and requires extensive knowledge of digital marketing channels. Taking your valuable assets, such as testimonials and case studies, and housing them on your website or social media is a great way to share positive responses and reviews of your products and/or services. Creating evocative and informative infographics and writing knowledgeable and persuasive articles are also services your B2B digital marketing agency will offer your business. Partnering with a B2B digital marketing agency helps you successfully navigate marketing channels and reach your target audiences.
Email marketing
Tried and true, email marketing is an effective method to reach and convert leads. B2B digital marketing agencies will help craft informed copy, design email graphics and templates that stand out to viewers and build brand awareness with recipients.
Email newsletters are another smart way to share your company’s products and services with leads while building credibility and brand awareness. Industry news, company updates, and CTAs can be included in regular, enjoyable e-newsletters.
B2B Tech Marketing Agency
Media, research, data, analytics, AI, ChatGPT… digital marketing is full of technologically-dense operations. Behind successful account management and smart creative are the nuts and bolts of digital marketing that connect—and help comprehend—digital marketing channels. B2B digital marketing agencies employ tech and research experts and subscribe to advanced marketing software tools that work to evaluate, understand, and reach your industry’s market and your business’s target audiences.
AI, and its subpart ChatGPT, works to automate language that includes industry keywords and will ultimately help reach target audiences and work well within various marketing channels. ChatGPT, a growing digital marketing tool, stores encyclopedic knowledge obtained from books, websites, blog posts, etc. Then, it generates communication for emails, recommendations, translations, and digital marketing content based on its internal “library.”
Regarding digital marketing content specifically, a B2B digital marketing agency can use ChatGPT (or its generative pre-trained transformer tool) to get quick responses to research questions about your industry, write copy, generate customer surveys, and help ideate. While AI isn’t the brains behind a B2B digital marketing agency, it is a new partner than can help boost the efficiency and breadth of marketing content.
B2B Marketing Campaigns
Multichannel digital marketing campaigns engage high volumes of audiences, generate brand awareness, and improve a company’s conversion rate. This is accomplished by combining brand-aligned messaging with a product and/or service advertisement that can be featured on multiple digital marketing channels simultaneously, over a period of time. A digital marketing campaign connects a singular message across channels to generate leads and increase conversation about the company.
B2B digital marketing agencies will use their technology and research skills to identify and gain insights into target audiences. Next, creative will develop a digital marketing campaign that encompasses both a central message and a direct or indirect, but influential call to action.
The success of a digital marketing campaign is quantifiable. Website traffic and engagement, search actions, and purchasing decisions are measurable results of a digital marketing campaign. B2B digital marketing agencies will use analytics to track lead and customer behavior before, during, and post-digital marketing campaign to determine how well the campaign performed.
How Can I Be Creative in B2B?
When we define B2B marketing, we typically discuss businesses selling to other businesses. And that is true. But we also note that B2B marketing is distinctive because of its longer and more populated buying journey. That’s because a business isn’t really doing the buying or selling. Humans are. Successful B2B digital marketing agencies know that target audiences are real people with real pain points, careers, and lives. B2B marketing may be different—but it shouldn’t be boring.
In the same ways that it is important to develop clear yet unique branding, that same stand-out mentality is applied to marketing and advertising. The internet, social media, and the nature of being plugged-in in the modern era demands that each marketing tactic grab the attention of its audience. B2B may involve the sale of logistical products or services, in some instances, but the people in need of making that purchase are as bombarded with media professionally as they are personally. And that means that B2B digital marketing must execute high-quality creative with each deliverable.
While creative B2B digital marketing isn’t dull or forgettable, it does not need to be gimmicky or over-the-top to be successful. B2B digital marketing agencies are pros at making sure that digital marketing content and ads remain true to a company’s brand, clearly convey messaging, and engage audiences where they live, work, and play.