Driving meaningful business results remains a struggle for many of the companies jumping onto the content bandwagon. All too often I continue to see companies throw anything and everything against the wall to see what sticks. This haphazard approach does nothing to attract or retain customers.
The truth about business to business marketing strategies is that in order to be effective you must conceptualize, design and scale your efforts. This article is intended to help guide you through this process and not only create, but also maintain a successful marketing strategy for B2B.
Conceptualize
The process of conceptualizing your ideal target clients is the first key element to having an effective marketing strategy. It’s impossible to market successfully to everyone at once. Concentrating your efforts with a segmented group and targeting them appropriately will drive success.
begin by focussing on one customer segment over time, learn as much about their needs and how you can drive their success. Only after you are educated about their industry can you speak directly to them with a deep understanding that they will pay attention to. After all, businesses are accustomed to being approached. If you want them to listen you have to demonstrate a deep knowledge of their industry and focus on helping them achieve their goals.
Design
Next you will want to design your campaign around conversion goals. Not only your conversion goals, but rather the goals of your clients. You are putting out content for your clients, and when this content is absorbed, what actin do you want to drive? You must be able to answer this question to be helpful for your clients.
Individual users will be at a different stage of the buying process. Make sure that your strategy is designed to funnel users through the sales process, and convert them from a user to a client. Include points of contact where appropriate, and make sure the type of contact being used is appropriate. Change your approach to match the forum for phone, email, social media and text messages.
Scale
Now that you have both a concept and design to your strategy you must be able to scale it. This often overlooked point is necessary to continue to add new industries and to grow current ones. One of the easiest ways of doing this is to have an ongoing plan to recycle, reuse and repurpose your content towards these new industries and campaigns. It will have to likely be changed, however, the root of the content may be able to stay the same.
Following this basic outline for a business to business marketing strategy wI’ll help you to be successful with your marketing plan. What other things have you done to give your strategy a boost? We would like to hear from you and get your prospective.
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