B2B marketing is a different game. Here’s how to win it.
Let’s be honest: who doesn’t want to be the best?
Your B2B digital marketing agency can rise to the top and put its competitors to shame.
How?
I’ll show you! Keep on reading this guide to learn the most effective strategies to grow your digital marketing agency for B2B.
It sounds cliche, but every B2B digital marketing agency should find its own niche.
In the B2B digital marketing agency sense, I’m talking about finding an area or industry for your company to focus on. You could only serve clients in the automotive industry, or maybe you’d prefer to centre your efforts on real estate marketing.
It’s completely your choice, but finding a niche brings the following benefits:
I can’t tell you what niche to look at; it depends on your expertise and what you’re good at.
The best digital agency for B2B knows everything about its customers.
Knowing all of these key things will help you work out what your customers need from a B2B digital agency. Why are they coming to you – and how can you help them?
This is crucial when it comes to pitching your B2B marketing service to prospects. Show off your research and demonstrate how much you know about them. If your pitch targets all of their pain points and shows how you will help them achieve their objectives, then you’re almost guaranteed to secure them as a client.
If you give some generic crap that could relate to any business, they’ll walk away.
You don’t want your prospects to walk away, do you?
It’s impossible to run a successful B2B digital marketing agency if you keep letting prospects slip through the net. Get to know every potential client that comes calling, and you’ll increase conversion rates.
It’s time to flex your marketing skills.
Why should a business pick your B2B digital marketing agency if they don’t even see it on the first page of Google’s search results?
Permission to speak openly? That’s a little bit embarrassing. How can a marketing agency expect to get clients when it can’t even promote itself!?
It’s like someone offering driving lessons when they don’t have a driver’s licence: absolute lunacy.
You need to put your money where your mouth is and show off your skills to the world. Build a solid SEO strategy so your website appears in relevant searches. When a business owner or executive is searching for a B2B digital marketing agency or a digital marketing agency B2B, you need to be one of the first websites they see.
Not only does this make your business look good, but it also makes it easier for people to locate and learn about you. There’s a crazy statistic that around 89% of customers start their buying process with a search. That’s why things like SEO and PPC are so crucial to make your business seen.
Combine this with content marketing, social media marketing and any other ways that help bring your business right to your target audience.
Hey, you’re the experts in this, so it should be a walk in the park!
Business owners care about money…a lot.
They don’t want to spend money on something unless they absolutely have to – or unless it provides more benefits for their company.
ROI (that’s Return on Investment, not the Republic of Ireland) is a brilliant way to demonstrate what businesses get out of choosing your B2B digital marketing agency. It’s a fantastic tactic to show them how much they’ll spend and what they’ll gain.
I know what you’re thinking; this sounds overly complicated.
Well…it is! You’ll need to track everything in your business and look at previous clients to figure out their ROI from choosing your company. This can be used as your benchmark to advertise your services to new businesses.
WebFX has a wonderful article breaking down the digital marketing ROI formula and how you can use it. A very basic approach would be to take your client’s Net Profit from your marketing activities and divide it by the Total Digital Marketing Costs, then times by 100 to get a percentage ROI.
E.g. A client spent £6,000 on your digital marketing services and saw £40,000 in revenue as a result. This amounts to a $34,000 Net Profit and an ROI of 567%.
In this scenario, you can boldly advertise a 567% average ROI for all clients who work with you – and provide links to a case study showing how you managed it with that particular previous client.
Companies are much more likely to call you and listen to your pitch when they see ROI figures. It helps them quantify your services, and the people in charge of purchasing things can relay the numbers back to their bosses with confidence.
Don’t be scared to give things away for free.
I’m not suggesting you give clients free access to your services and work pro bono.
Instead, think of ways you can educate prospective clients and show off some of your knowledge without charging anything. A myriad of ideas instantly jump to mind, such as:
Create resources that let your business talk about topics relating to your line of work. It’s a chance to show that you’re the best B2B digital marketing agency around! Cover complex topics and make them easy for anyone to understand – you can empower prospects to manage different parts of their marketing campaigns alone.
It might look a bit counterproductive, but no amount of online resources will ever be a substitute for a B2B digital agency. They realise they need expert help at some point, and who better to turn to than the company they already have a positive experience with?
Also, these resources work beautifully for your content marketing strategy, which links back to what I spoke about earlier with making your business seen. Pumping out lots of great content across different platforms helps you move into the eyes of your target audience.
Look, running a successful B2B digital marketing company means you have to offer things that nobody else does.
Flexible payment structures fall perfectly under this heading.
Give prospective clients a multitude of ways to pay for your services. I’m not just talking about specific payment methods – I’m more focused on specific payment plans or ways to buy your services.
E.g. Subscription-based plans and more traditional payment structures.
Implement subscriptions into your business where clients can pay a monthly fee and receive certain services. You can have different tiers with different prices – the more they pay, the more services they get. Subscriptions are fabulous because they give you a consistent income source.
At the same time, you should offer some one-off payment options.
If a small business only wants to pay for one service – like SEO keyword research – they can pay a flat fee and receive the work. Options like this cater to businesses without the financial resources to cover monthly subscriptions.
Either way, you’re providing different ways to pay, which helps you attract a wider range of clients within your niche.
Combine all of the strategies in this guide to run your B2B digital marketing agency with more success.
At the end of the day, it’s not rocket science!
These tactics and ideas are built around the concept of attracting more prospects to your business and then converting them. Make your B2B digital agency stand out and convince businesses to give you a shot.
Good luck – and feel free to check out my other guides and resources for more helpful tips!