What Is B2B Marketing: Definition, Strategy, and Trends

Editor’s Note: Enjoy this special encore post, which was one of our readers’ favorites so far in 2022. It was originally published on January 6.

If you want to learn about B2B marketing, what tactics it entails, and how to succeed at it in today’s environment, you’ve come to the right place. Let’s explore the topic in-depth to shed light on each element of the most effective modern B2B marketing strategies.

What Is B2B Marketing?

As the name suggests, business-to-business marketing refers to the marketing of products or services to other businesses and organizations. It holds several key distinctions from B2C marketing, which is oriented toward consumers.

In a broad sense, B2B marketing content tends to be more informational and straightforward than B2C. This is because business purchase decisions, in comparison to those of consumers, are based more on bottom-line revenue impact. Return on investment (ROI) is rarely a consideration for the everyday person—at least in a monetary sense—but it’s a primary focus for corporate decision makers.

In the modern environment, B2B marketers often sell to buying committees with various key stakeholders. This makes for a complex and sometimes challenging landscape, but as data sources become more robust and accurate, B2B marketers’ ability to map out committees and reach buyers with relevant, personalized information has greatly improved.

Who is B2B Marketing For?

Any company that sells to other companies. B2B can take many forms: software-as-a-service (SaaS) subscriptions, security solutions, tools, accessories, office supplies, you name it. Many organizations fall under both the B2B and B2C umbrellas.

B2B marketing campaigns are aimed at any individual(s) with control or influence on purchasing decisions. This can encompass a wide variety of titles and functions, from entry-level end-users all the way up to the C-suite.

Creating a B2B Marketing Strategy

Competition for customers, and their attention, is high. Building out a B2B strategy that delivers results requires thoughtful planning, execution, and management. Here’s a high-level look at the process B2B companies use to stand out in a crowded marketplace:

Step 1: Develop an Overarching Vision

Fail to plan, plan to fail. This truism remains eternally accurate. Before you start cranking out ads and content, you’ll want to select specific and measurable business objectives. Then, you’ll want to establish or adopt a framework for how your B2B marketing strategy will achieve them. For more insights on strategy, for both your content and your execution, check out The LinkedIn Pages Enterprise Playbook.

Step 2: Define Your Market and Buyer Persona

This is an especially vital step for B2B organizations. Whereas B2C goods often have a wider and more general audience, B2B products and services are usually marketed to a distinct set of customers with particular challenges and needs. The more narrowly you can define this audience, the better you’ll be able to speak to them directly with relevant messaging.

We recommend creating a dossier for your ideal buyer persona. Research demographics, interview people in your industry, and analyze your best customers to compile a set of attributes you can match against prospects to qualify leads.

Step 3: Identify B2B Marketing Tactics and Channels

Once you’ve established solid intel around your target audience, you’ll need to determine how and where you intend to reach them. The knowledge you’ve attained through the previous step should help guide this one. You’ll want to answer questions like these about your ideal customers and prospects:

• Where do they spend their time online?
• What questions are they asking search engines?
• Which social media networks do they prefer?
• How can you fill opportunity gaps that your competitors are leaving open?
• What industry events do they attend?

Step 4: Create Assets and Run Campaigns

With a plan in place, it’s time to put it into motion. Follow best practices for each channel you incorporate into your strategy. Critical ingredients in effective campaigns include a creative approach, useful insights, sophisticated targeting, and strong calls to action.

Step 5: Measure and Improve

This is the ongoing process that keeps you moving in the right direction. In the simplest terms, you want to figure out why your high-performing content performs and why your low-performing content doesn’t. Understand this, and you’ll more wisely invest your effort and budget. The more vigilant you are about consulting analytics and applying your learnings, the more likely you are to continually improve and surpass your goals. Even with a well-researched foundation, the creation of content and campaigns inherently requires a lot of guesswork until you have substantive engagement and conversion data to rely on.

Let your audience dictate your path. Consult metrics to pinpoint the channels, topics, and media that resonate most, then double-down. Meanwhile, cut or alter anything that isn’t performing.

B2B Marketing Tactics and Content Formats

Here are a few of the most common B2B marketing tactics and content formats to consider including in your strategy:

Blogs: A mainstay for almost any content team. Regularly updated blogs provide organic visibility and drive inbound traffic to your site. Your blog can house any number of different content types and formats.

Search: SEO best practices change as often as Google’s algorithm (a lot), making this a tricky space to operate in, but any B2B marketing strategy needs to account for it. Lately the focus has been shifting away from keywords and metadata, and more toward searcher intent signals.

Social Media: Both organic and paid should be in the mix. Social networks allow you to reach and engage prospects where they’re active. B2B buyers increasingly use these channels to research potential vendors for purchase decisions.

Whitepapers, eBooks, and infographics: Standalone assets containing valuable information, these downloadable documents can either be gated (meaning a user must provide contact information or perform another action to access) or ungated. Often used as a B2B lead generation tool.

Email: While its effectiveness is waning somewhat in the age of spam filters and inbox shock, email won’t disappear anytime soon. 

Video: This content type can be applied in several of the previous categories mentioned here (blogs, social media, emails) but is worth singling out because it is the driving force behind many successful B2B strategies.

Livestream events and webinars: LinkedIn Live videos get, on average, 7x more reactions and 24x more comments than native video produced by the same broadcasters. LinkedIn Live isn’t just great for promoting an event. Take advantage of this feature for demonstrating expertise, showcasing innovation, or giving LinkedIn members a behind-the-scenes view into your company’s culture. 

Case studies and customer testimonials: Establishing credibility is a must for B2B marketing strategists. Case studies and customer testimonials may not be the most creative ventures, but they’re crucial nonetheless. 

Podcasts: Podcasting is projected to become even more popular than it already is. Got a podcast geared toward a professional audience? Thinking about starting one? Grow your listening audience by marketing your podcast on LinkedIn. 

B2B Marketing Best Practices

How can you set yourself up for B2B marketing success? Here are a few proven pillars that will help your team stand out and make an impact.

Be Human

Yes, you’re trying to acquire a company as your customer, but you aren’t marketing to a building or some intangible entity. You are trying to reach actual people within the company, and like any other human being, they are driven by emotional and cognitive motivations.

Don’t just learn about the companies and accounts you’re pursuing. Learn about the people within them, and make sure your marketing speaks to them. Yes, business decisions tend to be more rational and logical in nature, but that doesn’t mean your content and tone should be robotic.

Target with Both Precision and Volume in Mind

Most B2B buying decisions are influenced by multiple stakeholders. A common mistake when targeting is trying to pinpoint the decision maker. But in nearly every case, that solo decision maker doesn’t exist. That’s why it’s essential to target all stakeholders who can potentially influence the buying decision. 

B2B buying cycles are complex and stakeholders are constantly shifting jobs and roles. This is among the many reasons why brand recognition matters. The following solutions can help B2B marketers reach professionals who can both influence and authorize the buying decision. They allow you to get as granular as you want, and when you need to expand your target audience, you can do so with sophisticated automation.