7 Creepy B2B Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them?
If you look at buyer dynamics, as stated by the research above, you will know how much B2B marketing matters if you want to convert higher. A good start to your marketing efforts helps you reap the profits, either through good customers, leads or increased profits. You need to place your marketing efforts in tandem with your goal if you aim to grow your business.
Why do most companies in the B2B sector fail to achieve growth or, are unable to convert their leads into customers? 60% of B2B marketers have no strategy that they can incorporate into the business strategy. Yes, they have not planned their marketing efforts.
Even among marketers who do have a strategy in place, there are few who don’t know what will work, and which channels to accommodate for the efforts.
The biggest mistake any marketer can make is to not have any strategy. This can be the scariest part of marketing, as you don’t know what to do and how to go about your marketing efforts.
In many cases, you can fail with a strategy, if you fall prey to one of the seven mistakes that we have curated for you. Avoid these mistakes and you should do just well.
#1 What Worked Yesterday May Not Work Today
We all keep forgetting that the digital landscape is ever-evolving. What is a trend today, may or may not be one tomorrow! You need to be ready for the change.
However, most of the businesses stay holding on to the same algorithm, which makes it difficult for them to change. For instance, SEO for most businesses is still the same old algorithm of link building.
However, a lot of businesses have understood that SEO goes beyond that. Today, SEO is all about good content, and Google wants something original and highly interactive. From short blog posts, SEO needs you to work on long-form content. And these days, visual and interactive content is given more importance.
Even today, a lot of companies don’t focus on the content but, tend to pay more attention to the link building exercises, and are unable to understand why it does not work for them.
If you are a B2B marketer, stop making the mistake of living in the past. Go with the flow, understand the buyer’s journey, and identify current trends that will help you sell your services better.
You need to incorporate new technologies, identify new marketing avenues, and even check for better lead generation techniques. Each day should bring with it new approaches that can enable you to grow better and profitable.
#2 Expectations Should Always be Realistic
This is every B2B marketer’s nightmare – not setting realistic goals, expectations or even deadlines. When you sit with the stakeholders to discuss how they want to go about goal setting, you will realize that they have some unrealistic expectations out of your marketing strategy.
They want 5 customers per month as soon as you start your marketing efforts. In some cases, they want a good reach immediately.
A lot of people complain about not being engaging enough, and their marketing efforts have just about begun. It is important to realize that setting goals and that too realistic ones will not frustrate you. if you have to educate someone about your marketing plans, do so.
As soon as you have a task list containing actual and workable tasks, one that can be done in the timeline you are looking at, then there are chances of actually growing your business.
For instance, if your goal is to increase search-based traffic for your brand, then you ought to think of answering a few questions before you set the goal
- What is the information that will be relevant and valuable to my customers, which will make them want to read my blogs or content?
- How does my audience perceive value?
When you have an answer to these two questions, you will know just how to go about your plan. Once the plan is ready, you can set a goal.
For instance, the smart goal, in this case, would grow traffic by 100% in a period of 10 months. This would be realistic, achievable, and you can even measure it. You would know what your current traffic is, and what is 100% growth.
You need to set such traffic goals if you want to convert better and higher with B2B marketing strategies.
#3 Always Try to Understand what your Customer Wants
Your B2B marketing efforts fail when you don’t understand what your customer wants or, your marketing strategy does not sync with the customer’s needs.
If you are trying to solve a problem that the customer has, then you ought to make it a point to broadcast it when marketing to the customer. If you have not highlighted the customer’s needs and marketed the product accordingly, then you might not engage them with your product.
If you want better conversions, you need to identify how the customer talks about the product or service. What are they looking for in the product that will help solve their issues? once you have identified that, you need to use the same words while marketing the product or service. It is the exact words and needs that will create engagement.
Always remember that the customer does not understand the jargon. If you want them to convert, then you need to use less of the technical language, and more of simple words that will connect with them. avoid clichés, as customers tend to overlook clichés, and will not even consider your brand as a result.
Qumolo uses a simple yet effective method of understanding customers and what they want. They listen to the feedback given by the customers and incorporate them into their products to enhance the customer experience. If you want to succeed, it is important you begin talking to your customers, and ask them what they want.
#4 Use Email as an Effective Marketing Tool
When you are a business approaching another business, email is the only tool that can do justice to your personalization and communication needs. It is quite effective in every way.
However, it is possible for you to use email but, make plenty of mistakes, that render it ineffective.
You should make sure that the email that you have created is meant for the customer’s buying stage. For instance, you cannot send a welcome note to someone who has already reached the lead nurturing stage.
Some email marketers forget to personalize the email to their senders. Right from using a send-to email address to including the first name of the person you are sending the email to, there are some of the personalization techniques that you need to remember. Subject lines need to be engaging if you want the open rate to increase, which will eventually result in a good click-through rate.
Finally, you should optimize the emails for mobile devices, and have a clear and precise call-to-action that can help increase conversions.
This email from Uber is the perfect example of personalized marketing. The email starts with talking to the person using their first name. The content has also been personalized to meet the needs of the person at that stage. He is already a customer, and this email is meant to keep him engaged.
Uber has understood the stage in the buying cycle the user is and has defined the email accordingly.
#5 Focus Should Include Lead Generation and Beyond
A lot of marketers focus all their marketing efforts on lead generation alone. They believe that all they need to do is have good and qualified leads, which they can send to the sales team, and their day’s job is done.
However, that is the wrong approach to take. You need to place your efforts in branding as well as image building in order to get the leads and market your product well.
The idea is to create brand awareness, bring the brand to the customers, make it likeable to them, make them realize that the brand will fulfil all their needs before you can move to the next step.
Instead of selling the brand and simply pushing them towards the sales, you need to pull them towards your brand. Only a good and focussed marketing approach can help you create a brand for the people, and get them to buy your products, eventually.
#6 Define your Target Audience Before Planning
You have a product, and a brand but, you don’t know who you are going to approach for the product. That’s why you decide to sell it to everyone, and wait for someone to appear and buy your products.
That is the number one scare that every B2B marketer should have. If you don’t have a person in mind when planning your marketing, then all your marketing efforts will go in vain. You don’t know how to approach your marketing and what problem you will solve through the marketing of the product.
The growing traffic and the number of people coming to your brand’s site as a result of the unidentified target audience will go away, as the brand is not relevant to their needs. This will increase your bounce rates and will undermine every effort you have made in building the brand.
Instead of following this route, you should seek to understand who your target audience is, know what they lack and how your brand will fulfil their needs, and finally define a marketing strategy that meets their needs.
#7 Use the Right Social Media Avenues
B2B marketing depends heavily on the right social media channels. Not every social media channel will be effective for their needs. you need to choose the right channels.
However, most B2B marketers ignore LinkedIn and do not realize that if this channel is used to its full potential, then they might just get the conversions they have planned upon. Having a B2B mobile app is an added advantage.
To make sure that you have used all the avenues optimally, it is important you have an overall social media plan and a plan for all the individual social media channels.
You should understand the channels you have selected. Don’t go for all the channels. Make a choice, and then use the tone and content that feels appropriate for these channels when marketing,
Summing up
B2B marketing needs to be planned before you begin executing it. When planning, you should include metrics that make sense to your marketing goals as well as the objectives you have identified. If you have used certain strategies in the past, make a point to understand and analyze the strategies and see how things worked then, and what worked for you. Insights obtained from analysis should be used when defining a new strategy for your business.
Apart from that, you should define your target audience, and use a user-centric approach to market your products.
If you avoid all seven scary mistakes and work on building your brand before you begin marketing, then you are sure to get paid for all your efforts.
Sourodip Biswas
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- 7 Creepy B2B Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them? - August 13, 2019
