An efficient B2B marketing strategy in 3 steps

We live in a digital world where technological developments follow each other at a rapid pace. As a B2B marketer, the question is not whether you should keep up with the latest developments, but how. As a result, realizing marketing objectives increasingly resembles finding your way through a maze of channels and messages. Here, the ultimate challenge is to convince your own organization of marketing as an investment, as opposed to marketing as a cost.

Optimizing yourB2B marketing strategy is a step in the right direction. You ultimately want to generate more leads and achieve higher conversion rates. Staying of value to the customer is a requirement. Mass communication, sending and push strategies often no longer provide the desired results; the customer nowadays decides where, when and in what way he or she is informed. This buying process nowadays takes place largely online. Online visibility is therefore becoming an indispensable part of the B2B marketing strategy.

Attracting and generating new customers is and remains your objective. You have always succeeded in doing this well. However, long before the B2B customer contacts you, he or she has already oriented him or herself online. It is therefore important to be findable at the moment your future customer is searching online for the solution to a problem. It sounds simple, but gaining insight into the online behavior of your future customer is an art in itself. After all, who is this person? What keeps him or her awake at night? And what journey does that person take before they first interact with your company? These are questions that are often insufficiently thought through and that should be the basis of every B2B marketing strategy. Therefore, we give you a simple three-step plan that will help you on your way to better online findability.

Step 1: create a buyer persona

You know your customer pretty well by now. But what about his or her online identity? Thebuyer persona, or customer profile, is a semi-fictional reflection of your (ideal) customer. The buyer persona is created through market research, website analytics and online customer tracking. A common mistake is adopting an (inter)nationally established buyer persona. Take the time to create a buyer persona that specifically fits your company and the industry in which you operate. That way, you'll only speak to those people who are really important.

Step 2: map out the customer journey

Besides drawing up a correct customer profile, it is also wise to consider the path this customer takes before and after he first makes contact with your company. This is thecustomer journey. What (online) behavior does the customer show? How many contact moments are needed before a customer is ready to engage with you? And what message is needed to actually engage the customer? Understanding this data is very important to be able to respond to the way you engage with the (future) customer.

Step 3: integrate the buyer persona into the B2B marketing strategy

Establishing the buyer persona and the customer journey are the starting points for optimizing your B2B marketing strategy. These acquired insights provide a wealth of information that can ensure that in the future you deploy channels and messages that are perfectly tailored to your target group. A perfect synergy between online and offline is created. This way, you reach the people who are actually looking for you, and a positive and long-term customer relationship lies ahead.

So I advise you to start working with buyer personas yourself. Our white paper Buyer Personas will help you with that. You can also create your own buyer persona right away with the easy B2B buyer persona tool.