Improve your B2B marketing ROI with LBDigital

Are you looking to target small businesses for your next marketing campaign? B2B marketing and B2C marketing vary considerably in terms of the strategies and the marketing channels that work best. They also vary in the customer journey and the lead time required to convert a prospect into a customer. Luckily LBDigital is here to help guide you, with tips to help boost your B2B campaign performance and reduce your CPL.

Consider the B2B customer journey

The average B2B customer journey is much longer than that of a B2C customer journey. It’s true that both will usually include an awareness stage, a consideration stage and a conversion stage. Yet while in B2C marketing the lead time to convert a prospect into a customer can be relatively short, in B2B marketing the process is much more complicated.

For one, there are many more stakeholders involved in the buying process. According to Gartner, the typical decision making unit for a complex B2B solution involves six to ten stakeholders. You may be marketing to a gatekeeper at the beginning of the customer journey but ultimately you will need to convince the budget holder if you wish to convert the business into your paying client.

Secondly, the B2B customer journey isn’t linear. 77% of respondents from the same Gartner survey, said their latest purchase was either very complex or difficult, requiring sign-offs from each of the stakeholders involved in the decision-making process more than once.

What does this insight into the buying process mean for your B2B marketing campaigns? Certainly, you shouldn’t be expecting an immediate sale as the nature of the B2B customer journey will likely mean long lead conversion times. As Jonathan Franchell of Ironpaper explains: "A frequent mistake B2B organizations make is educating the buyer on their own company, product, or service. The buyer isn't ready for that; they are just beginning to understand their problem." Make sure then that you have messaging for the different points within the buying process. Avoid a hard sell in the awareness stage and tailor your marketing to the different buying personas within the decision-making unit.

Choose your channels and content wisely

Don’t just focus on email marketing. Try using different B2B channels to target different points in the customer journey. For example, 75% of buyers use B2B social media such as Linkedin to learn more about products and services they may be interested in purchasing. You could upload a list of your hottest leads to the platform and build a look-a-like audience targeting business professionals with a similar profile.

Or have you tried other digital channels such as contextual display to build brand awareness? With contextual targeting you can deliver your message to people who are already reading content that is similar to the content you’re advertising. That way, you can be sure that if they’re accessing content on, for example, funding options for small businesses, they are highly likely to be interested in a small business loan offer.

Similarly, don’t just focus on short-form ads. According to Marx Communications, 80% of business decision-makers would prefer to read an article than to see an ad to get information on their next business purchase. If you are only producing short-form ads that direct prospects to your website, your campaign is unlikely to be as engaging as it would if you had selected a variety of content including articles, case studies, infographics, and videos. Try mixing it up to suit the different points of the customer journey and to satisfy the various buyer personas that may visit your site looking for information.

Try segmentation & dynamic content for a higher response rate

So you’ve managed to get your audience’s attention and you’ve driven them to your site but you’re showing everyone the same content, no matter their buying persona. Yet, depending on the stakeholder, you may have different product features that will matter most to them.

Let’s imagine you are selling some Martech software to small businesses. For the marketer within the business, they will want to know how user-friendly the software is, potentially some information on the training provided, and generally how the software can make their daily working life easier. Now the marketer has got his or her boss involved and they are most interested in ensuring your product is viable, so they may be looking for testimonials or case studies. Finally, finance gets involved and they’ll be most interested in pricing and invoicing options. That’s three different buyer personas with different priorities and needs; yet you are showing them the same landing page.

Try segmenting your audience into different buyer personas and directing them to the content that matters most to them. You could do this both in email - using dynamic content to tailor specific images and text - as well as on landing pages. By serving up the content that is most relevant and most important to the different stakeholders within the decision-making unit, you are in a better position to convert your lead to a client.

Ensure the B2B data you’re using is up to scratch

Of course, segmentation and dynamic content are great if done well. If executed poorly, it could put your prospect off. That’s why it’s so important to trust the B2B data you’re working with. What if you sent an email to a prospect referencing their company name but in fact the data you were using was stale and that contact hadn’t actually worked at that company for several months?

If you don’t trust the quality of the data you’re using in your campaigns, maybe it’s time to change data provider. At LBDigital we pride ourselves on providing quality B2B data at scale. In fact, our data was recently validated by an independent data evaluator, Truthset, and we ranked first in accuracy for small business owner data in comparison to other leading data providers.

We have over 500 proprietary B2B audience segments that include business at home and essential & remote workers. We can also help build a custom audience based on your exact requirements.

Find out more about our B2B data offering >

Get in Touch

If you’re interested in learning more about B2B data strategies, we provide a free data mentoring service, available for agencies, platforms, media buyers, digital marketers, and brands. Alternatively, get in touch to discuss your specific needs. Give us a call, we’ll answer the phone!