Marketing communications in the b2b segment. B2B brands need communications even more than B2C
Marketing communications in the B2B market are fundamentally different from communications in B2C. First of all, there is a limited number of clients. And this limited number of potential buyers is sometimes offered a high-tech product with a number of characteristics. Even if they say that today’s buyer is sometimes better informed about the product than the sales manager, but it is often almost impossible to find functional differences in offers from different manufacturers/suppliers.
Let's remember all the marketing tools for the B2B market that are in the arsenal of every communications manager: exhibitions, organizing presentations and seminars, advertising and PR in print media, all types of online advertising (search engine marketing, contextual advertising, advertising and PR on industry portals ), personal selling and sponsorship. And each manager, possessing various skills and knowledge, offers his own set of promotion mechanisms designed to ensure communication with a potential buyer.
But every manager needs to remember that the modern buyer is a person who makes titanic efforts to protect himself from the flow of information that pours at him from everywhere - from billboards and mailboxes, by e-mail and on the Internet. How many “messages” from this flow of information passed through the filter and how many of them are yours?
Yes, undoubtedly, without constant reminders of yourself, without constant work with the audience through the media, you can’t get anywhere. But advertising is communication without feedback, it is a reminder about the company, about the brand. But what is a brand that doesn't have a human face?
Most likely, this is why most people believe that in B2B everything is decided by personal relationships and the key element of marketing communications is personal selling. Those who competently build relationships, and most importantly, constantly maintain them, achieve success. But is everything decided only by the personal relationship between the manager and the client?
I don’t believe that anyone has not at least once attended a training seminar or presentation organized as part of an industry exhibition, or has not organized a seminar/presentation themselves. Yes, this is another communication mechanism that allows you to build a dialogue with the buyer. The time he himself has set aside for you to talk about yourself, the product and the brand, so that he can decide whether to deal with you or ignore information from you in the future.
Question: How many people will attend your seminar? How many of these seminars are needed to reach the required audience so that the number of adherents of the product, and therefore the brand, grows. So as not to constantly spend money on attracting customers, and profits/excess profits would be brought by regular loyal customers? How many seminars - 10, 50, 100. You just need to create the bouquet of communications you need in optimal proportions. There is a seminar where you competently and accurately describe all the benefits of the product, its features, installation and use options. The seminar answers the main question of how the system/device differs from analogues that have flooded the market. Why should the buyer pay the price that you set (for which he, with his own markup, should sell your product to the end consumer). What if you record an electronic version of the seminar and distribute it on disks (on which your catalogs and price lists are already posted) as part of the next industry exhibition.
And the most interesting thing is, why not professionally shoot a video of the seminar and publish it on an industry portal that is visited by 80,000 people annually. And not just publish, but conduct an advertising campaign with intriguing interactive announcements, supporting it with PR activity in print and electronic media.
All in your hands. Compose your communications bouquet using the best that the industry media market has to offer.
In the marketing of industrial goods, it is especially important to pay attention to such a classic promotion technique as a unique selling proposition (USP). For B2B marketing, it is extremely important that the USP concept is carefully prepared. The USP can be, for example, the production of drugs from domestic raw materials using a patented technology, in which the cost is several tens of times lower than the world average. Of course, it is important to ensure appropriate protection of intellectual property. In such cases, other means of marketing influence may be less developed, but the advantage of a globally unique method will clearly prevail.
For technically complex products and solutions in the B2B field, such USP can be, for example, the presence of a center of competence (CC) in a certain area, the ability to test unique equipment, as well as an independent examination, during which the obtained objective data are automatically recorded.
Decision making by a corporate client is characterized by increased requirements for the availability of technical justification. Particularly convincing is the technical justification, supported by calculations, measurements, instrumental expertise, automatically recorded test protocols and other objective data. In the field of information technology, such examinations are carried out in centers of competence in relevant areas, which are quite common in large foreign enterprises. Conducting such objective research (for example, examination of billing systems of telecommunications companies) is already a common practice for Western organizations.
For Russia, such experience has not yet become widespread, but conducting such an examination for large-scale projects (meaning the IT sector) is already possible without traveling abroad, since some Central Committees employ international-level IT experts with experience in implementing relevant projects .
Communications in the B2B market
Communications deserve special attention in B2B marketing. They represent a complex of personal and impersonal communications in relation to the purchasing company. These may include promotions, trade shows, personal selling, direct mail, gifts, etc. The effectiveness of using any of the selected tools depends on how it will be combined with other elements of sales promotion.
The purpose of marketing communication is to move the buying organization from the state of a potential client to the state of a real one.
The development of a marketing communications program within the B2B market consists of six basic elements:
1) setting tasks. As part of the development of this element, it is desirable to conduct two types of analysis: analysis of the company and its products, as well as analysis of the market and customers, that is, analysis of the internal and external environment. Carrying out these types of analysis involves answering a number of questions: What position do the company’s products occupy in the market? What are the firm's strengths and weaknesses relative to its competitors? What is the assessment of this company by buyers in comparison with competing firms? How satisfied are the company's clients? Answers to these questions will reveal the company's problems and help formulate clear objectives for the marketing communications program;
2) determining the target audience. The target audience can be identified at two levels: within the micro and macro segments;
3) determination of the budget. From the point of view of economic theory, a company can continue to increase the costs of marketing communications until the additional income from them becomes equal to the additional costs. However, in practice, determining such a moment is a very difficult task, since it is not easy to determine the relationship between the costs incurred and the reaction and activity of buyers. There are three approaches to determining the size of a given budget: the use of various types of guidelines and rules, the use of general firm practice in a particular industry, and the use of the “goals and objectives” method. The latter involves setting clear goals to achieve a certain measurable result, according to which the expected size of the budget is established;
4) development of a message strategy. Developing a message strategy includes two mandatory stages: preliminary and final development. The first develops a kind of statement about the goals of marketing communications, that is, it contains information about the company, its capabilities, products produced, etc. In addition, it must demonstrate the ability to meet the needs and desires of customers, and also reflect the specific benefits of cooperation with this particular company. The final stage, in turn, creates messages ready for distribution through media channels;
5) selection of media channel. The basis for choosing a media channel is the specifics of the selected target audience;
6) creation of a system for evaluating results, assessing the effectiveness of the communications program.
We all, to one degree or another, use various communication channels and methods of communicating with clients. What online communication methods are most effective for communicating with clients in the b2b sales segment?
B2B marketers say the most effective: Email, organic search engine results, company-issued releases and publications, webinars and LinkedIn are the most effective digital customer communication methods and tactics for generating sales. This is the finding released by DemandWave based on a recent study.
Popular communication methods in B2B
The most popular online marketing communication methods among B2B marketers are:- social networks (95%),
- email (93%)
- SEO for the purpose of TOP search engine results (91%).
How do you attract B2B clients?
When it comes to performance, Email leads the way as the leading channel for generating leads (73% of respondents say this is the case), followed by marketing professionals citing SEO and organic search (70%).B2B Marketing Content
The most common types of content created by B2B marketers are:- white papers: technical and information releases, corporate materials are rated as the main type of content for attracting potential clients (53% of respondents say they use this),
- webinars – 50%;
- case studies, reports containing experience and practice – 44%;
- blog posts (82% say they publish professional posts);
- videos are published by 35%
But these are the results of the study. Would you like me to tell you a little about another experience of attracting B2B clients, which does not contradict the above data, but complements the picture of the survey and without which information about the source of attracting clients in B2B would not be complete.
This is data from a Google Analytics report about visitors to one of my B2B websites.
Thus, most of the traffic to a site comes from search engines, which may indicate that the content of that site:
- is present and relevant to customer needs;
- has been properly optimized for search engines.
- what a company sells in the b2b segment is clear and familiar to its customers.
- Do you understand why your CEO is not sending client traffic?
- dig deeper into this online method that generates traffic to determine the reason.
The report was based on survey data conducted in November and December 2016 among 179 B2B merchants at leading companies in the United States. Respondents work for firms in a variety of industries, with the largest share being in B2B software product sales (39%) and B2B business services (17%).
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