Top 14 B2B Marketing Strategies to Grow in 2021

Digital marketing strategies are constantly evolving with the development of new technologies and consumer habits.

With the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s no surprise that businesses all over the world have had to adapt their service frameworks to best support the fast-changing needs of their consumers.

As experienced marketing professionals, we at Ravenshoe Group understand that the digital marketing world can often feel overwhelming to navigate. With so many tactics to choose from, it’s hard to predict which marketing approach will separate you from the competition and yield the most profitable Return on Investment (ROI).

To help you get the most out of your 2021 business potential, we’ve compiled a list of the top 14 most effective B2B marketing strategies that you won’t want to miss!

We know that it can be challenging to navigate which tactics you should try and tackle first, so to help you out we’ve arranged our list into a priority order so that you can easily narrow down which you should start with!

1. Fast & Responsive Website:

Maintaining a professional, mobile-friendly and Search Engine Optimized (SEO) website is the most important marketing asset your business can have.

From communicating your brand identity to sharing valuable content, a website can be used as a centralized lead magnet through a combination of client-centered content marketing, social media strategies, pay-per-click (PPC) ads and more.

It’s also the last place a customer will visit before reaching out to get a quote or buy from you so it’s important that you’re not making a bad last impression. There’s no point in spending all of your hard-earned marketing dollars driving traffic to a website that doesn’t convert well. Beyond visuals, the experience a user has on your website can definitely impact their decision to reach out to you, so it’s important that your website is evaluated for user experience as well. Last but certainly not least, in order to increase trust and security it is imperative that your website has an SSL certificate installed if it does not already.

2. On Page SEO:

It’s one thing to have a site that looks good and functions well, but if it’s not programmed with the almighty Google in mind, it can hinder your chances of being found.

The foundation of any good on page SEO campaign starts with solid keyword research, there’s no point in optimizing your web pages for keywords that users aren’t searching for.

The goal is for your product and service pages to show up in Google’s search results. The only way to do this is to find out what terms your target buyer is using to search for your services, and to ensure your website is optimized for those terms.

From there you want to make sure you have some key things taken care of:

• Page title set with keyword search intent
• H1 tag set with your keyword or a variation of it
• H2s & H3s with keyword variations in them
• Alt text on your images
• Interlinking between pages – you shouldn’t write pages in a silo, keep the user journey in mind and link to pages that will help move them down the funnel to and into buyers
• Page speed – it’s important for users and important for Google so make sure your website isn’t built using bloated code, and the server it’s on is blazing fast

There’s more to on page SEO than just the above points, but if you can cover those on your website and ensure they are well-done, you’ll be surprised at how they can bump your impressions in search over time and drive more traffic to your site.

3. Pay Per Click (PPC) Ads Through Google:

Google is still the search behemoth, and with over 3.5 billion searches a day it makes sense to get your website to show up on the searches that matter most to you.

The quickest way to do that is to pay for ads to show up when potential buyers are typing in keywords that are important to your business.

Search campaigns through Google contain text-based ads that show up at the top of Google Search Results above organic results, and send users to a web page that showcases the services you speak about in the ad.

The leads that come from search ads are highly targeted, as users are specifically searching for terms related to your products or services. PPC ads help to increase lead generation quickly, and are geared to target both the terms and geographic area of your choosing.

Different terms have different search volumes per month, but a collective “group” of keywords is used to get your campaign going.

There are a lot of things to tweak in Google Ads to have profitable campaigns running long term but if you hire the right company, they can have you up and running in no time.

The right company will perform initial keyword research, and as your campaigns progress, your original keywords should be analyzed for success, allowing you to capitalize on this data and adjust or remove terms as needed. Your ad’s messaging should focus on the unique value propositions of your services.

The great part about PPC ads is that they can be set to a daily budget of your choosing, making it easy to control and adjust spend as your campaigns evolve over time.

Running Google Ads is also a great way to see what keywords are converting well with your audience to help influence what keywords you should target with your SEO campaigns.

4. Remarketing Campaigns:

While Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising can be expensive for new businesses, remarketing is an excellent solution to maximize your ad spend on a budget.

If you’ve ever noticed an ad follow you around the internet you’ve seen remarketing in action. When a person has visited your website but not yet made a purchase, remarketing ads will follow them to other websites to encourage them to return to your site and reconsider.

Remarketing ads are generally visual banner ads (also known as Display ads) that feature your key message, your brand style, and a call-to-action to come back to your website and complete a transaction or reach out to you.

By staying at the forefront of their minds, remarketing campaigns are able to increase sales with generally a much cheaper cost-per-click (CPC) than search ads. They are great for assisting with brand awareness and staying top of mind among those who already recognize your brand.

Here’s a very coles-note’s overview of how remarketing works:

1. Customer visits your site
2. Customer leaves and visits another site
3. Retarget ad shown to customer on other site
4. Customer clicks ad and comes back to your site

5. Content Marketing / Value-Oriented Blogging:

Content marketing is a powerful way to showcase your experience and expertise.

By focusing your content on topics that your specific audience is looking for, you have the opportunity to increase your website’s search engine visibility for your targeted keywords, share valuable insights and build trust with potential leads.

Creating content and showcasing your expertise to your target audience is going to help when it comes time for your audience to make a purchasing decision.

It is more likely that they will purchase from a company they have established trust with (through ways of helpful and interesting information) and who has shown an alignment in core values with their customers.

While there are many different content types that fall under the content marketing umbrella (from blogs and white papers to case studies and infographics) we recommend starting with blog content that helps answer questions potential buyers have.

The best way to start with blogging is to think of your most frequently asked questions, or feedback you often receive. If you find yourself typically answering a specific question over and over again, this is likely information that would be valuable to your potential customer pre-purchase!

6. Link-Building Strategy:

Link building is a valuable tool for increasing your search rankings on Google.

Having links from high-authority websites that are strong players in your industry helps signal to Google that your website should be ranking as well. Google looks at sites that high-performing websites link out to as a ranking factor.

The goal of link building is to build trust and authority within your industry in order to rank better in Google.

Incorporating inbound links (links that lead to specific pages of your website) and adding outbound links (links from your site to other reputable sources) also helps to increase the strength of your overall B2B website.

In the world of link building, quality is more important than quantity. A few links from stronger, more authoritative websites can be more powerful than a large number of links from websites with no authority.

Having other reputable websites link back to your content (such as a blog post) can be an excellent way to increase organic search results but remember – it’s not always about the number of links, rather the quality of them! It can be difficult to put together an outreach strategy to try and collect links, and to figure out which websites you should be aiming to get links from. The right marketing company can help you evaluate sites for authority and put a plan together to help you with your link building efforts.

7. Modern Email Marketing Strategies & Funnels:

Email marketing has easily become one of the most effective channels to grow your B2B business!

The main marketing objective of an email automation strategy is to reach and engage with potential clients. Building and having access to an email list is an excellent way to transform warm leads (those who have already given you their email) into repeat buyers and brand advocates; funneling them back to your website and service offers.

Email funnels and sequences based off of how a user interacts with your initial email can also be created. For example, if in your introduction email a user clicks “book a phone call”, you can update them through a separate sequence of emails to book the call, thank them for their business, and ask them to leave a review after a certain period of time.

Here’s the cole’s-notes version of how email funnels and automations work:

1. User completes an action (e.g. signs up or completes a purchase)

2. User is put into a funnel

3. User is sent a series of related e-mails

With a combination of personalized messaging, segmented audiences and email automation tools, businesses have the ability to position themselves as a reliable resource to a self-qualified audience. We know that setting up funnels and sequences can seem daunting, but there are ways to incorporate email marketing without seting up sophisticated funnels! The best way to start is with a quarterly newsletter sent out to your current customers. This will help keep you top of mind if you have a longer sales cycle, as well will give you a built in audience of potential buyers when you release new services.

8. Video Marketing:

Did you know that 70% of B2B buyers prefer video content during their decision-making process? (source)

From landing pages and blog posts to emails and social media, the curation of branded video content offers a visual, educational and time-saving aspect to the buyer’s journey; boosting web traffic and sales as a result. 

9. LinkedIn Marketing Strategies:

As LinkedIn is the most viewed professional newsfeed in the world, it is no surprise that the platform is regarded as number one for B2B marketing strategies.

With the ability to target by specific job titles, B2B businesses are able to directly connect with the types of professionals they are trying to reach that best match their target audience of potential buyers.

Additionally, you can also target on LinkedIn by:

• Job title
• Company name/ size
• Industry
• Job function
• Job seniority
• Fields of study
• Years of experience
• (and a few more)

Single-image, carousel, and video ads can be created on LinkedIn with different marketing goals and objectives in order to test what works best. Different calls-to-action and unique value propositions can be tested within your ad messaging in order to see which resonates best with your audience.

From networking and content marketing to prospect targeting and competitor research, LinkedIn will surely remain one of the leading marketing platforms for B2B businesses in 2021. If you’re looking to get started with LinkedIn ads, you can find a list of different campaign objectives here. The minimum daily budget required to run ads through LinkedIn is $10/day.

10. Content Re-Optimization & Improvement:

Each time you create a new blog post, there is a buffer period where Google indexes and ranks your content.

When looking for immediate results, this time-to-rank period can take a bit longer than preferred. This is why you will often hear that SEO-related marketing tactics are not an “overnight” solution.

Instead of continuing to write new blogs blindly, it can be extremely valuable to pause and track what is already performing well among the blogs you have already created. Knowing what users are responding well to can help you made better content-related decisions moving forward.

If there are blogs you notice have gotten a good amount of attention but are now a bit dated or are missing new information, it may be time to focus your resources on re-optimizing and updating these before creating new content. By re-optimizing and improving upon your existing content, you can not only retain your existing URL structure and hard-earned Search Engine Results Page (SERP) positioning, but boost your overall ranking by building on what you already have.

11. A Solid, Repeatable Review Strategy:

Reviews are important – if you don’t believe us, try this on for size: 79% of consumers say they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations from friends or family. (source)

That means that the right review strategy in place that keeps reviews rolling in on a consistent basis will work to help convince a lot of potential customers to trust in your business and it’s products or services. And if that’s not enough to convince you, reviews are also the second most important ranking factor when it comes to local SEO.

Staying ahead of your competitors by generating and collecting positive reviews from past satisfied clients will not only help you appear more credible than them, but also rank higher than them – sounds like a win-win to us!

There are lots of review sites out there and depending on your business some will make more sense than others but for the most part the best place to focus on is your Google My Business Reviews.

The best way to start getting more reviews is to, well, ask for them. We’d recommend visiting this link which will generate a review link that can be shared with your current customer base, asking them to leave a review for you. https://whitespark.ca/google-review-link-generator/

From there the best thing to do it so create a repeatable process so that you can continue to gain reviews consistently. For example, once you have delivered your product or completed your service, you can send a follow-up email asking clients about their experience with you, and asking them to leave a quick review on your Google My Business page.

It is important to note that if a client takes the time to leave a review, you should take a moment to respond. This gives you the opportunity to show your customer service side and show that you are active online. There are tools that exist that can help to automate the process of collecting reviews that essentially send surveys out to your client-base for you asking them a review. This helps to automate the review-collection process and is something we can definitely help you with.

12. Interactive Content Creation (Quizzes, Games, Infographics):

As B2B buyers have been spending much more time at home, many brands have developed creative new ways to engage their audience with fun, online experiences.

From quizzes and surveys to infographics and games, B2B brands have been able to stand out from their competition by creating interactive content that captures their audience’s attention.

When combined with lead-generating strategies (such as participation in exchange for an email address), this interactive tool can also contribute to growing your email list for future marketing campaigns.

13. Conversational Marketing Strategies:

Conversational marketing comes in two forms, the first being live chat. While it’s not as sexy as chatbots, and it takes manual input in the form of someone being around to answer the chats on a regular basis, it’s still a good way to dip your toes in the waters to see if your audience prefers access to a more real-time form of communication.

If your live chat is booming and gets to the point where it’s hard to manage internally, you can graduate to something like a chatbot. Chatbots have allowed a number of successful businesses to maximize efficiency while better serving their clients, but it does come at a cost. Usually the tools are more expensive and setting up the bots so that they serve your buyers in the best way possible takes a significant amount of time.

But as modern buyers continue to look for quick and accurate answers in real-time, AI advancements are becoming more helpful, personable and customizable in response.

If you have a Facebook page and are looking to test the water with automatic responses and conversational marketing, here’s a quick overview of how you can set a few auto-responders up on your Facebook chat!

14. B2B Influencer Marketing:

The B2B Influencer industry has grown exponentially over the past few years, with a huge impact on brand awareness, building trust and overall sales performance.

As consumers often buy from people they trust, many B2B businesses have caught on to this traditionally-B2C approach by including online industry experts in their marketing strategies.

By improving customer engagement and marketing effectiveness, B2B businesses have been able to narrow in on niche target audiences by collaborating with those who influence them.

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And we’re done, I know that was a lot to take in so please don’t hesitate to reach out and ask any questions. At Ravenshoe Group, our business is about taking care of your business.

If you are interested in learning more about how our marketing specialists can assist your B2B marketing strategy for 2021, please feel free to contact us or call (905) 944-0033 for more information.