Successful B2B Marketing
Looking for help with your B2B marketing?
Would you like to work with a B2B marketing agency that:
- Understands that any marketing activity must support your company's aims and objectives
- Focuses on the buyer and helps you put successful, buyer-driven marketing strategies in place
- Has it's fingers on the pulse of the changes in B2B buyer behaviour and understands where the biggest opportunities in B2B marketing lie (Viewing on a mobile device? Scroll down to find out more.)
- Has been helping brands grow since 1994
Whether it's a specific project, your marketing strategy or a fully integrated marketing communications programme we can help.
We deliver excellent client service - most of our clients have been with us for over 6 years. Where we work with clients on a specific ‘one-off’ project, we have a very high return rate, with clients coming back to us with new projects to work on.
Let us help you get results like these:
- Over 92% year-on-year increase in website traffic and 30% increase in time spent on their website (B2B professional services company)
- SERP page one position achieved for campaign landing pages (B2B service provider)
- Email marketing performance 20% better than the sector average (Engineering organisation)
If you’d like a brief informal chat with us to see how we may be able to help with your marketing please get in touch.
Not ready to talk with us yet? Click the link to find out more about how we can help you with your marketing.
Want to scale up your B2B Marketing and accelerate your plans for growth?
FMS Fast Track is our premium service for ambitious companies who want to ‘fast track’ their growth and get ahead of competitors. Get results quickly and save time, money and effort with intelligent B2B data prospecting and smart marketing automation - all with just one simple point of contact.
Find out more about how you can scale up your B2B marketing.
B2B marketing strategy
B2B buyers are changing, but is your B2B marketing strategy?
Traditionally, most B2B businesses have operated based on internal processes and goals. Marketing campaigns tend to be driven by product launch dates or industry-scheduled events. The way marketing teams are organised is often determined by internal programs, processes and functions. This introspective approach doesn’t take into account the buyer, their buying process(es) or their timelines.
B2B businesses need to focus on the buyer and put buyer-driven marketing strategies in place. What's more these strategies need to reflect the new generation of 'digital natives' rising up the ranks into senior buying positions.
Traditional B2B marketing, and B2B buyer-seller relationships, have changed.
B2B buyers have become digital-first. The first wave of 'digital natives', who have always used cloud-based services and collaboration tools, are already becoming established in senior buying roles. Their professional experience doesn't pre-date search, e-commerce and professional communities and tools like LinkedIn.
The use of smartphones, social media, and other ‘digital’ advancements have blended into all our business lives, but this is especially the case for the new generation of B2B buyers. Recent research by Salesforce identfied that 80% of B2B buyers want a B2C experience. B2C marketing trends are influencing B2B. They are still different audiences, but consumers’ expectations of companies are very similar for both B2B and B2C buyers.
B2B marketing
Why B2B marketing needs to switch emphasis
Since the advent of digital marketing the majority of B2B marketing investment has been made in 'performance' marketing - a short-term performance based strategy that can be valuable for generating quick leads and sales. We think this has led to an obessesion with short term results, when enduring success lies elsewhere.
The biggest growth opportunity in B2B is to influence the 95% of 'out-of-market' buyers who aren't even in the sales funnel yet.
When those 95% of buyers do come in-market, we believe that brands should be 'easy to mind and easy to find', because the brand that gets remembered is the brand that gets bought.
It's time to take a different perspective on B2B marketing
We're not saying that performance marketing doesn't have a place. It does! But according to LinkedIn data, B2B marketers spend around 8% of their budgets on brand awareness objectives. This means that something like 92% of B2B marketing budgets are committed to short-term, bottom of the sales funnel 'performance' marketing activities. The balance needs to be redressed, with more effort and investment being focused on the future i.e. influencing the 95% of 'out of market' buyers that will help deliver long-term success.
Redressing the balance won't just help deliver long-term success, it will also have a positive impact on all the (shorter term, 'performance') marketing activity directed at the 5% of buyers that are in-market. Strong brands outperform weaker brands in the same industry by 3:1 in terms of customer acquisition costs.
Ultimately, brand marketing creates more financial value than short-term performance marketing. Research carried out in 2019 by the B2B Institute, with Les Binet and Peter Field, showed that B2B brands that invest at least 50% of their budget in long-term brand building deliver the best financial returns in terms of market share growth, profitability and revenue.
Performance marketing has its place, but it shouldn't account for 92% of B2B marketing budgets! Building your brand, and being 'easy to mind and easy to find', are absolutely crucial to long-term success.
If this resonates with you, please get in touch to find out how our approach can add value to your B2B marketing.