How to Develop a B2B Advertising Strategy That Outsmarts the Competition

Advertising often involves a lot of time and research. Even if you work with a B2B advertising agency, you need to understand your target audience and find ways to outsmart your competition.

If you want to stand out, use these tips to develop a more effective  B2B advertising strategy.

Understand Your Target Audience

The first step for devising an effective B2B advertising strategy is to research your audience. You need to know the needs and wants of your potential clients.

With business-to-consumer (B2C) advertising, you are promoting products or services to individuals. B2B sales often involve multiple decision-makers within an organization.

Several people may need to sign off before completing a purchase. This requires a unique advertising approach.

When researching your target audience, consider the needs of the entire business. Create marketing personas for each business type, size, or industry that benefits most from your offerings.

List the most common pain points for each persona and then list how your products or services solve those issues. These details will help with each stage of your B2B advertising strategy.

Generate Informative Content

Understanding your target audience allows you to create content that addresses their concerns.

The most basic content includes the general product or services pages on your website. However, you also need to create detailed whitepapers, e-books, and case studies to help highlight features and benefits.

Content is key to guiding your sales prospects through the buying process. With each step in the journey, they need additional content to help inform others within their organizations.

Blogs, articles, newsletters, social media content, webinars, and infographics are effective ways to deliver content. You will also need quality content for your sales funnels, including the use of landing pages and emails.

Create Optimized Landing Pages

Landing pages are one of the most used B2B advertising strategies for acquiring new leads. Optimize these pages with content geared toward specific audiences.

Each landing page should have its own goal, such as acquiring contact information. However, many visitors are not ready to give away their contact info without more research.

Besides using a call to action (CTA) for visitors to fill out a form, you can use a CTA to direct visitors to other pages on your website.

For example, you may lead visitors to a detailed report, allowing them to acquire more information before giving you their email addresses and phone numbers.

Automate the Sales Funnel

Email marketing provides a way to automate your sales funnel. After acquiring contact information, you need to follow up on your leads. Email marketing is the most cost-effective solution for this task.

With email marketing, you can continue to deliver informative content to your sales prospects. You can also send reminders, updates, or special promotions.

These steps help you nurture your leads, moving them further in the decision-making process. By automating a portion of this process, you may reduce the time spent on each sales prospect.

Implement Best SEO Practices

After generating landing pages, web pages, emails, and lots of content, you need to optimize everything using good SEO practices.

Use targeted keywords, meta tags, structured data, and other SEO solutions to help increase organic search rankings.

SEO drives organic traffic to your sites, increasing your authority and brand recognition. However, it is just one method for generating traffic.

Drive Traffic With Paid Advertising

With paid B2B advertising, you gain instant traffic. Pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns are fully customizable. You can start a campaign with any budget and alter it based on the results.

For example, you may find that specific keywords result in higher conversion rates or click-through rates.

Focusing on SEO and content creation before starting a PPC campaign also increases the effectiveness of your paid advertising. PPC platforms often analyze your landing pages to determine the relevance to your ads.

Use Retargeting to Maximize ROI

As mentioned, most first-time visitors do not leave their contact information. Retargeting helps you bring lost visitors back to your website or landing page.

Here is how retargeting works. A visitor browses your site and leaves without filling out a form. As they surf the web, your advertisement appears on some of the web pages they visit. This recaptures their interest, bringing them back.

By bringing visitors back to your site, you get more out of your B2B advertising efforts. You end up with a greater return on investment and more sales prospects.

Receive Help Developing Strategies

You may also consider partnering with an experienced B2B advertising agency. This can save you time and yield better results.

A dependable agency can help with each of the stages discussed. They can also review your existing strategies and devise a plan that meets your specific needs.

Along with these strategies, continue to monitor your competition. Pay attention to their advertising methods to see what works and mirror some of their techniques.