It is a new world and the sales game is now being played exclusively on the digital field.
Using digital for B2B sales is what has saved some of our clients during lockdown. We’ve spent the last eight years honing corporate clients’ sales strategies for the digital platform. For many years B2B and digital marketing were considered incompatible, but the value is now being recognised.
In the months ahead, every company and corporate’s biggest challenge is to innovate and create an online revenue stream. Online is where the biggest game will be played. Your current and ideal customers can be reached via digital platforms, and at good margins, with these contact points converting to sales and major deals.
Very few digital marketing agencies are skilled at B2B marketing. Here are 7 important points to know before you start marketing B2B online.
1. B2B digital marketing MUST be figured out on a per business basis
This is non-negotiable. Utilising digital marketing intelligently can bring huge rewards for the business – remote sales at a much lower cost than any other form of traditional options – but there is no one size fits all strategy.
We would not have believed that digital marketing could build and establish a new business and double our sales in one year. Best of all it is business as usual during lockdown, because of all the online systems that are in place.
Logistics innovator
2. Targeting
Tricky to figure out, but essential. If you get targeting right, you get digital marketing right. When the right target audience is reached, quality leads will be generated, and these leads will turn into sales. This can only be achieved with a professional agency, with years of experience, at the helm. We have seen extremely limited results with DIY, in-house marketing teams.
Sophisticated targeting filled our private schools and colleges with learners – three years in a row now. In previous years we found it extremely challenging to target the right audience to fill our schools and colleges. We now have a successful method that delivers.
Private Education Group
3. Show me the money
The only way to measure success of digital marketing is monthly turnover, not clicks, or likes, or any other form of vanity metric. The only way to measure true value is impact on the bottom-line.
4. Details are everything
Relentless search for the method (or methods) that is responsible for getting quality leads that turn into sales. This means examining both the external (lead generation) and internal (conversion of the sale) processes. First prize is to try and get to the point where the process (or at least part of it) is automated. For example, registration of a lead on website, with these potential leads funnelled through an automatic vetting process.
In order to be successful, digital marketing must be strategically refined continuously as more is learnt, and adjusted to bring in higher and higher levels of conversion. There must be very high levels of trust, collaboration and communication between client and agency to achieve this.
After more than a year of constantly refining digital marketing results, we now have a lead generation machine that brings in the right customers and sales consistently. We were relentless in our efforts to innovate together with our marketing agency. Constant refining of marketing messages, constant re-examination of the website experience and usability, new innovative online tools, and automation made it possible.
Corporate client
5. The B2B buying journey is extremely challenging
Most marketers are committed to understanding their customers and what is needed to convert. Now that the sales platform is online however, companies have to deep dive into consumer psychology and how the offering is communicated. This innovative thinking and knowledge exchange requires a close working relationship between agency and client.
Getting digital marketing to deliver was a challenging but rewarding process. It required constant strategic refinement between us and our agency. The knowledge of our digital agency concerning all digital offerings, and how to utilise them, was crucial for the success we achieved.
Corporate client
6. Everything in the technology toolbox needs to be considered
Tech can help all companies achieve their objectives. It needs to be simple and match the objective 100% to be successful. Sometimes it is an e-commerce platform, sometimes a specific tool, or a mix of a few tools to get the results.
Building an online voucher system on our website, and marketing it to our existing clients and new clients, saved our business during lockdown. Next is a full-scale e-commerce platform to safeguard against times like these in future.
Commercial client
7. The different marketing platforms and the trap
The different advertising and marketing platforms (e.g. Google Ads, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram) must match the businesses objective and the budget.
Many people think that social media and B2B are incompatible. This is a big mistake, as massive value can be reached by advertising B2B on social media. In order to make it work though, a deep knowledge of each is needed, as well as how to utilise it effectively to achieve the desired objectives.
Joburg Capital, digital agency
Since our inception in 2011, Joburg Capital has been totally focused on creating digital strategies that bring measurable value to our clients. Our goal is to help companies, medium and large, become more profitable, develop a predictable lead flow, and reach ideal audiences in a more influential way. We’re more than a digital marketing agency – we are fundamentally invested in your business succeeding online and persistently apply our skills and resources until these goals are achieved. This is why our key performance indicators are tied directly to the areas that are most important to our clients.
team@joburgcapital.com