Business-to-business marketers are responsible for raising awareness, generating leads to drive revenue and differentiating their organization from its competitors. A B2B marketer faces a different set of challenges with each campaign. If these challenges are not combatted, they can significantly lower the business’s efficiency and revenue.
As the president of a marketing agency, here are the top challenges I’ve observed B2B marketers are facing today and how you and your team can combat them:
1. Generating Quality Leads
In today’s digital era, many platforms exist to publish and promote marketing content. The digital space is so cluttered with content, consumers no longer have to seek out information. Push notifications, geo-targeting, customized ads and messages, and site pop-ups deliver tailored content to every user.
B2B marketers can struggle to create enough demand for their content. Because of the plethora of content syndication opportunities available today, B2B marketers often lack understanding of which channel is right for their message.
An effective way to address this problem is doing research on the type of content your target audience actually wants — such as video, blogs, etc. — about the topics that are keeping them up at night. Creating high-quality content that provides the reader with value will gain their trust, and they will come back for more.
2. Knowing The Right Target Audience
Strong marketing strategies should satisfy the needs of customers at every level of the customer journey. You must know your audience and what they care about in order to reach them. But, there’s a lot that goes into a B2B buyer’s decision-making process, such as how their company does business and their personal preferences. This can make it challenging to determine your target audience.
Studying your customers’ buying process enables you to segment your buyers by their pains and their needs, so you can deliver a more personalized experience when communicating and marketing to them.
3. Proving ROI
Return on investment attribution remains one of the most common challenges facing many B2B marketers. In order for a marketer to comprehend the effectiveness of each piece of content, each campaign and the overall strategy, a marketer must be able to attribute a relatively accurate amount of revenue to them.
B2B organizations often find it difficult to prove ROI because of the multiple points of contact a marketer must make before a business purchases their product or service. B2B purchasing decisions often involve interacting with a number of professionals within a company in a variety of ways, so the sales cycle is much longer and more complex. Tracking the revenue that these interactions generate can be extremely time-consuming and convoluted, as the purchase process is not linear and the financial benefits of the marketing effort are often not reaped until long after their execution.
I advise organizations to tackle this issue by facilitating two-way communication between your company’s marketing and sales teams, in addition to implementing reporting tools into your regular analysis.
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4. Optimizing Your Website
A B2B company’s website is a marketing asset that is working all day, every day, to generate traffic and convert prospects into customers. Keeping your site functional, fast and user-friendly is essential for any B2B business.
This is an umbrella issue that encompasses a variety of challenges, including:
• Optimizing SEO;
• Producing strong messaging that speaks to the pains of your buyers;
• Engaging website users with your content;
• Designing pages in an easy-to-read, yet appealing style.
It takes different skill sets to effectively manage all these types of projects, so having strong marketing partners is important to ensure you can get the right skill for the right role.
5. Strategic Marketing Planning
To plan or not to plan? While it takes time, I firmly believe that to effectively market to your customers, you must know them inside and out and plan accordingly.
Ask yourself the following questions about your customers:
• How do your customers form their plans?
• How do they evaluate solutions?
• Where else do they search for information to educate and later purchase?
• Where do they get recommendations and purchasing advice?
I believe by conducting buyer persona research, you can overcome the common challenge of marketing to the wrong consumer or marketing with the wrong message at the wrong time. Customers’ answers to these questions can inform email marketing, social media, outreach to influencers and more.
So, you have some or all of these challenges. Now what?
From creating a personalized website experience to generating quality leads, marketers face a different set of challenges. A seasoned team of marketing strategists can help you identify and overcome the marketing challenges your B2B is facing. Whether it is an in-house marketer at your organization or employing a marketing agency to fill your unique gaps, surround yourself with those who are professionals in the space so you can get the results you need.
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