The pandemic presented an interesting scenario where some businesses grew by leaps and bounds while others struggled with diminishing revenues.
Did your business meet its revenue targets in 2020?
If your answer is no, then this article is for you.
As we emerge from the pandemic, companies are looking for ways to replace lost business. They are revising tactics to capture the leads and sales that didn’t materialize.
Is demand still there?
It is, albeit latent.
The good news is that you can revive interest and nurture your way into prospects’ businesses again. Let’s look at five top B2B digital marketing strategies for business recovery.
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Rediscover Your Customer
Covid-19 brought a shift to B2B consumer behavior. If purchases were scrutinized before the pandemic, the bar was raised even higher afterward.
The question on the buyer’s mind is, “Is this purchase absolutely necessary? What’s in it for me?”
Change in consumer behavior looks different from one business to another but one thing is clear, it has evolved.
What worked previously may not produce meaningful results now.
If you want to stay in the game, you’ll need to rediscover your customer.
How?
Recreate Buyer Personas
Customers who didn’t need your services previously might look for you right now and vice versa.
It’s highly likely that the assumptions you had developed about your buyers are no longer valid.
This is a good time to research the pandemic’s effect on their industry—positive or otherwise, emerging opportunities, pain points, and concerns.
Review Your Present Offerings
Critically analyze how your solutions can help address new customer concerns. How relevant are your offerings? Do they help customers achieve their goals?
You may need to change certain aspects of your offerings in line with your discovery.
Determine the Impact of Virtual Buying on Your Customer
With face-to-face restrictions, B2B buyers became savvy at self-educating.
They look up information about things that interest them rather than talking to a sales rep.
Knowing the extent virtual buying has on your prospects can help you create suitable content for the buyer’s journey.
2. Focus on Customer Retention
Along with the lockdown came the “Nomadic customers.”
These are B2B buyers who research and migrate from one B2B seller to another looking for the “best deal.”
While it created opportunities for growth, it also made customer retention a headache.
Seeing as existing customers are paramount to recurring revenue, focussing on retaining your clients is a primary business recovery strategy.
Here are retention strategies to consider:
- Invest in customer service channels (chatbots, email, social platforms, and WhatsApp) that facilitate responses in the fastest time possible.
- Be empathetic and flexible in your dealings. Be willing to negotiate payment terms and options.
- Create or share meaningful content with your customers.
- Offer exclusive discounts or bundle useful solutions to encourage them to keep buying.
- Stay in touch whether by phone, video calls, or email, and let your customers that you’re available to help them.
- Surprise loyal customers with thank you cards or small gifts like a bag of high-quality coffee.
- Ask your customers for feedback on your offerings and use the information to improve. When customers feel their opinions matter, they stick around.
3. Advertise
Advertising plays an important role in promoting your solutions, increasing brand visibility, and driving content download.
It also sets you up as an industry expert and provides opportunities for lead generation.
There are many advertising avenues B2Bs can use, ranging from free options to paid advertisements.
The main differentiator is that paid advertisements have higher chances of generating quality leads, which ultimately results in sales.
Below are different ways to get your brand and offerings in front of your audience:
- List your business on Google My Business. It will bolster visibility in local searches.
- Invest in SEO to improve your ranking when users search keywords relating to your business.
- Update your website to make it more engaging. Think about its colors, the layout, and providing valuable and industry-relevant content.
- Have your team include your website in their email signature. Add the link to your site on your social profiles too.
- Create engaging, relevant, informative, and shareable videos and post them on your social platforms.
- Encourage customers to leave online reviews. Positive word of mouth is a great advertising tool since consumers trust the opinions of fellow consumers.
- Take advantage of Facebook’s targeted advertising capability to reach prospects.
- Employ the Retargeting technology to anonymously “follow” past website visitors as they browse the internet and serve relevant ads.
- Invest in Google’s pay-per-click advertising. It displays brief advertisements, product listings, or service offerings when searchers look for what you offer.
- Run banner ads to attract the attention of prospects and drive traffic to your site.
- Work with an influencer to encourage your prospects to choose your brand’s offerings.
4. Cold Call
Contrary to what most salespeople think, cold calling is an effective tactic for setting your company on its way to recovery.
Why?
Because B2Bs are always open to hearing about products/services that promote efficiency and help them achieve their goals.
They will listen so long as you can prove value measurably.
Do it right and your business will have qualified leads that can be nurtured and converted to paying customers.
Best cold calling tips include:
- Research your prospect beforehand. There is plenty of information in the public domain about companies and decision-makers. Look up industry-specific pain points and your ability to deal with those challenges.
- Warm up the call by sending a short professional message to the contact person through email or on their social media account – preferably LinkedIn.
- Throw out the script and use a call guide instead – unless you’re required to use a script verbatim. Call guides outline parts of the call but allow you to use your own words which makes for a more natural conversation.
- Make the call about the customer. Ask the right questions and pay attention to the answers they give you. It will be easier to qualify the prospect.
- Be genuine, empathetic, helpful but not pushy. The first call isn’t about closing the deal but about understanding the needs of the prospect. Only then can you recommend the best solution.
- Follow up with the prospect after the call. Most sales happen after a couple of encounters (virtual or otherwise) with the prospect. Drop them an email thanking them for taking your call and where possible add a link to genuinely useful contact.
5. Analyze Data
Analyzing data correctly allows marketers to know if their digital marketing techniques are working.
It’s crucial for pointing out weaknesses in strategies so you can know where to improve.
Here are metrics that every marketing team should analyze:
- Sales revenue: most marketers find it difficult to tie marketing activities to sales revenue. Yet, through analyzing quarter-to-quarter or year-to-year increases in revenue you’ll know if the marketing activities are providing results.
- Conversion rate: this metric identifies the percentage of website visitors who complete desired goals. The higher the conversion rate, the more effective your marketing campaigns (website included) are.
- Customer retention rate: this metric lets you know how many customer accounts you’re retaining year after year. You can then create retargeting campaigns for lost accounts.
- Cost-Per-Click (where applicable): here you’re measuring the number of clicks your digital ad has received in relation to the money spent promoting it. You’ll be able to see if the ads are performing as expected or if they need changing.
- Social media engagement: this metric measures the number of people that engage with your posts against your total number of followers. It helps you know the topics that elicit a lot of interest.
- Site traffic: analyzing site traffic gives you a clear position of your website’s visibility and relevance. You’ll know the specific pages that attract action which can be useful in redefining your buyer personas.
- Return on advertising spending: this data measures the money your business has made from sales directly linked to paid ads against the cost of those ads. Not only does this metric measure ROI but also which channels are most effective.