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B2B Marketing Challenges

Different audiences come with a variety of unique challenges in terms of access, interest, and need, which marketers must overcome in their outreach efforts. And no audiences less so than other organizations. 

B2B marketing requires your team to solve all the same problems present in business to customer interactions: where to find them, when to reach out, finding out what they need, how best to meet that need, etc. All this, plus the added intricacy of them being a multifaceted entity with their own purchasing, sales, and marketing teams. With this in mind, B2B marketing requires a wholly unique approach to standard customer outreach strategies - although the methods may look surprisingly similar.

Why research for marketing and sales is so important

Understanding your target is hurdle number one for any marketing team. Market research is what allows you to develop a concrete marketing strategy that is most likely to bring customers in to your sales team for conversion. In collecting data on your more promising clients, you will learn what they need, what they need from your organization, and when they need it most. 

Market research additionally helps you to understand the greater environment of your industry: what competition is like, whether there are disruptions to contend with, and if there are gaps your company may be able to fill. 

Intricately can help you collect unparalleled insights into your client pool as well as the industry at large. Click here to learn more.

B2B marketing methods

Communicating business to business still requires communication between humans, although those humans may not have the final say in ultimate purchasing decisions. Your business marketing efforts will utilize many of the same methods you might engage for direct, single-customer marketing, but on a larger or altered scale. In all cases, it is critical to maintain a human voice that speaks to the needs of the people making up organizational teams, rather than the needs of the organization as an abstract entity.

Here are some of the best methods you can leverage for B2B marketing.

Search engine optimization

SEO increases the visibility of your various digital platforms by utilizing keywords common in relevant search engine activity to develop content. SEO is an excellent way to generate direct traffic to your webpage and other platforms. It also performs an initial lead qualification as you know the searcher is already in need of something you might be able to offer. 14% of lead generation happens through SEO.

Referral

Consider implementing a referral program for your clients as a way to directly recommend your product to other relevant organizations. Referral marketing provides incentive to clients who already love your product to encourage other businesses to sign up as well, resulting in easy lead generation.

Social media

Reach new organizations, build relationships, and expand your audience by posting relevant and engaging content on a variety of social media platforms. Social media is also a great source of data and can tell you who is accessing your content and how often.

Email

Email marketing falls directly behind SEO in terms of B2B lead generation success. It's yet another strategy effective for not only data gathering and measuring click-through rates, but for building new relationships with leads as well.

Major B2B marketing challenges

Now, let’s talk about the five top marketing challenges faced by B2B organizations in 2022.

1. Tech integration and communication

The sheer volume of communication channel options through which organizations interact with clients necessitates an approach that integrates those channels for a more streamlined communications process. Your email, social media, phone, and content interactions should be linked to help you better trace the client journey.

2. Leadership expectation management

Leaders who have been in the game for a long time may need a little help understanding how newer, more tech-savvy marketing approaches contribute to successful B2B sales in the digital era. To get executive buy-in, your team needs to partner with other departments – including IT and sales – to illustrate the relationship between SEO and a boosted bottom line.

3. Marketing and sales alignment

These two sometimes disparate departments share similar goals, and the express role of one is to feed promising leads directly into the other. But marketing and sales are too often held as mutually exclusive departments, to the disadvantage of the organization. Consider how you might align marketing and sales goals and operations to bolster lead generation and create more client conversions. 

4. Talking to the right people

Knowing who to talk to is one of the enduring challenges in B2B marketing. The person who needs your solution and the person who OKs the purchase of your solution are very rarely the same individual. So your initial marketing content needs to have relevant information both to the end-user, as well as a higher-up stakeholder overseeing the big picture. 

5. Competing with content globalization

Expanding globally means cultivating market understanding locally. You need to understand the precise use case for your global audience, specific to their location, industry conditions, and cultural practices. It’s not enough to simply translate your stateside content into Greek: you need to be able to relate to your Athenian purchasing director why your product is the best option for their current economy and need.

Intricately and B2B sales and marketing funnels

Intricately's unique behavioral and spend data allows cloud marketers to create timely, customized marketing materials for sales teams to leverage in their outreach. By monitoring the behavior and spend of over 7 million global businesses, Intricately data empowers you to forecast territory potential, build target account lists, and execute successful sales plays by understanding your prospects and their digital infrastructure.

Looking for more tips?

Learn how to assign incoming leads to available sales reps through Automated Lead Routing

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