[GUIDE] Top Actionable B2B Marketing Strategies for 2020

In this article, we provide the ultimate playbook for effective B2B marketing strategies in 2020 to crush your goals for lead generation, customer acquisition and client engagement.

You will learn very actionable B2B marketing tips that you can quickly implement to help you improve your B2B marketing strategy which is vital to over time creating a predictable and repeatable streams of new leads, customers and revenue.

81% of marketers expect the majority of their decisions to be data-driven by 2020. Seventy-six percent say that’s already the case. (GARTNER for Marketers)

Some B2B marketing strategies will be evergreen, concepts that you’ve most likely already heard before as a B2B marketer.

Other B2B marketing strategies will be a new form of what worked in 2019 and new technologies widely adopted by B2B marketers, such as the paradigm shift away from the “funnel” and more toward the “flywheel” outlined in the video below. You can expect to learn something new here, so make sure you read the whole article and take some notes along the way.

You can expect to learn something new here, so make sure you read the whole article and take some notes along the way.

1. Make Sure You Mean Business — Respect B2B

While most business owners can make a difference between Business to Business (B2B) and Business to Customer (B2C) business models when it comes to their company’s products and structure, they often forget about it in their marketing campaigns.

If for example, your company sells an app that helps small businesses collect leads, or automate chat, you should address your audience from that perspective. Business owners, CEOs, managers, require a different approach from end consumers.

In B2B, your buyer will not purchase your product for themselves, but their company. B2B customer journey is a different one from B2C. Yes, a human will buy, but the real customer is the organization he/she represents. Always keep that in your mind when organizing a marketing campaign.

2. Focus On Adding Value

Adding value should be your mantra in anything business-related, but B2B marketing is where you should emphasize it even more. People who are browsing your products and services need to have a clear picture of the difference your company makes to theirs. But that is not always easy.

When it comes to B2C, adding value comes to writing blog posts or offering a discount code here and there. If you sell supplements, writing about best kept recipes, or the most effective forms of exercises for weight loss will get you more attention, and many opportunities to mention your products in the text, with those discount codes.

Conversely, when trying to create a successful B2B marketing strategy adding value is much harder. Business owners, managers, and other key people are already educated about running a business and know what they want to achieve.

Giving them general, one size fits all advice won’t do. Furthermore, approaching a too broad audience base is never smart in B2B, as you can miss the point. So what to do?

The best approach is to show directly how your products and services added value in real-life situations. Case studies are a perfect example of that.

Through them, you will directly show what was the situation before your product/service was, and how it changed after you came into play.

Having in-depth studies can also be a valuable source for future blog posts that will explain how the whole process went. You can also interview the business owners, and use their praise for your testimonials page, which is another excellent form of promotion.

3. Niche It Down

Your business model should be aimed at providing help to a particular business type, in certain situations. Ideally, you should specialize in tackling one type of issue, not to be a general problem solver that knows everything.

You help bloggers reach #1 on Google. You create custom-made pastries boxes for bakeries and cookie shops. Niching down will help you specialize, becoming a problem-solver for a specific kind of issue. People will know you as an expert in your field, which will also help you raise prices.

You should approach your B2B marketing strategy in the same way. Set a goal, choose the target audience, execute. Going narrower will bring fewer people in your funnels, but more quality leads and sales will come out of it, and that’s all it matters.

Focusing too wide will maybe get you more email addresses, but unless your goal is to sell them, that isn’t such a big deal. It is much better to have fewer people in your funnel, that are leads of better quality than to have a bunch of random leads that fall off along the way. The primary goal of marketing is to increase sales, everything else is secondary.

4. Be Direct And To The Point

Business people don’t have time. Yes, you should offer them value, and you should niche it down, but keep it short and direct.

When running your email campaigns, pay attention to subject lines. That is what often makes or breaks your email. Business people are flooded with emails every day, and they will be reluctant to open another one that is trying to sell them something.

So you better make sure your emails add value, and you state that in the subject line. Also, don’t add attachments, as they often trigger the anti-virus, or send the email to the spam folder. Keep it short but effective.

Because business people lack time, running a blog with overly long articles might not be the best approach. Sure, it will get you organic traffic, as long-form posts contain a lot of keywords. But, who has time to read 3000 words long posts you release twice per week?

Instead, your better option is paid advertising. Sure, PPC is more expensive, but there’s a reason for that — it’s immediately effective. You pay for those ads, and they show in front of your target audience.

Blogs, on the other hand, are there, available to anyone, and are less likely to attract the right kind of people. Ideally, you should do both, but if you are interested in getting more leads in a shorter time, PPC is a much better investment.

Below is a great LinkedIn video from their content series “Live with Marketers” discussing effective B2B marketing strategies in 2019. This LinkedIn video is a great primer for this article, which focuses on looking forward to ways to be an effective B2B market in 2020.

Conclusion

We hope this article helped you gain a deeper insight into how to refine your companies approach to improving the effectiveness of your B2B marketing strategy. These actionable insights also follow industry best practices that will stand the test of time, and will continue to be effective in 2020 and beyond.

After reading this you may feeling as though this is overwhelming and you are thinking that you do not know where to begin to implement these B2B marketing strategies. No worries, you are not alone.

Many of the B2B markers can plan an effective approach, but often lack the internal resources to execute on your internal approved B2B marketing strategies. This is where we highly reccomened having a conversation with veteran B2B marketing agencies who do this for a living.

When you look at these B2B marketing strategies outlined above more closely, they don’t seem that groundbreaking. They may seem obvious to a lot of more veteran B2B marketers, yet even the best B2B marketing professionals are not fully leveraging these B2B marketing strategies to their full potential.

These days are wearing many hats internally. As a result, the concept of leaning on niche B2B marketing companies to execute on your vision can have a profound impact on your marketing ROI.