Companies that are marketing a software as a service (SaaS) product are challenged with attracting the right visitors to their website to engage with their product. An effective method of meeting this challenge is through a viable and creative B2B (business-to-business) digital marketing strategy. In this post, we will discuss how to create a SaaS digital marketing strategy that works for your unique product offering and business objectives.
What is B2B Marketing?
A B2B marketing strategy is the practice of marketing products or services to other businesses instead of individuals. Developing an effective B2B marketing strategy is essential to drive growth and promote a company’s products. B2B marketing strategies can be categorized in the following ways.
- Lead-based - This type of marketing is designed to appeal to a wide audience. It does not differentiate based on the qualification of customers for the given product. A small percentage of these leads will be converted into paying customers.
- Account-based - This marketing approach treats each customer as an individual market. Specific businesses are targeted due to the desire of marketers to convert them to customers. Tailored strategies are used with these customers who are often already close to conversion.
Who is the Audience for B2B Marketing?
The audience and prospective customers targeted in a B2B marketing campaign are businesses. Conversely, B2C (business-to-consumer) marketing is designed to appeal to individuals. It is necessary to modify the marketing approach when dealing with the typical B2B audience.
B2B marketing should be focused on the business decision-makers who will ultimately be responsible for approving the purchase of the marketed product or service. There may be multiple people involved in making the decision, as opposed to a single individual responding to a B2C campaign. Additionally, the sales cycle in the B2B world is usually longer than in B2C due to the number of approvals necessary to close a deal.
Addressing these facts requires a more persuasive and informative marketing strategy. Case studies, illustrative examples, and hard data need to be provided to demonstrate the product or service meets the needs of the B2B customers. Quality content that appeals to the proper audience is necessary for a successful B2B marketing strategy.
Components of an Effective B2B Marketing Strategy
A B2B marketing strategy can consist of several coordinated components. Following are some of the most effective tactics to use in B2B marketing.
- Create a value proposition that illustrates the product’s benefits and how it addresses your audience’s needs and pain points.
- Employ valuable content to attract new visitors and engage your target audience.
- Use email marketing to reach your audience. Segmenting the audience for a more personalized approach can be very beneficial in email marketing.
- Social media marketing is another tactic that makes use of the multiple communication channels used by your target audience to promote your product.
- Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of driving more traffic to a website by improving its visibility and ranking in search engine results.
- Paid digital advertising offers another technique for reaching your target audience.
Not all B2B marketing campaigns need to employ all of these tactics. The creation of a value proposition and producing compelling content form the foundation of an effective B2B marketing strategy. These two components should be the focus of every B2B marketing campaign.
Content is King!
The quality of the content provided to a B2B audience is integral to its ability to be effective. Providing authoritative content is often the differentiating factor in converting an interested audience member into a paying customer. Without the right type of content, your campaign will not be as effective as you would like.
The decision-makers you want to reach in a B2B marketing campaign are often busy executives that do not have the time to spend on irrelevant content. Providing inferior content that may be considered a waste of time can result in potential customers abandoning your product. This is the polar opposite of what the marketing campaign was supposed to accomplish.
Consider the following questions when creating your content.
- Who is the audience you want to reach with your content? A level of research into your audience is necessary to answer this question.
- Why are you creating the content? It may be to increase brand awareness, create interest, or retain customers and build brand loyalty.
- Where will the content be published? The channel you use to distribute your content will influence its creation. For example, different types of content are suitable for web pages or social media posts.
- What type of content will be created? You may decide that blog posts and videos are the most appropriate types of content to reach your target audience.
- How will the content be created? Companies may attempt to create all content in-house or engage an experienced partner to assist with the campaign.
The Authoritative Content Funnel
Creating authoritative content is an excellent way of marketing a B2B product or service. Three components of an authoritative content funnel need to be addressed when creating and distributing the information about your B2B solution.
- Awareness - The top of the funnel is meant to drive awareness of your product. This can be accomplished with original data and newsworthy content. The point is to demonstrate to your prospective audience and search engines that you are producing expert content.
- Consideration - After creating awareness of your product, you want to show your audience that you understand their problems and can solve them. This can be done with case studies and instructive guides on how to use the product to address specific pain points.
- Decision - Once your audience is convinced that your product can serve their needs, it’s time to help them make a decision. Providing demos and reviews that illustrate the benefits of your product will help your prospective customers become paying customers.
Essential Questions to Answer About Your Audience
Creating the various types of content needed to address this funnel requires a well-designed plan. Understanding your audience is the key to an effective B2B marketing strategy. Ideally, the content you create effectively communicates your product’s value and benefits to your audience.
Answering the following questions about your audience can be instrumental in creating effective content.
- What is your audience’s problem or objective? This answer will drive your marketing campaign.
- How does your SaaS product help them with that problem or objective? You must have specific answers to this question to differentiate your product.
- How do they find your business or solutions like yours? Determine the channels your audience uses and incorporate them into your strategy.
- What were your visitors searching for when they found your website? Was it a generic search or were they looking for a specific product or solution?
- What was the single best piece of content with the most social shares and the most traffic? Try to replicate the success of this piece with similar content.
- Why do you think this piece resonated so well with your audience? You may want to survey your audience to answer this question and use the results to influence further content creation.
- What other pieces of content worked and why? The goal is to eliminate non-performing items in favor of content that resonates with your audience.
Developing an effective B2B SaaS digital marketing strategy does not have to be difficult if you consider the points we have discussed in this post. The keys are to develop an understanding of your audience and provide them with authoritative content that drives conversion.