Digital marketing remains front and center of a marketing strategy for not only B2C brands but B2B brands as well. This can be unfamiliar territory for B2B marketers as they may be unsure about how to best optimize messaging and position their brand. The average consumer spends 143 minutes per day on a mobile device and an additional 38 on a desktop computer. Desktop time is predicted to slowly decrease, but mobile time continues to increase. To take advantage of the continued increase in time spent online, marketers are adjusting their strategies and omnichannel campaigns accordingly.
Several B2C strategies that have been working in consumer-focused marketing for years now need to be adopted by B2B marketers as well to see the same success of B2C marketers. With more online activity, decreasing marketing budgets, and a new normal of working from home, they need to learn from and implement B2C strategies to optimize outreach.
Explore Digital Touchpoints
Digital touchpoints, from marketing emails to text message marketing, are a long-game as a typical buyer engages with 10 to 20 touchpoints before making their buying decision. Knowing this, use digital touchpoints to build long term relationships with customers to signal a ‘warmer’ hot lead versus targeting a one-time purchaser. Even if someone isn’t actively in a purchasing cycle, they’re learning and conducting research to use down the line. Because of the time to conversion being longer, it’s important to nurture them throughout their customer journey providing them with meaningful insights to support their evaluation.
Adopting broader omnichannel strategies such as trigger-based email campaigns allows B2B marketers to add a crucial component of a subscriber’s experience. Thirty-three percent of brands generate more than 25% of revenue from email marketing through transactional and triggered emails. Triggered emails are triggered by customer behavior or certain events. In the B2C world, this could mean a customer adds a pair of jeans to their cart, doesn’t purchase and receives future emails regarding a sale on denim. In B2B email marketing, this may be someone navigating to set up a demo, but failing to select a time, triggering an email follow up to see if they’re still interested in the demo.
Furthermore, B2B marketers should take after their B2C counterparts by integrating insights from one channel, like email, into their larger content strategy. While the majority of time online is spent on a mobile device, additional mobile-friendly channels grant marketers nearly unlimited access to consumers. For example, if an email campaign drives sales from users viewing the email on a mobile device, consider sharing a similar campaign via text message marketing.
Implement Abandoned Cart and Browse Campaigns
B2C brands are far ahead of B2Bs when it comes to utilizing customer behavior and intent data. The most common eCommerce example are abandoned cart campaigns when a consumer adds something to their cart, doesn’t purchase, and then gets an email reminding them of the item in their cart plus some similar items they may like. While the majority of B2B brands don’t have the ability to leverage the abandoned cart tactic, they can implement similar campaigns based on browser history. For example, if a user navigates to a particular page from a marketing email multiple times, or navigates to many pages all on the same topic, marketers can follow up with the user with additional materials on a similar topic.
In the B2B world, such a campaign won’t necessarily lead directly to a sale. If following up with materials that help a customer prove value to a boss or execute better campaigns for themselves, marketers instead earn the customer’s respect and gratitude. It’s important to remember that sometimes it’s better to garner information and data to help further develop a lifelong customer than complete a sale from a one-time customer.
Add More Personality
B2C brands tend to have a more fun and personal tone across all messaging, while B2B comes across as more “buttoned-up” and technical. While being buttoned-up has a time and a place, B2B email marketing offers a chance to replace formal communication with a more personal tone which can result in more sales. This is because the future of buying is based on a human-to-human connection with a brand and a great experience with the brand.
While, yes, customers want to view a company as reputable and a service or product as professional-quality, this is still achievable while adding more personality into the marketing mix. People most value the human-element and experience. This stresses the importance for brands to make communication personal, empathetic to the problem the prospect is trying to solve, and easy for them to learn more or engage with the brand. That said, don’t let go of current messaging all together. Maintain similar value propositions and messages, instead adjusting your tone.
Email is one channel allowing for more direct and normal conversations. These contacts opted-in to receive your emails, therefore they want to hear from you. Leverage this by personalizing beyond the “first name field”. Again, prospects want to hear from humans, not from a machine. Consider tying in seasonal or holiday hooks into messaging, show customer appreciation or work some fun personality into footers and unsubscribe messages.
Just because a B2C and B2B brand sell different products doesn’t mean their approaches to marketing need to be completely different. Many strategies that work for B2C marketing should be adopted by B2B to achieve an increase in ROI and, most importantly, developing long-term customer relationships. Explore digital touchpoints, implement new campaigns and let your brand’s personality shine through in messaging. It’s time for B2B marketers to see the success that comes from B2C strategies.
About the Author: Melissa Sargeant is CMO at Litmus, where she runs worldwide marketing initiatives including corporate and product branding, demand generation, product marketing, public relations, and event management. Prior to Litmus, Melissa was CMO at customer experience leader SugarCRM and at e-commerce innovator ChannelAdvisor (ECOM). With more than 30 years of marketing experience in the tech sector, she has expertise in SaaS go-to-market strategy and execution, customer success, digital demand generation, and branding. Melissa also held senior marketing roles at Avalara, CA Technologies (Computer Associates), Digitalsmiths – A TiVo Company, Bluefire Security Technologies, and Guardent (VeriSign).