Tag: b2b marketing strategy

Compelling Digital Marketing Drills for B2B Organizations

Some B2B digital marketing trends never go out of style. Here are some tactics that you should utilize to see a greater impact and return on investment from your digital marketing efforts.

 

B2B Digital Marketing Trend #1: Don’t Undervalue Webinars, Videos & Virtual Events

The use of video calling skyrocketed as organizations around the world adapted to remote work and it doesn’t look like this digital marketing trend will be slowing down anytime soon.

 

The pandemic had a huge impact on the popularity growth of video conferencing, webinars and virtual events, but they were all on the rise long before ‘social distancing’ became part of our daily vocabulary.

 

The good news is that including webinars, videos and virtual events in your B2B digital marketing strategy can open up a number of opportunities for lead generation, improving the buyer journey, and expanding your brand reach.

 

Use Webinars and Virtual Events for Lead Generation

Producing high-quality webinars and virtual events that truly add value to attendees can take a lot of work, but we promise that it will pay off and the rewards will be worth the effort!

 

Not only do webinars position you as an authority and a thought leader, but they are also a great vehicle for generating high-quality leads. People that are willing to take the time out of their day to join your webinar are likely to be highly engaged and searching to add value to their organization within your area of expertise. With that being said, it’s definitely worth adding webinars and virtual events to your B2B digital marketing strategy.

 

Expand Your Reach with Co-Marketing 

Now that you’ve added virtual events and webinars to your marketing must-haves, it’s time to consider how to elevate your reach. Collaborating with compatible organizations to your own can be a great way to elevate your webinars or virtual events by tapping into new, but relevant, audiences.

 

Plus, hosting a webinar in partnership with a complementary organization means you can add even more value to your audience by going above and beyond your specific area of expertise.  

 

Improve The Buyer Journey With Videos

B2B Digital Marketing Trends Video

Videos are an amazing tool for getting all sorts of messages across to your audience in an engaging, easy-to-understand way. When used effectively, they can drastically improve the buyer journey by providing a much more detailed look at the product or service you are offering. In fact, according to Google 55% of people search for a product on Google, and then learn more by going to YouTube before they buy it. 

 

Not only can videos help your audience better understand your products or services, but they can also have a huge impact on your SEO. Search engines love video and value it as high-quality pieces of content. In 2021, it’s estimated that over 80% of all web traffic will consist of video.

 

B2B Digital Marketing Trend #2: Be Authentic, Educational & Informative

Customers are inundated with messages every day, so being authentic and adding real educational value will help you cut through the noise and create a strong connection with your audience. Use your content to capture interest and establish your organization as a source of reliable information, and stay consistent with the value you provide to your audience.

 

The following content types are a great way to provide educational content and generate leads at the same time: 

 

  • Whitepapers – creating technical, in-depth whitepapers on a specific topic can enforce your organization as a thought leader in your area, establish trust among your audience, and solidify you as a go-to source of information. 
  • Guides – help your audience get up to speed with easy to follow ‘how-to’ guides. 
  • eBooks – easy to read and more general than whitepapers, eBooks are a great way to increase credibility and add value through educational content.
  • Infographics – a great way to format content and information so it’s easy to read, educational and highly shareable.
  • Blogging – consistent blogging can showcase thought leadership as well as drive traffic to your website.

B2B Digital Marketing Trend #3: Nurture Leads with Email Marketing Nurtures & Automation

If you haven’t already moved your email marketing to an automated platform, we should probably be catching you up on marketing in 2011 rather than now!

 

Email Digital Marketing Trends for 2021

Transitioning to an email automation platform (our favourites are MailChimp and HubSpot) can be one of the most highly impactful marketing investments you can make, with substantial ROI for years to come. It will make staying in touch with your contacts easier than ever and allow you to keep them engaged with relevant and personalized content. 

 

Email Nurture Flows

Use your email automation platform to take your contacts on a journey depending on their interest group. For example, if you gained a contact because they registered to join a webinar, you will know the subject area that they are interested in. Moving forward, you can nurture this contact with relevant information that adds value to them within this area and tie in your product or service offering in a way that’s relevant to their individual needs.

 

Automated Email Follow Up

Reach out to new contacts instantly with automated email follow-ups. Setting up auto-responders to download, sign up or other forms allow you to automatically reach out to new contacts with the information they need without delay. This will allow you to get a higher response from your audience, as when they complete a significant action like filling in a form they will likely expect a response or confirmation. 

 

Consistent Email Communications

To get the most from your email list, it’s important to keep your contacts engaged and remain consistent over time. A great way to do this is by sending a monthly newsletter to your contacts to keep them updated on what is new & noteworthy with your organization, and to share any new resources that may be helpful to them. A monthly newsletter provides the opportunity for you to touch base with leads, showcase your business and keep your database up to date. 

 

B2B Digital Marketing Trend #4: Reinvest in Search Engine Marketing for the Long-Term

When it comes to SEO, it is a common misconception that if you optimize your website once then it will last forever. The reality is interest changes, and so do keywords. For example, in the Microsoft space, “Office 365” rebranded to “Microsoft 365” or “Microsoft Dynamics NAV” is now “Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central”.

 

It’s important to keep checking back in on your keywords and your keyword strategy, as it’s not guaranteed that they will get more popular with time. This coming year, check back in on your SEO with the following crucial stages:

 

Revisit Your Website Keyword Strategy 

Keyword Strategy - SEO B2B Digital Marketing Trends

Keywords are at the heart of website SEO, so it’s important to clearly define the keywords that have the most relevance and potential for your organization.

 

To build an effective keyword strategy, start by conducting thorough keyword research using tools such as Google Keyword Planner, Moz or Ahrefs. Use the keyword data gathered in this research stage to guide how you will use individual keywords and how you will track their impact going forward.

 

Conduct a Thorough SEO Audit

How is your current site performing in terms of SEO? The best way to check what is working and what isn’t is to complete a thorough SEO audit of your site. It’s important to look out for both big issues that may be holding your site back, as well as smaller, easy-to-fix problems that may present opportunities for quick wins.

 

An SEO audit should cover an analysis of current organic search traffic using Google Search Console and Google Analytics, a content audit and content gap analysis, as well as examining what content (whether that’s written copy, images, or videos) is optimized and what still needs to be. 

 

Book an SEO Audit Today!

Not sure where to start with your website SEO? Don’t panic, Maven Collective Marketing’s expert team is here to help you!

Request My Audit Now

 

Implement SEO Elements Across Your Site

Last but definitely not least, it’s time to fill in the gaps highlighted in your SEO audit. We recommend building a checklist for each page, article, or blog post, so you have a comprehensive list of all the elements that need optimizing. It can be time consuming, but ensuring that all your headings, images and copy are optimized for search will drastically improve how easy it is for potential customers to find you online. 

Tracking B2B Digital Marketing Trends

 

B2B Digital Marketing Trend #5: Explore New SERP Opportunities

Search engine algorithm updates happen all the time which means there are constantly new opportunities to improve your ranking. Take advantage of rich snippets and structured data markup to take that coveted ‘position zero’ on search engine listings – the most sought after spot on the internet.

 

Schema Markup

Schema markup is a section of code that you put on your site in order to help search engines serve users with an informative response to best answer their questions. Essentially, schema markup provides search engine algorithms with context to inform what your data means rather than simply what it says. 

 

Rich Snippet Categories

The majority of Google search results show a website’s title tag, meta description and URL. Rich snippets include these, but also adds more to it making your site more compelling and increasing CTR. Search engines like Google will pull this rich snippet data from Structured Markup (like Schema) in your website’s code.

 

Leveraging Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free service that provides insights to help you measure your site’s performance, flag potential issues and control how Google views your website.

 

It’s a great tool to monitor and improve your SEO as it can show you invaluable data insights such as how often your site appears in Google search queries and which keywords drive the most traffic to your site. If you haven’t already, setting up Google Search Console should be high up on your to-do list!

 

B2B Digital Marketing Trend #6: Promote in the Right Channels Consistently

There are countless platforms you could use to market your organization, but it’s important to pinpoint the most important ones for you so you can stay focused on connecting with your audience in the right place at the right time. If you don’t you may find yourself spending an endless amount of time without any measurable results.

 

Here are the key channels we recommend focusing on:

 

Email Marketing

As mentioned earlier in this post, email can be a very personal way to reach your target audience. When planning your email strategy, think about how you can create a personalized experience for your contact list so that every communication is relevant to their individual interests and goals. 

 

B2B Social Media

In our experience working with B2B companies, a lot of organizations struggle to get into a routine with social media marketing, or even ignore it completely. When used effectively, social media marketing can present a number of opportunities for your organization so make sure it is a key part of your B2B digital marketing strategy!

 

Social Media B2B Digital Marketing Trends

 

The key is to understand where your audience is showing up online, and focus your social media efforts on a couple of key channels rather than stretching yourself across all platforms without much in the way of engagement or return. For B2B digital marketing, our favourite platforms are LinkedIn and Twitter, but don’t overlook the value of Google My Business!

 

Paid Advertising (Google/Bing, LinkedIn, Podcasts)

Paid advertising is an excellent way to expand your reach, grow brand awareness, and drive new leads to your site or landing page. Depending on your goals, you can run paid advertising campaigns on search engines such as Google or Bing, social media platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter, or you could even run an audio advertisement on a podcast that’s relevant to your offering.

 

When set up and optimized correctly, paid ads can be a very budget-friendly option to drive traffic and convert leads. However, as with all areas of digital marketing, it’s important to take a strategic approach and clearly understand who you are trying to reach to get the best return on ad spend.

 

Co-Marketing

Simply put, co-marketing is when two or more companies come together to promote an event or co-branded offer. By leveraging the relationship between your own organization and an aligned organization, you can experience the mutual benefits of expanding your brand awareness across a much larger, combined audience. This can deliver new leads and grow awareness of your product or service offering, with the added benefit of sharing the workload with another team!

 

Guest Blogging/Appearances

Guest blogging can present a number of benefits for your organization. You can establish yourself as a thought leader within your industry and expand your reach to a completely new audience. Plus, it can be a great way to build backlinks to your own site from high-authority, high-traffic sites in your field. When getting started, make sure you do your due diligence to ensure that the sites you are guest blogging to align with your brand, have a high domain authority, and are reputable within your field.

 

B2B Marketing Trends & Beyond

B2B digital marketing trends are ever-changing, but if you keep on top of them then you will be able to uncover countless opportunities to expand your reach and grow your business.

 

We hope these B2B digital marketing trends will help you keep your digital marketing strategy current through this next year, and beyond. But, if you need some extra help, our expert team is here to help.

 

Find out more about how Maven Collective Marketing can revolutionize your B2B digital marketing by getting in touch at maven@mavencollectivemarketing.com.

How to Improve SEO and Drive More Traffic to your B2B Website

We all know how important it is to have high SEO rankings, but with over 200 search engine ranking factors in Google’s search engine algorithm alone, it can feel a little overwhelming knowing which factors are the most critical for a successful online marketing strategy. 

 

One question we are frequently asked by our clients is “how can we improve SEO on our B2B website?” This might sound like a simple question but producing the desired results for your B2B website requires establishing and maintaining a complex series of strategies and tactics. 

 

In this blog post, we’ll highlight the key search engine ranking factors you should be integrating to improve SEO.

 

Improve SEO with Keyword Research
Improve SEO with Thorough Keyword Research

Keyword Research Is Essential to Improve SEO

Keyword research is ESSENTIAL to improve SEO strategy and practice.

 

There are various FREE and paid tools for keyword research, which can be helpful to gain a better understanding of a keyword. We recommend you take the time to evaluate the demand and competition of the keywords you are targeting and think about how someone would search for relevant information based on the specific product or service you are offering.

 

It’s also worth bearing in mind how competitive a keyword is. If you need to focus on building more authority on your B2B site, try targeting less competitive words until you have built a stronger foundation for your site.

 

Once you’ve researched and chosen your keywords it’s time to plan relevant and high-quality content around these keywords, BUT make sure it sounds natural and avoid using too many.

 

Improve SEO with Fresh Content
Fresh Content is Vital to Improve SEO

How to Improve SEO With Content Marketing

Producing high-quality content is crucial to increasing your rankings, but DON’T forget about old content once it’s up on your site. Your content needs to be relevant and up to date, so make sure you are reviewing and updating existing content regularly. 

 

This is a fantastic way to signal to visitors that your website contains fresh, exciting, and accurate information. It will also likely increase the amount of time people spend on your site, also known as your dwell time, which can significantly improve SEO.

 

When reviewing existing content ask questions like, does my content demonstrate expertise, authority, and trustworthiness? Google’s ranking factor “E-A-T” (Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness) is used to measure just this.

 

While search engines want to ensure users are getting high-quality content, they also want to know that users are acquiring accurate and trustworthy information from your content.

 

Focus on Technical Elements to Improve SEO

Improving the technical SEO of your site is more important than you might think, so you want to ensure your site is compatible with the standards set by search engines, as this will significantly influence your ranking. 

 

We recognize there are a lot of different aspects to technical SEO, so to make things easier we’ve highlighted some key points for you to focus on:

 

  • XML sitemaps – make sure to use an XML sitemap, as this shows search engines your website URLs and allows them to see what content is available and how to reach it. 
  • Site structure – have an organized and flat structure that shows your site’s pages are only a few links away from one another. This also helps search engines to access and “crawl” all of your pages easily. 
  • URL structure – a consistent and logical URL structure provides a better user experience and helps users understand how to move around your site. 
  • Linking – internal links direct users to other relevant pages on your site, which increases your authority as well as your dwell time. It also helps search engines to “crawl” more of your site’s pages.
  • Duplicate & thin content – avoid duplicate content or providing thin content with little or no value to the user. We recommend using a social audit tool to help you find and remove duplicate content on your site.
  • Canonical Tags – canonical URLs help you manage similar content on your site and helps specify the exact URL you want visitors to see in search results. 
  • Rich snippets – a type of markup that enables you to include additional information on your pages, making them more noticeable in search results. This will naturally increase organic traffic to your site.
  • 404 pages & 301 redirects – you want to show search engines that all of your links are live, so make sure you don’t have any broken links and use 301 redirects to redirect users if you’ve restructured your site. 
  • HTTPS – make sure to use HTTPS, an encrypted version of HTTP that will improve the security of your site for visitors by encrypting the data between your browser and server.

 

Optimize User Experience to Improve SEO
High Quality User Experience is a Key SEO Factor

Offer an Optimal User Experience to Improve SEO

Evaluating your site for page performance is key to ensuring visitors have an optimal user experience on your page, whether on a desktop or mobile device. This will not only improve SEO but also increase organic web traffic. What’s more, with the increase of mobile browsing, it’s more important than ever to have a mobile-friendly user experience and a fast-loading speed. 

 

Arriving in 2021 is Core Web Vitals, Google’s latest ranking factor. With this new factor, your search ranking will be measured by the user’s experience on your site – we’re talking about the speed of your site when it loads, page performance and mobile experience. 

 

Algorithm updates can have a big impact on your rankings, as well as traffic to your site, so it’s important to stay ahead of them. Here are a few points that will help you understand how to prepare your B2B website for Core Web Vitals:

 

  • Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – how long does it take for the largest piece of content on your site to load? Whether it’s a video, an image, some text, on your desktop or on your mobile, your ranking will be influenced by the loading speed of that content.
  • Cumulative layout shift (CLS) – is used to measure the stability of your site. Think about whether a user may experience an unexpected layout shift when they go to click a button. 
  • First Input Delay (FID) – how fast can your site start to process and produce a result when a user clicks on something?

 

Remember, this is all about providing an optimal user experience, so make sure your site offers an easy, accessible and fast experience for visitors.

 

It’s important to build high-quality backlinks by linking to authoritative and trustworthy sites that are relevant to your subject matter. Backlinks not only demonstrate subject matter expertise, but they also build your own authority and trustworthiness. 

 

Take the time to link your content only with relevant and high-quality backlinks and make sure not to include too many.

 

How to improve seo with social media
Improve SEO by Growing Your Social Signals

Grow your Social Signals

Social shares may not be a direct ranking factor but getting more social shares to your site can really help your search engine ranking. There are two key reasons for this: 

 

  • More social shares help to increase organic traffic to your site.
  • More social shares mean there are greater opportunities for your content to build backlinks.

 

What’s more using platforms such as Google My Business (GMB) and Bing Places for Business is a fantastic way to improve your B2B business ranking. There is a long list of benefits for local businesses, such as increased customer trust, expanded search engine real estate, increased website traffic and one-click accurate business information for customers.

 

It’s Possible to Improve SEO! 

As we mentioned earlier, the question “how to improve SEO on our B2B website?” is a simple one to a complex series of strategies, tactics, and execution planning, but by following this resourceful guide you too can improve your search engine rankings and drive more traffic to your B2B website. 

 

Have further questions or would like hands-on guidance applying these strategies and tactics?

 

Get in touch at maven@mavencollectivemarketing.com to learn how our expert team can improve your SEO and drive measurable results.

B2B Digital Marketing Practices You Can’t Ignore

Top 2020 B2B Digital Marketing Trends

No better time than now to equip yourself with the best marketing tools to create (and execute) an even stronger marketing strategy for your B2B organization..

But with so many emerging trends, where should B2B marketers turn their attention? This post will take you through the top B2B digital marketing trends you can’t ignore in the year ahead.

1. Increase Use of Interactive Content for Result Drive B2B Marketing 

Have you noticed more interactive content on the internet lately? If you have, it’s no coincidence. According to the Content Marketing Institute, the number of interactive posts has increased by 33%. And this will continue to grow as the years progress. 

In the saturated content landscape, it’s hard to make static content stand out anymore – let alone connect on an emotional level with consumers. Interactive content is considerably more effective at grabbing people’s attention. In fact, 66% of marketers reported greater audience engagement after using interactive content, according to the Content Marketing Institute. 

Aren’t sure what type of interactive content would work best for your industry? Try using Buzzsumo. Search your topic and add keywords like “interactive” or “quiz” to see what has worked for other businesses. 

It’s up to B2B marketers to start providing more engaging interactive content as part of their content marketing strategy.

Employee Advocacy 2020 B2B Digital Marketing Trends

2. Employee Advocacy is the NEW Influencer Marketing

Tapping into the influential power of your employees should be a consideration for all brands – especially since we have kissed goodbye to the assumption that having a high-profile influencer equals instant credibility (and is worth the investment).

Employee re-shares of company-posted content not only generates more reach, but it’s shown to have more than double the click-through rate of the original post. Plus, employee-shared content is seen as more authentic, and therefore more likely to inspire action.

Employees often have more connections than their employer has followers. Since this is the case, employees can easily act as “influencers” and help spread their company’s message to increase online reach.

The takeaway? Encourage employees to share company-sponsored content, as well their own company-related content, to achieve the expanded reach and consideration you are looking for. 

Digital events and going live on social media - B2B Digital Marketing trends 2020

3. Digital Events & LIVE on Social Media

Most marketers believe event marketing is the most effective channel for achieving business goals – and they’re not wrong. However, events no longer need to be in-person in order to be effective. Integrating digital events into your B2B marketing strategy can also be lucrative for generating leads and accelerating your sales pipeline. 

Virtual events in B2B marketing are a powerful alternative to in-person events

Virtual events are quickly becoming a mainstream form of event for B2B companies. Full-scale live events can be costly, and justifying the expenses associated with travel to an international event can be difficult. Virtual events alleviate both obstacles and provide the ultimate convenience for attendees who can join from anywhere on a laptop.

Event streaming and live Q&As on social media present a big opportunity for B2B marketers

Going live on social media should be another consideration part of your content marketing plan. Social media sites like Facebook are prioritizing live stream video content, meaning live content is less likely to get lost in the sea of regular posts and videos. 

Additionally, Facebook wants more users to go live: “Live” is currently the first option in the status bar and sometimes you’ll receive notifications of when someone you follow goes live. With this extra push from Facebook, your company should be considering the live option to stream an event or run a live Q&A session. 

Chatbots and messaging trends for 2020 B2B marketing

4. Chatbots & Messaging Apps are the Future of B2B Marketing 

The conversation has become increasingly digital in our daily routines, and this has quickly spilled over into B2B marketing. Chatbots have taken their place as the customer communication channel of choice, and they are giving rise to more personalized customer experiences. 

According to Twilio, 66% of consumers prefer to reach brands through messaging apps. Chatbots connect people to the help and resources they need faster than ever before, proving to be a cost-effective and convenient way to communicate. 

Savvy B2B marketers are increasingly using messaging apps and chatbots to meet their conversational marketing needs. 

In fact, 100,000 bots are already available within Facebook Messenger. With the growth of Facebook Messenger, the launch of chatbots, and Messenger’s codes and plug-ins available to improve interactions, messaging has become the fastest-growing channel for branded conversations worldwide.

If you’re not on board with chatbots and messaging apps yet, you’re already falling behind.

Artificial Intelligence trends for B2B marketing in 2020

5. Artificial Intelligence for More Productive in B2B Marketing

A recent survey of marketers identified AI as the technology they are most likely to implement.

The reason for this is two-fold: today, prospects are expecting more personalized engagement throughout their customer journey than ever before, and there is more data available to inform those strategies. As a result, manual analysis of data and marketing best practices just doesn’t cut it anymore – prospects want more relevant and compelling engagement. 

Artificial intelligence is the solution to this. It can help B2B marketers determine the best time and place to engage with prospects based on past performance and the information already collected about that prospect. AI can help deliver higher value to prospects by applying machine learning to the content selection and delivery process in order to further personalize their customer journey. It can even help B2B marketers predict outcomes like campaign performance, conversion rates, revenue, and customer value.

AI is more than just hype. It can make a fundamental change to the productivity and efficiency of your B2B marketing strategy. 

6. The Race to “Position Zero” in B2B Search Engine Marketing 

Position zero is the featured snippet of text at the top of the Google search results page, just after the ads. 

Despite being the most sought after spot on the internet, only 12% of search queries include position zero in their search results – presenting a huge opportunity for your marketing strategy.

So how can you ensure your content ranks in position zero? Assuming your content is good enough to rank organically on the first page of search results, you then need to optimize your content for the specific question it answers. Depending on the question, you can use text, lists, images, and even videos to inform your audience. Encourage users to learn more by creating teasers for your answers so that they are more likely to click through to your website. 

Remember, Google is looking for the best answer. That means the relevance of the content will outweigh its ranking (once in the top 10) when it comes to the sought after position zero.

B2B marketers already know that position zero is the holy grail of SEO. A recent study from HubSpot found that when their content ranked for position zero, it generated a 114% increase in click-through-rates, even in cases where they already had the top organic placement. 

B2B Marketing Trends & Beyond

Digital marketing has one consistency: it is ever-changing. In order to stay current, it’s important to adopt new technology, fail forward, and test what works for your business. Which strategies will you try to implement?

Need help with your B2B Digital Marketing Strategy?

Successful B2B marketing is constantly shifting, iterating, and adapting to reach your goals. Want to stay ahead of the game? Get in touch at maven@mavencollectivemarketing.com

No better time than now to equip yourself with the best marketing tools to create (and execute) an even stronger marketing strategy for your B2B organization.. But with so many emerging trends, where should B2B marketers turn their attention? This post will take you through the top B2B digital marketing trends you can’t ignore in… Continue reading B2B Digital Marketing Practices You Can’t Ignore

5 Must-Read Books to Improve Your Marketing Strategy

Clients often ask us to weigh in on the best marketing resources to help them get their heads around the ever-changing landscape that is marketing today. Some aspects of marketing have remained unchanged over the years from a fundamental and theoretical perspective, however, in terms of digital marketing strategies, marketing campaigns and execution tactics, much… Continue reading 5 Must-Read Books to Improve Your Marketing Strategy

The King’s Council: Why B2B Companies Need Content Marketing Guidelines

If content is king, then content guidelines are its council. Learn why your B2B company should put in place content guidelines to ensure your content occupies its rightful throne.   With decision makers now traveling further and further through the sales funnel before engaging with a solutions supplier, content marketing has become central to B2B… Continue reading The King’s Council: Why B2B Companies Need Content Marketing Guidelines