Although many of the same channels are used for B2B and B2C digital marketing, the focus and purpose is often entirely different. Pinpointing the best digital marketing tactics for your B2B organization is crucial – and here’s what you should be focusing on.

Digital marketing efforts for businesses that want to reach consumers directly (B2C) all relate to reaching consumers and converting them into paying customers as quickly as possible. Marketing to consumers is all about making your products stand out from competitors, and reaching consumers on the digital channels they are already spending time on.

On the other hand, digital marketing from a business to a business (B2B) is about generating leads and crafting relationships. Businesses speak a different language to consumers, and have different needs and processes to go through when purchases are made. B2B digital marketing is therefore all about reaching high quality prospective leads and building a relationship with them directly from that point onwards.

If you need to do B2B digital marketing to help your company succeed, here are some of the tactics you definitely need to include in your strategy.

1. Website

Most businesses have a website these days, but there is a misconception among some people that websites are less important for B2B organisations compared to B2C companies. In fact, the opposite is usually true. While B2C companies can usually get buyers to make purchases from them on many different channels – from social media to marketplaces such as Etsy – the role of a B2B website is often more profound.

When you’re selling a product or service to another business, you will often need to win over multiple stakeholders in that business. You may need your website to ‘sell’ to procurement managers, departmental decision-makers, and sometimes C-suite executives. If another business is having internal discussions about the possibility of buying from your company, the one thing everyone will be consistently looking at is your website. It is therefore important to invest in making it a good website that reflects your brand well and gives them all the key information.

2. Search Engine Optimization

Having an excellent website is the foundation you need for all the other B2B digital marketing you do. And once you have a great website, you need to make sure as many people find it as possible. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a crucial step towards ensuring your B2B website is discoverable and ranking well in search engines. Although many companies do some ongoing SEO in-house, it can pay to work with experts such as King Kong, particularly on optimizing your company’s most important landing pages.

3. Pay Per Click

As well as enabling your website to rank better through natural rankings via SEO tactics, pay per click (PPC) is also a vital tool for many B2B digital marketers. This is especially important while you are establishing your SEO processes and gradually gaining traction through organic search. PPC is essentially about paying search engines such as Google for your adverts to appear alongside organic search results for your key words and phrases. Many companies uses PPC even when their organic rankings are doing well, because it always pays to get your business in front of new possible customers and audiences.

4. Email Marketing

Yes, everyone is inundated with email newsletters these days, whether they are a consumer or a business professional. The difference with B2B email newsletters is that business professionals are on the clock when they read your newsletters, meaning they are a little more likely to engage with them. Of course, you need to do a lot of work in terms of crafting your e-newsletter to meet their specific needs. But email marketing is so popular because it works. The key area to focus on in B2B email marketing is return on investment (ROI) and how your business can help their business grow. You don’t necessarily need to capture their attention with gimmicks and flashy graphics. But you do need to make a succinct and compelling business case.

5. Content Marketing

A tried and tested digital marketing tactic in the B2C and B2B world, content marketing is a powerful tool to bring out when selling to businesses. One crucial element to B2B content marketing is analyzing each moment in the B2B buyer’s journey. Many B2B content marketing strategies jump straight into trying to educate readers about their product or service, or showcasing the different functionalities available to them. In fact, content marketing editorials should start right from the beginning, which is what customers’ problems or pain points are.

This resonates with the B2B audience much more, because if your business is selling something truly useful to them, they will understand the pain points it is trying to solve inside-out. Also remember that content marketing isn’t just written content and blogs. It could also come in the form of white papers that have input from renowned industry professionals, webinars and videos.