In a previous blog, we discussed the importance of marketing in B2B commerce industries. In today’s fast-paced, increasingly digital and mobile environment, it’s no longer enough to rely on word of mouth or traditional marketing strategies. Diversification, with strict KPIs in place to track your efforts, is the best way to ensure that your marketing reaches hot leads wherever they’re searching for your services.

If you ignore the need for marketing, fail to update your marketing strategy with digital tactics, or fail to track the performance of your marketing efforts toward the goal of increasing revenue, you could quickly find yourself with cash flow problems that threaten to close your doors.

Here at The Commercial Finance Group in Burbank, we’re in the business of keeping the doors of small to medium sized companies open, and their revenues thriving. We realize that it sometimes takes money to make money, and if you’re finding yourself in a situation where you just don’t have the working capital that’s needed to fund a full marketing program, our asset-based lending services and other custom financial solutions may be able to help.

Keep reading to learn more about how to put together a brilliant B2B commerce marketing strategy that will deliver a return on investment that you can really sink your teeth into. And if you’re already feeling the pinch of cash flow problems, contact The Commercial Finance Group to learn more about how asset-based lending can provide relief.

7 Steps To Marketing Your B2B Commerce Company Brilliantly

Just because you’re a small or mid-sized B2B commerce company doesn’t mean you have to settle for second-rate marketing strategy. Use the steps below to guide your choices when investing money in marketing services (or performing them yourself!).

  1. Strategize – You wouldn’t write up an annual report without an outline and a table of contents, and you shouldn’t leap into marketing without a solid strategy. Be sure to define your target audience as specifically as possible, develop a detailed SWOT analysis of any marketing that you’re doing currently, develop a sales funnel that will guide your marketing choices, and use marketing frameworks like RACE, the 5Ss or 5Ps to focus your thinking. Lastly, you should also be aware of new marketing tactics that B2B commerce companies are embracing at a rapid rate. These include social media, email marketing, blogging, videos, infographics, and mobile apps.
  2. Design – We’re not just talking about flyers and billboards. In today’s digital age, design typically refers to your website, an increasingly popular way for B2B customers to select their vendors of choice. If you don’t have an easy-to-find, easy-to-navigate website, you’re going to lose customers to your competitors who do. Design the UX around your customer’s personalities, habits, and goals, and optimize their journey through the sales funnel.
  3. Optimize – B2B commerce experiences lower search volumes than B2C, to be sure, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore organic marketing and search engine optimization altogether. Consider this: 30% of B2B marketers (i.e. your competitors) spend ZERO time on SEO each week, while a whopping 55% can’t even be bothered with PPC marketing. Choosing to do both puts you among the small percentage of B2B firms who are doing everything they can to be where their customers are looking, and that means you’re far more likely to get the account.
  4. Diversify – In addition focusing on both organic and paid search, you should further diversify into content and inbound marketing. According to industry statistics, 49% of B2B companies are increasing content marketing spending in the next year. Are you keeping up or falling behind? Your content should inform and educate your audience, making it obvious why you are the clear experts to whom they should turn for the products and services you provide.
  5. Socialize – Just having a website and appearing high in the search ranking is no longer enough. Like the rest of us, the target audiences of B2B commerce turn to social media for information, recommendations, and company information, at a rapidly-increasing rate. This means that to be found, your company also needs to be social. According to Smart Insights, 57 percent of inbound marketers have obtained B2B leads from LinkedIn, 52 percent from Facebook, and 44 percent from Twitter. Have you?
  6. Manage – The last piece of the B2B marketing puzzle is lead generation and customer relationship management (CRM). It’s said that less than 30 percent of B2B leads are actually ready to buy at the time of their generation, so it’s important to have strategies in place for keeping them in the sales funnel. Conversely, once they’ve completed the sale, and had a positive experience, it’s imperative that you capture their feedback as many B2B customers refuse to purchase from a firm with low or no positive reviews.
  7. Analyze & Improve! – Once you have all of these various marketing strategies in place, it’s time to sit back and watch how they work. This isn’t a passive practice, however, as you should be actively capturing data through analytics tools and using it to asses the effectiveness of your overarching strategy. If you notice things moving the wrong way in your KPI dashboard, it’s likely time to make some tweaks.

Marketing Working Too Well? The Commercial Finance Group Can Help You Grow!

With a brilliant marketing strategy in place for your B2B commerce company, don’t be surprised if you soon find yourself drowning in sales! If your business experiences an uptick in revenue and you need to expand, asset-based lending from the Commercial Finance Group in Burbank can create the working capital you need. Contact us to learn more or apply for asset-based lending today!