The Basics of B2B Marketing Strategy

A cornerstone concept in contemporary "inbound marketing" is that today's buyers prefer self-service research over interruptive messaging. Today's B2B marketers, therefore, need to know how to publish media assets that draw the attention of qualified prospective clients and resonate with them, cultivating a sense of trust and authority.

While publishing great content is a prerequisite for effective marketing in the B2B sphere, that content will serve no purpose whatsoever unless marketers are able to draw the right eyeballs to it. The mix of paid and unpaid content promotion channels is always in flux, but the main buckets include social media, email and search engine optimization.

Rarely do B2B buyers make purchases the very first time they come in contact with a vendor's marketing presences, and aggressively pitching the sale too early can turn audience members off. That's why it's so important for marketers to offer something of value in exchange for prospects' contact information, allowing them to build relationships over time.

So far, we've covered attracting an audience, capturing leads and nurturing them to the point of sales-readiness. Once B2B marketers have all of these elements in place, we can track the effectiveness of each of our assets and brand touchpoints in terms of its ability to inspire the right people to take action and advance along the funnel.

Just a few years ago, social media was used in B2B marketing primarily for broadcasting links to content. As social media matures and people spend more time interacting here in a professional capacity, so to have the marketing use cases evolved. Today, social media is used for nurturing relationships, retaining customers and even prospecting for buyers.