B2B INBOUND MARKETING
You don’t ask for the customer’s attention, you have to earn the attention.
You don’t ask for the customer’s attention, you have to earn the attention.
Get started with a sustainable marketing strategy for your company, choose Inbound Marketing ! With the help of an Inbound Marketing strategy you are assured of a solid flow of qualitative visitors and leads. Do you want that too?! Digital Ananth helps B2B companies to strategically devise and set up the inbound methodology.
What is Inbound Marketing?
The era of buying consumer attention through paid media is over. It has given way to a marketing philosophy that revolves around creating and sharing valuable content . This philosophy is called Inbound Marketing . You attract potential customers by producing accurate and valuable content that helps your target audience at all stages of their customer journey.
Companies that use marketing have the objective to grow. Whether this is by attracting new customers or because more returns must be obtained from existing customers. But do you still stand out with your product or service in a hugely saturated marketing landscape where advertising budgets are high, reach is difficult to measure and the revenue from marketing is often low? Especially in the current time where the consumer or business customer is increasingly in control of what he or she does or does not want to see. Think of ad blockers, the anonymization of IP addresses, fewer newspaper circulations or people who only watch online TV where advertisements are no longer seen.
At the same time, the trend has started for customers to do their own research when they have a problem or question. With all the online data available, the customer can easily find his own way. For example, a potential customer often only contacts a sales department very late, so that you must be present early in the buying process with relevant content to convince them of your product or service. Because sales often don’t even get this chance anymore.
The marketing philosophy by which B2B business succeeds.
The Inbound Philosophy revolves around creating valuable experiences of your (potential) customers with your organization so that you have a positive impact. Both with new and current customers. It’s about adding value at every moment of your interaction, these moments are broken down below:
1. It starts with your customer
Everything revolves around your (potential) customer. This is the core of all your activities. Your business will only grow when your customers are successful. Therefore make sure that all parts of your organization are well coordinated, for an optimal customer experience! You do this by setting up a good CRM (Customer Relation Management system).
2. Inbound Activities
The foundation of the inbound method is based on the 3 activities; attract, engage and delight.
Attraction
The basis of a good Inbound Marketing strategy consists of placing and attracting visitors through content in the form of blogs, videos, white papers, e-books, etc. By optimizing this content for search engines (SEO) you will be found faster and better online. In combination with targeted advertising and posting on various social media channels, you attract exactly the right leads.
Engagement
By keeping your leads warm in a targeted and sympathetic way with relevant information (what they need at that moment), your potential customer will become a paying customer much faster . In this way, you take your lead by the hand, as it were, to ensure that the buying process runs smoothly.
Delight
The marketing and sales process does not end when purchasing a product or closing a deal. The higher the satisfaction, the more repeat purchases, so the more likely your customer will become a fan of your company. After that, it is important to maintain this positive feeling and to continue to enthuse your customer for your company. Because every marketer knows: it is cheaper to keep an existing customer than to bring in new customers.
B2B SEO is like a marathon and long term process.
The promotion of Inbound Marketing is strongly focused on a good presence online. It is essential that your website and your content are found organically. SEO is therefore always an important part of Inbound Marketing.
B2B SEO: a continuous process
SEO is also a continuous process: if you don’t give it any more attention, your results on Google will also slowly deteriorate. So you should always keep working on the content of your website, even if it is just optimizing existing content.
SEO is complex with many variables. So it really is a long-term strategy. You can compare it with, for example, your fitness: when you start with your fitness you are not immediately in top shape. You build it step by step, just like your SEO. However, if traffic doesn’t grow as quickly as you’d like to start with, big results can be achieved in the background.
Organic search (SEO)
The term SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Everything you do at SEO is aimed at being found better in search engines such as Google and Bing. These search engines give your website a certain value, also called ranking. You try to increase that ranking with all the techniques within the SEO field. The ultimate goal is to be No. 1 in the search results of search engines like Google.
The better your website is organized according to SEO principles and the more attention to this discipline, the more organic search traffic your website will attract. SEO remains a long-term strategy, you will not immediately see significant differences. It is also a continuous process. Google is constantly changing its algorithms, so you always have to be on top of SEO developments.
The big advantage of SEO within Inbound Marketing is that you will always benefit from the investment in this field as your ranking will only increase. In the long run, you will recoup the time and energy for SEO work in the form of more organic traffic.
SEO can be divided into 3 disciplines:
Technic
Content
External factors
Technic
There are so many ways to be found better. It often starts with technology; does your website work fast enough, is it easily accessible on mobile, is the site structure clear, do you have an SSL certificate, etc. But also findability of photos and pages such as the use of clear ALT tags, Meta tags and Title tags are important to be found by search engines.
Content
In addition, the content of your website is important; what do you write about, is there search volume on it, answer your questions, do you have duplicate content, is your content fresh, are you unique in what you write, is your content engaging your target audience, is your content optimized as per search queries, etc.
Inbound Marketing is all about shaping the message in such a way that your content is also found for specific long-tail keywords. Therefore, it is wise to start with good keyword researches so that you know which keywords you should focus on.
External factors
In addition to the technology and content that you largely control yourself, off-page optimization is also very important. The more valuable content your organization posts and shares, the more often your website link will be included in other external websites. If these are sites with a good quality and they have a high authority, your ranking will obviously grow with it. This is also known as link building.
By frequently publishing your own content such as blogs and offers on social channels and external blogs or forums, you also build up extra value.
These are just a few examples of possible SEO optimizations. Before you start with SEO, it is smart to have a good idea of what you want to focus on. By pre-defining these KPIs (such as site speed, ranking and volume/share of organic search traffic) your SEO efforts will become much more concrete.
Practical B2B SEO factors and results.
B2B SEO: HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO SEE RESULTS?
One of the most important ways to make your website more discoverable is search engine optimization ( SEO ). When your website is found better, more organic traffic will come to the website. After all, all the people who come to your website through a search are potential customers. Most entrepreneurs are now beginning to understand that B2B SEO is extremely important. But how long does it take before you start seeing results? Digital Ananth explains!
What are B2B SEO results?
Before you can evaluate when you see results, it’s important to determine what those results are. This is different for every website. There is no ‘one size fits all’. The reason that search engine optimization is used is to ensure that the business can grow. Getting the website to rise in Google’s rankings is a means to achieve the business goals. By achieving higher and higher rankings for important search terms, the traffic to your website will increase. Some of the new visitors will become customers. An increase in organic traffic can therefore be a good result, for example. But an increase in the conversion percentage from organic search traffic is also a good result.
Measuring SEO Results with SEO Tools
Various SEO tools are available to measure rankings on search terms. Two very important free tools are Google Analytics and Google search Console. This allows you to measure how much traffic is coming to your website and even how many goals are achieved. After all, measuring is knowing! B2B marketing consultant such as Digital Ananth also often use paid tools, such as Moz, SEMrush and many others tools.
This way you can see exactly how many views a knowledge base article or page has gained in recent times. You can also see exactly whether there is more or less traffic to your website. And also important: you can see how many achieved goals (such as a request for quotation) come from organic traffic. This way you can set realistic goals for the B2B SEO.
People like to see the organic traffic to their website increase in a nice upward trend, preferably in the shortest possible time. In reality, the organic traffic will look a bit more erratic, like this:
Important factors for SEO success
There are several factors that depend on how quickly your website will rise in Google’s rankings. Firstly, it is important that you keep a close eye on whether your website is properly indexed by Google. Otherwise, the different pages will never appear and rise in the organic search results. Search engines ‘crawl’ through your website (in English this is called ‘crawling’), through which the content is viewed. It is then indexed in the server. This way, for example, Google can show your website in the organic search results.
How long has the website been around?
It’s actually quite simple: Google prefers older sites. Google gives more confidence to a site that has been around longer and will therefore make an older site rise faster. So, among other things, it is very important when you build a new website that you do not lose your previous results!
Have you been involved with B2B SEO before?
If you’ve never done anything about SEO, it will take longer for you to rise in Google’s rankings. If you have already been working on SEO, you often only have to make small adjustments to see results faster.
In which industry are you active? Is there much or little competition in this industry?
There is more competition in some B2B sectors than in others. If you sell tools or, for example, forklift trucks, the competition will be greater than if you sell a robot for a CNC machining center, for example.
How many good links from other sites does your website have?
If you have many qualitative links to your website, Google attaches great importance to this. This is also known as backlinking. For them, this is proof that your website has a lot of authority and is therefore relevant for visitors.
Do you want to know more about how to apply SEO within your Inbound Marketing strategy for your B2B business or do you need help to implement SEO with your digital marketing strategy? Contact Digital Ananth
Future proof your B2B business with social media.
Why is B2B social media important?
There are countless reasons why using social media for B2B is important. Below are the most important ones.
Create business exposure
This is probably the most obvious reason. But no less important for that. Social networks can be used to reach potential customers. In addition, the traffic to your website will increase.
Increase customer satisfaction
This is arguably the single most important reason for any B2B marketer to use social media. The Return on Investment is in the relationship you build with your customer. It has been repeatedly shown that customer satisfaction can increase enormously by having an active presence on social media.
It enables salespeople to actively involve the target group in their company and to enter into long-term relationships with the customer. An excellent means for this are, for example, blog posts. With this form of content marketing you can really involve the target group in your company.
Impact on SEO
Good social media channels contribute to good SEO . By integrating Youtube, LinkedIn and your website, your website gets more authority. This way your website will get a better ranking in Google. Link building, for example, is of great importance here.
Gain market insight
By involving the customer through social media, you gain a better understanding of what is going on in your market. Knowing what the customer really wants and needs is crucial for any company.
Social selling
It is important for social selling . This involves entering into a conversation with the potential buyer, with the aim of enticing them to make a purchase. The idea behind social selling can be traced back to inbound marketing . The purpose of actively entering into a dialogue is to get potential buyers to come to you.
By now it is clear that B2B social media can also be very useful for your company. But how do you achieve the best success? Compared to B2C, this differs in the approach. Below I have mentioned 5 tips to get success in social media.
High-quality content is crucial. You really need to have something to offer that makes people want to read and share your articles. Like Moz, become the authority in your industry. Or involve your target group such as DAF and Volvo. Boring or bad content means no engaged customers. And so no success.
Good comments are crucial in social media for customer satisfaction. However, it is not only necessary to respond quickly, but also in terms of content. By responding substantively, quickly and pleasantly, you indicate to people that you have expertise in-house.
Influencer marketing is a form of online marketing where products are promoted through an influential person. It is a misconception that influencer marketing is especially effective in B2C. It is also a valuable tool for B2B marketing. Do you want to use influencer marketing as a B2B person? That’s how you approach it .
For a good social media strategy, it is good to think about what you really want to achieve. Are you focusing on the internal organization or recruiting employees? Do you focus on sales or do you want to build deep customer relationships? Each goal requires a different approach. It is therefore good to determine this in advance, so that the strategy is appropriate.
Many companies in B2B do not know exactly what they are doing. Marketing and the associated use of social media are still too often seen as something that the secretary can do on the side. With all the negative consequences that entails. To have real success in social media, it is important that someone with knowledge is involved in this.
Many companies in B2B do not know exactly what they are doing. Marketing and the associated use of social media are still too often seen as something that the secretary can do on the side. With all the negative consequences that entails. To have real success in social media, it is important that someone with knowledge is involved in this.
Do you also want to use social media successfully? At Digital Ananth I apply B2B social media for both our B2B e-commerce and B2B lead generation customers. If you divide this well over all channels, this is an advantage for the visitor and therefore also for the customer.
If you would like to know more about all the possibilities of B2B social media, please contact me. Digital Ananth is a specialist in B2B social media and advertising on it.
Right to the heart of the (marketing) organization.
An important step when starting Inbound Marketing is drawing up a strategic marketing plan. The main purpose of the marketing plan is to direct the long-term marketing activities. It helps you as an entire organization to focus on marketing developments and to work towards a common goal.
By clearly defining the market, you can spread your message in a much more targeted way. This is especially important for B2B companies. Not all companies are suitable for doing business with. In addition to the fact that defining a clear market focus is more efficient for Inbound Marketing, (Inbound) Sales also benefits a lot from this.
In the marketing world, a lot of general content is often created under the one-size-fits-all principle. If you do not specifically target 1 well-defined target group with a specific challenge or problem, you cannot target this target group. Therefore, always work from a clearly defined buyer persona : the face of your target group, your ideal customer.
You are not there yet with only the use of tools that are aimed at the different personas. Every customer goes through a process before making a purchase or making a deal. This process is called the customer journey, but also customer journey or buyer’s journey.
Lead nurturing is all about turning a lead into a customer. This is only possible if you follow your lead from the first moment (good monitoring) to know where a lead is located. Lead nurturing is the process of tracking and editing your leads to guide them from one stage to the next in the customer journey and thereby get the maximum return from the lead.
Inbound Marketing is supported by content; the right message. But what is the right message? Before you start with content creation, it is very important to have a good idea of what your buyer persona finds difficult, what resistance he/she has to purchase something, what problems he encounters, etc. This way you discover which questions you have. can give the best answer.
If the foundation is in place and you know which buyer persona(s) & focus market(s) you want to reach, you have mapped out a clear strategy with concrete objectives, you have insight into the customer journey and you have a lead nurturing process for your organization have worked out; it’s time to promote your content! Make sure your message reaches the right audience in the right place.
Inbound Marketing does not stop at creating and publishing content. You should always keep a critical eye on whether your campaign is still performing well and whether you may need to make changes to get even more out of the campaign. A campaign is never really finished.
Inbound Marketing is not about simply deploying a tool and hoping that it will work. No, Inbound Marketing is all about a sophisticated marketing strategy from A to Z in which all facets are taken into account. I can help you with your B2B inbound marketing strategy & implementation.
What I offer for driving leads to loyal customers.
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