It’s a new year, and a new opportunity for you to refresh your site and take advantage of digital marketing strategies and AI advancements that can give you a boost when it comes to B2B lead generation. At 360Leads, we want you to grow and be successful as you pursue your B2B digital marketing goals, and that’s why we have compiled this list of 30 digital marketing tips to help secure your success.
Site Health
1. Make sure your website is fast
If your website performs poorly, not only will people become frustrated whole browsing your site, but Google may rank it poorly if it negatively assesses your site’s vitals. Perform regular QA for your website and social media pages, ensuring that all links are functioning as intended. It is also wise to perform a site audit through a tool like SEMrush, so you can identify what sort of problems your site may be experiencing that are not immediately apparent just from a frontend assessment. You could be dealing with JavaScript issues, duplicate meta titles, duplicate meta tags, caching issues, and so on. A common issue to check for is related to unoptimized file sizes, this is more common for large, uncompressed images which can drastically impact loading times. To ensure the B2B content marketing material on your website performs well, you must first ensure your website performs well.
2. Keep your Google Business Profile up to date
If you don’t already have a profile, now is a good time to get started with this free tool from Google that can be incredibly helpful for controlling how your business appears on Google search and maps. You should be constantly on top of the information presented in your profile, with accurate hours of operation, phone numbers, website URLs, and location. This can be the first thing people see when they are exposed to your business, so make sure it is the best it can be in regards to presentation. Operating a profile also allows business owners the ability to interact directly with a Q&A section, and customer reviews to educate clients and address concerns. Treat this as an extension of your public relations efforts, as it can do wonders for your brand’s reputation.
3. Ensure your site is secure
This is a simple one but is something that you always need to be mindful of. Your site should be properly secured and encrypted, for the safety of you and your customers, as well as to improve how search engines assess your site health. Google will not recommend your site over others if your domain is risky for users to click. All your digital marketing efforts can go to waste if people click through to your website only to be greeted with a warning that their information may be at risk, causing them to bounce from the site.
4. Aim to have your content land in Google’s “featured snippets” with SEO
On Google search result pages, there exists a section for “featured snippets”, which exist above the first organic search result for whatever query has been entered. This is a highly coveted space, as these take up large amounts of screen real estate and enjoy a priority position on Google’s results page. While Google does not reveal exactly how snippets are chosen, some best practices to push your content marketing material into these spaces involves structuring your blogs in question-and-answer format, and properly tagging webpages in the backend so search engines know your blog is formatted like a list. Be sure to incorporate these efforts into your content marketing plan.
5. Make sure your website looks great on mobile devices
It’s an overshared fact at this point, but most people are viewing digital content on their mobile devices. Plan your digital marketing strategy accordingly and take the time to ensure that your content looks great for smartphone, tablet, and desktop users alike. Nothing looks worse to consumers than improperly laid out mobile sites, with poorly scaled images and text which prevent them from interacting with your content in a meaningful way. Do not miss out on B2B lead generation opportunities by neglecting your website’s mobile appearance.
Try New Things
6. Don’t be afraid of AI
New developments in the field of AI could have huge effects on digital marketing strategies, with exciting progression related to chatbots, machine-generated wording and so on. New technology can be intimidating, and it can be difficult to ascertain how emerging fields will affect your business going forward. That said, the only way to know how new technologies will affect your digital marketing strategy, is to implement them and observe their impact.
7. Deploy a chatbot on your website
Conversational marketing is on the rise, with customers wanting instant access to support and personalized answers, this can be accomplished with real support staff AND AI solutions, such as chatbots. If you have not yet worked with chatbots, they can be a great way to increase engagement with prospective customers. Chatbots boost B2B lead generation, and are an essential aspect of any modern digital marketing strategy.
If you already have a chatbot on your site, ensure it is kept up to date to address evolving customer concerns. There’s nothing worse than a chatbot that can’t actually help customers, and leaves them stranded at the end of a tree of responses with no option to speak to a real person. Keep track of how people are using your chatbot, and be wary of trending questions that remain unanswered.
8. Try new social media platforms
While sites like LinkedIn reign supreme for B2B lead generation, with 93% of B2B content marketers choosing the platform, that doesn’t mean you should ignore other social media marketing channels which could perform particularly well for your business. Depending on your target demographic, social media platforms like Pinterest, Reddit, or YouTube could boost your digital marketing efforts by delivering content to those most interested in your offerings.
9. Have a presence at relevant events
Be seen. And don’t limit your scope to just digital presence. Build brand awareness through cultivating presence at local (or otherwise) events. If you cannot physically attend or run events, then sponsoring events is also a worthwhile pursuit. You can generate leads just by getting your name out to people in different contexts. A key decision maker may attend an event, be exposed to your brand there, and a few months down the line they will remember your company when it comes time for their company to make a decision about purchasing a product or service.
10. Provide self-service options like pre-recorded training videos or knowledge bases
As an extension of your content marketing strategy, let your customers help themselves by providing them with training videos or extensive knowledge bases. Not only does this improve your reputation, but it can also save time as people solve their own problems instead of utilizing live support staff interaction.
11. Automate simple tasks
Lots of time can be saved if simple tasks are automated through software offerings. For example, if someone fills out a form on your website, it should not be manually read and entered into a mailing list, with a confirmation email manually sent out. This entire process could be easily automated and will save you time and effort.
12. Emphasize your versatility
Don’t narrow your potential down to niche applications. Emphasize the many ways in which you can make the lives of your clients easier and educate them on how your products and services may do more than they may initially think. If you can do more for your clients than they expect, communicate that! Make sure your target demographics understand everything that you can do for them and what value you can bring to their lives.
13. Advertise through your employees
Your current employees can be an excellent addition to your digital marketing strategy and can function as a more organic method of improving B2B lead generation. For example, if you are working to fill a vacant position, have your employees share that position on their own LinkedIn pages, with written copy that is a little less professional, asking around for interested parties to reach out to them or click on the job posting link. An increasing number of companies are also incorporating their employees into their social media content marketing strategy, with videos and other media posted to social media sites depicting company culture in an attempt to increase their brand reputation.
14. Work with smaller industry influencers and experts
Influencer marketing is nothing new, and there no shortage of individuals with massive followings on various social media sites. A section of influencer marketing that may deserve more attention are “micro influencers”, those with comparatively smaller followings, but involved in more niche communities with followers that are more devoted than those with larger numbers.
Larger influencers are usually in a constant revolving door of sponsors, which can in some cases overload their audiences and render them less likely to engage with sponsored content marketing.
There has also been an increase in “employee influencers”, employees of companies which utilize social media to market the culture of a company through various forms of content. This can do a lot for brand reputation and awareness, by painting a vivid picture of how a company operates and what sort of culture they have cultivated.
15. Utilize analytics software to set and measure goals
Eliminate guesswork from performance assessments. Compare how you are doing now to how you were doing in the past, by leveraging analytics software or external companies to understand how well your marketing efforts are contributing to B2B lead generation. With the right tools or partner, you can quickly assess how well things are working in relation to your digital marketing campaigns and strategies and make changes as necessary.
16. Conduct customer profiling and research, identify your ideal sales prospects and consider new verticals
It is incredibly important to understand who you are pursuing with your digital marketing strategy. Understand your target demographic as best you can, by thinking about what common pain points and stressors they are currently dealing with in your industry. If they feel like they can never get answers to technical questions, bolster your knowledge base and support solutions, for example.
Content marketing & PR
17. Invest in public relations strategy
Leverage news and customer stories, increase brand awareness and consideration of your products and solutions with various target audiences through public relations efforts. Boost your brand reputation through earned media, that is, content marketing which gets shared without paid promotion. This is an incredibly valuable aspect of digital marketing, and can take the form of case studies, news articles, contributed authored content, interviews, panel or guest speaker sessions, awards, and so on. Position yourself as an industry leader through your contributions, and drive interest in your offerings and your company’s ultimate goal by building credibility and trust.
Over time, your credibility with media publications means that they may approach you for content, instead of the other way around. This means that when they need an article or content piece, they will approach you based on your relationship and perceived status as a thought leader within your industry.
18. Secure earned media placements for interviews and featured articles
Nothing looks better than earned media placements, that is, content marketing pieces that get published or shared without you having to promote them through paid placements. This means that other people or organizations have recognised the genuine value that you have injected into your content and are doing the legwork of spreading it for you.
19. Try podcast marketing
Consider having your own branded podcast, based on your own industry expertise on what your audience wants to hear. This can be a big undertaking, as you need to be consistent, with well-maintained digital marketing channels and a content calendar. If time does not permit, or the amount of equipment and technology required is unrealistic, you could also approach various industry publications that run podcasts and pitch a topic to them to appear as a guest. Some podcasts are earned, and some are paid.
Your presence should be expertise-driven, so make sure you’re addressing pain points or topical industry news and do your best to genuinely share your knowledge and help your target audience. This comes across as less obvious than a hard sell, as you are portraying yourself as a helpful source of expertise. Ultimately, treat your podcast, or your podcast appearances, like any other piece of content marketing.
20. Take advantage of video marketing
Video marketing, and digital video viewership in general, is enormous. Do not be left behind as your competitors begin to take advantage of this huge market and think about how you can craft video content to be shared through different marketing channels. Tutorial and how-to videos are very popular, and sharing high-quality content in this vein can position you as a thought leader, increasing brand awareness and recognition through a boost in positive public perception. Most content marketers say video is underutilized and underfunded, so if you are ready to capitalize on this market segment you could beat out other hesitant businesses and competitors.
21. Create content that answers your customer’s questions
Quality B2B content marketing is born from a genuine desire to help your customer base. People are smart and will see right through self-serving content which offers only promotion and no real value. Be genuinely helpful and create and share material which could help your customers solve real issues and pain points they are dealing with.
Once content marketing material has been drawn up, drafted, and approved, don’t just blindly post the same content to all your marketing channels. Pay attention to your target demographics, and the demographics of each marketing channel you make use of. Long form written content will not fly on Twitter, and short videos are wasted on sites like Medium. The same content marketing material can be used for multiple sites, but the form and delivery must be customized.
In a similar vein, work to make content marketing efforts personalized. Email campaigns, retargeting efforts, and similar forms of content that reaches out to individuals should be as personalized as possible. Taking into account the browsing patterns, or where users signed up for email lists can inform what you should be sending them.
Digital marketing Strategies
22. Keep potential clients engaged with website retargeting
Website retargeting can be a powerful tool for digital ad campaigns, as you can effectively market yourself to previous site visitors if your digital marketing strategy did not capture them the first time around. If a prospect has clicked through an ad on to your website, their unique ID can be tracked and retargeted with digital ads at a future time.
23. Run an e-newsletter
Keep people in the know. Remind them you exist. An e-newsletter does both and building a master list of emails is also incredibly valuable in the long run. Keep things simple, let your newsletter serve as a recap of specific content marketing material that you have recently put out, and take advantage of the fact that you control the format of the newsletter to post the most relevant content at the time of its distribution.
24. Conduct drip email campaigns
Drip email campaigns can be a great tool for any digital marketing campaign, and function well in a sales funnel as they bring people into the B2B lead generation process. It’s as simple as sending out a few emails, and gauging interest based on if links are clicked in those emails, and following up with relevant emails and phone calls to move them down the funnel.
25. Dazzle audiences with campaign or promo related landing pages
Revamp your website with temporary, campaign or promotion related landing pages that seek to emphasize a particular aspect of your company’s offerings. This could be in relation to a new product, an update for existing products/solutions, a job posting, an upcoming event, and so on. You can customize this in a hundred different ways, and revert to your regular site homepage after the campaign or promotion has run its course, so experiment!
26. Take advantage of geofencing
Geofencing for digital marketing campaigns can be an incredibly powerful and cost-effective tool for securing qualified leads. If you’ve done an appropriate amount of target demographic research, you can narrow down the physical location of where your most qualified leads are likely to reside or work and run digital ad campaigns which specifically target that area.
When someone views that ad and clicks on it, a unique ID is generated and assigned to that viewer, and this allows digital ads to be targeted towards that ID for the next 30 days, even when they have left the target area.
27. Update old content
Don’t lose track of older content marketing efforts. Make sure you constantly assess the performance of all your online material, and bringing old pages back into relevance can be as simple as a new title, featured image, and slight adjustments to body copy. This can be a relatively small time investment on your behalf, and should be carried out routinely to get the most value out of content you’ve already produced and shared. Relevant, old content can be bolstered with backlinks in newer material, or shared via socials (when relevant) on a yearly basis. More general content, like, how to take advantage of back-to-school season, for example may need incredibly minor or no changes to be relevant again.
28. Make use of appointment and scheduling tools/software, or external lead generation appointment setting services
Depending on the nature of your business, appointment setting and scheduling tools could make your workflow more efficient, saving valuable time by automating the scheduling of meetings by cutting back-and-forth email chains. Set your hours, and let clients pick a time that works for both of you, streamlining the B2B lead generation process.
If you’re struggling to set appointments, and need help figuring out why or just boosting numbers, it may be time to reach out to an external company which specializes in lead generation for appointment setting.
29. Omnichannel marketing is key, unify your brand experience
While adjusting content marketing pieces to fit different marketing channels is essential when it comes to bolstering your brand awareness and reputation, your messaging and brand experience should still be consistent across all marketing efforts. Consistency sticks in the minds of viewers, so marketing material they see on LinkedIn should align with material they view on Twitter, or YouTube, and so on. Different forms does not mean different messaging, so keep your brand voice and messaging consistent so that repeated exposure to your marketing material serves to further reinforce your value, instead of confuse customers.
30. Make sure you are easily reachable/available to help via contact forms on your site
Contact forms should not feel like the end of a customer’s troubleshooting journey, as in, they can’t find what they’re looking for in your FAQ, knowledge base, or support articles, but they dread a contact form that may take weeks to be replied to. Don’t be THAT company that makes B2B lead generation harder for themselves, and invest in systems which can address customer concerns and queries quickly and effectively, making customers feel heard and valued.
We hope these various tips can help you bolster your digital marketing campaigns for 2023 and beyond. Applying these suggestions can be time-consuming or require skillsets that your company may currently not possess, and if that’s the case we recommend you reach out to us at 360Leads to learn how we can help you with B2B lead generation through a bespoke marketing strategy.
