Whilst there are a lot of similarities between internet marketing for B2C (business to consumer) and B2B (business to business) there are also some differences. The borders between the two are definitely blurring and it’s important not to rule out a method just because it didn’t work a year or two ago.
Here are some of the most important strategies you can currently adopt:
You need a good profile on LinkedIn and you need connections (LinkedIn’s equivalent of friends on Facebook or followers on Twitter).
The headline of your profile is the most important part – it plays the same role as the title of a web page and shows up in Google searches for your name as well as searches within LinkedIn.
Spend some time working on this and making it a blend of a summary of your services and a call to action. Not the normal boring “name, position and phone number” offering that is used on so many profiles.
Then spend some time completing the rest of your profile.
And getting connections.
Go through any potential connections – that pile of business cards, email newsletters, Twitter followers, business contacts.
Send a personalised message to each of them asking if they’d like to connect. Take a bit of time to write these messages rather than using the built-in message and you’ll get a much higher acceptance rate.
Personally I’m not a fan of Twitter and I tend to avoid it if at all possible. But I’m coming round to the idea that I’m wrong about that.
It’s an easy way to let people know what you’re doing and if you write a new post on your blog or upload a video to YouTube or even do something else (like purchase a “gig” on Fiverr) you can Tweet about it. And potentially get visitors to your website or followers or both.
I know quite a few people who are getting regular business from Twitter. Their Tweets are usually a mixture of business and personal, which makes following them more interesting than getting perpetual boasts and adverts – model the Tweets of people who you actually read and you won’t go far wrong.
And be wary of automation – it’s rarely the panacea that it seems initially.
Although at first glance this seems to be totally B2C, it’s actually moving to being a B2B medium as well.
You should have a company page on Facebook.
And you should keep it regularly updated rather than leaving it as barren as the day it was first created.
Your updates can be the same kind of mix as your Tweets although probably with more emphasis on the corporate side of things. You can liven them up with news about your team or your clients. And pictures count for a lot with Facebook, so consider getting an infographic created and putting it on there (plus Tweeting about it and linking it from LinkedIn).
Infographics
That’s a techie word for an image that has things like statistics on it.
Newspapers and magazines have used this kind of graphic for years to show things in a nutshell.
Infographics are the internet’s equivalent.
They provide an easy way to digest information – pie charts, thumbnail images, etc are all contained in one fairly large image.
You can get them created on places like Fiverr or elsewhere but you need to take the time to gather the stats and other information that you want to show. Otherwise they’re a very easy way to demonstrate the principle of “garbage in, garbage out”.
Reports and White Papers
These are one and the same thing really, the name varies according to your industry.
So a B2C company will usually call the PDF they’ve created a report whereas a B2B company will more likely call it a white paper as that sounds more official.
The tone of either of them should be closer to a magazine like “Which?” than an advert. Mainly because they’ll be better received by your customers and clients.
If you’re able to create a printed version, so much the better. Because printed versions of things like this stay around longer – people are more relucatant to throw away a booklet than they are to delete a file on their hard drive.
Printed versions cost a little bit more but if you measure the response you may well find that they pay for themselves handsomely.
You could always offer both – ask people for their email address and then – once you’ve got that basic detail and permission to contact them by email on a regular basis – politely ask if they’d like the printed version, allowing you to collect their physical address as well as maybe a phone number, etc.
AdWords
I’ve left this to last as it’s probably the most difficult to work with.
Superficially, AdWords are easy: put up a small classified ad and pay every time someone clicks on it.
In practice, they’re like an iceberg – almost all the detail is hidden below the surface.
If you want to go into those shark infested waters, at least go through this free guide before spending any real money.