This is an article ‘How to make your B2B venture more engaging’ by Marc Primo
It is essential for every brand, old and new, to achieve strong positioning and create significant impact online for the long-term. Launching campaigns for such tasks can be a little bit daunting, especially for newer brands trying to break into the market. However, anchoring your efforts from experiential storytelling can make it easier for your business-to-business (B2B) audiences to appreciate what you offer them.
Take Apple and BMW, for instance, and how they push their brands' essence into their B2B marketing campaigns. Apple relies on creating emotional connections with its customers through experiential marketing. On the other hand, BMW takes pride in its unique definition of power based on a more emotive interpretation of its slogan, ‘the ultimate driving machine’ – a bit pedestrian but anyone who reads it cannot deny the truth behind it.
Reaching the right touchpoints to tell your stories can make your brand more engaging and improve customer loyalty, leading to higher conversion rates. Here are four tips that can help you create a positive shift as you rethink your B2B campaigns.
Making your brand more experiential for B2B efforts
There are numerous factors that every business leader needs to target to strike a chord with their B2B counterparts. However, efforts should start from within the organization and branch out to gain genuine support from customers by using four key campaigns.
Tap trained employees to assume the role of brand ambassadors. This practice can easily promote your brand essence among your B2B prospects and show your company culture, mission, vision, and values. Likewise, encouraging your B2B clients to explore more about your products and services and various channels they can visit via your digital marketing campaigns creates more engaging experiences and higher interaction.
Another critical factor is how you communicate with your B2B clients before, during, and after the sale, covering all phases of your marketing funnel. Linking your customer relationship management software to your marketing platforms will give you more real-time feedback and allow you to address concerns more quickly and directly. The first thing you should always aim for is customer satisfaction through customer experiences, as this leads to improved loyalty and can earn you more referrals and new customers.
Lastly, empowering your B2B stakeholders on your social media and mobile platform channels as part of your inbound marketing stage continues the dialogue and makes your campaigns cyclic. Remember, the work does not stop after making a sale. You'll always have to offer new alternatives for all of your customers, even after purchase so you can improve your digital marketing efforts and enjoy their brand loyalty and lifetime value for the long term.
Adjust your brand's positioning for better experiences
Disruptions like the COVID-19 pandemic forced many businesses to shift their brand positioning to cater to the new normal industry. It's always a good idea to reevaluate how your target audiences perceive your brand, especially when massive market shifts are looming and new channels emerge for your competitors. Addressing these changes and letting your customers and B2B partners know you are aligned with the changes maintains your valuable connections. In fact, regularly checking if your brand positioning remains relevant, disruptions or otherwise, is essential to keep your success in the market.
However, for the EY Future Consumer Index, it would be best to focus your brand positioning efforts on five key factors that are important to today's consumers, namely: affordability, health, environment, society, and of course, experience. Understanding what matters to your customers also means understanding what your competition is doing about their brand perception.
You can succeed in shifting your brand positioning when you allow your customers to clearly understand your brand essence and provide them with meaningful experiences in your various interaction channels, including social media. After all, this would really set you apart from other brands. Spend time researching the characteristics that may determine how the current market has changed customer behavior and keep your positioning aligned with the insights you discover.
Looking ahead to the future
Although it may take a lot of effort and money, brand positioning is always a worthy investment for your business. By setting your sights on how to position your brand today and into the future, you'll be able to dig up something valuable from consumer insights that can expand your marketing touchpoints. Good market foresight will lead you to develop a more genuine B2B experience for the long term.
If brand positioning before the pandemic only meant that you had to look into your competitors, what customers expect after the disruption are better experiential campaigns. In fact, this trend has already been rising even before COVID-19, with how Generation Z has adopted more technology-focused lifestyles. Personalizing the content and offers you present to your B2B clients gives more than just simple digital transactions. Today's companies want intuitive and customized experiences throughout the entire consumer journey, now that they have access to their personal data.
To guarantee that your B2B experiences live up to escalating expectations, make your brand scores a crucial key performance indicator (KPI) for all channels that allow you to engage and interact. Real-time analytics helps establish the necessary technological and data-based support to improve customer experiences and journeys. Align your business's individual and group objectives throughout the customer experience to spare consumers any gaps between your functional silos in marketing, sales, and customer support.
Be creative
A combined appreciation for technological science and creativity fuel the most elite marketers of today. Achieving the perfect balance between automated processes in positioning your brand and human experiences relies on helpful insights from analytics and the best AI platforms you can install for your business.
Sticking to traditional brand positioning tactics that only focus on elevating your brand above the competition is not enough. Adjustments in performing your digital marketing efforts are necessary for the new normal. Brand positioning is telling and retelling your story according to current trends and customer behaviors to drive more meaningful connections.
Shifting to more creative and data-driven strategies for your B2B campaigns entails drawing that fine line between your brand perception and performance marketing. Focusing on bespoke experiences will constantly show all of your stakeholders that customer perspective is your highest priority moving forward.