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To start with, not all Google updates are major! That means, you don’t need to run for your SEO expert immediately and change your SEO (though, if you have full-time SEO working with you, updating first can be an advantage But, when impactful updates like Panda, Penguin or BERT are rolled out, you should start strategizing and executing then and there.

Every business, every content marketer has established that they need blogs to not just increase website traffic, but also to generate quality leads. The difficulty arises when it is time to decide exactly what should the blog post be about.

Spam, which is generally related to the emails, has now rooted itself in social media. The unwanted and irrelevant load of content that we see scrolling is increasing day by day. As an enthusiastic social media user, I find that the easiest and way to deal with this is to unfollow the page or the source of the content.

It’s the era of “Smart Work” ! However, this smartness doesn’t pertain merely to being metamorphic about your business ideas. It also means ingraining that smartness in every B2B aspect. One of those several aspects is “personalization” !

Not focusing on target audience

Many marketers think that they are only limiting themselves to a particular niche by targeting a particular audience segment. Wanting to target a large audience base is not correct, but it can lead you to chase the wrong leads who do not have any pressing need of your offering.

Ignoring your website

While growing their presence on social media, many B2B marketing websites tend to ignore their own websites. However, as most customers turn to online search for the solution they need, vendor website acts as one of the topmost sources of information. Along with great content, you need to focus on making your website user-friendly in order to encourage conversions.

Not engaging in personalized communication

For years, inbound marketing and outbound marketing have been pitted against each other for their distinct approach and effectiveness. Often, B2B marketing companies are divided into choosing one strategy for their marketing ventures.

To make the right choice, you need to completely understand the exact differences and advantages offered by both these strategies.

Simply put, inbound marketing takes the subtle approach where you attract users' attention with the help of relevant and helpful content in the form of blogs, social media posts, podcasts, newsletters and many more. Outbound marketing follows the more direct method of targeting prospects with tele calling and trade shows.

Both these approaches come with their own set of pros and cons. Outbound marketing is seen as more intrusive and costly, while inbound marketing does not interfere in the prospect's schedule and offers a more long-term ROI. On the other hand, outbound marketing is the quicker way to put your solution in front of a large audience base.

With inbound marketing, you can face a lot of competition as opposed to outbound marketing, as your prospects are actively searching for a solution and will be looking into other brands as well.

A business's data forms the crux of its marketing campaigns. Without proper data, there can be no effective lead generation and progression. However, B2B marketing companies deal with a colossal amount of data pouring in every second in their databases. It becomes increasingly difficult to keep the database free from errors, inaccuracies and duplicities. As a consequence, businesses might end up chasing the wrong leads, which would ultimately result in the waste of time and efforts of the marketing team.

Data profiling helps you avoid such complications resulting from faulty data. It allows you to maintain a clean database, so that you can send targeted messages to only the right contacts. This increases the chances of positive responses from your leads, thus optimizing the marketing cost. The benefits of data profiling include -

• Keeps your database updated so that you can reach just the right person, and avoid contacting a person who no longer works for the same company or position

• Scrubs your database clean of duplicate entries so that you do not reach out to a prospect twice with the same message

Seemingly similar to lead generation, demand generation comes with its own set of challenges. It is nothing but conducting highly targeted marketing programs to build brand awareness, generate the interest of viable leads and guide them through the sales funnel. 

Let us have a look at some effective demand generation marketing strategies that will fetch you maximum returns -

Host live events and webinars

Such events are the best option to offer value and engage your target audience in person. Moreover, most of the attendees to these events are likely to have buying authority. This can lead to a shorter sales cycle.

Give away free material

A free trial or demo that gives your customers an idea of how your solution can solve their problem, or educational material like e-books and infographics will help them trust you and encourage them to revisit your website or brand.

Create quality content

Regularly posting content in different formats, and on multiple channels, helps your prospects learn about your solution, brand, and your expertise in the industry.

Leverage email marketing

If you experience a sudden steep in your website ranking and traffic, there is a good possibility that Google has detected a transgression and penalized your website. Being aware of the common reasons for a penalty can help you avoid them, so that your online visibility and traffic does not suffer. After all, prevention is better than cure.

The following actions can result into a Google penalty -

• Having duplicate or stolen content on your website

• Engaging in shady link acquiring practices such as link exchange programs or buying bad links

• Hiding links or content through cloaking

• Keyword stuffing

• Too many broken links or 404 errors

• Using too many advertisements

• Overusing H1 tags

• Using private blog networks for backlinks

• Outbound links to suspicious sites

• Poor mobile-friendliness

A few decades ago, B2B buyers only concerned themselves with the features, price and benefits of a particular product. Today, however, buyers can easily find out all this information themselves. Today, the experience a brand provides and its reputation in the industry play a key role in the purchase decision. 

PR helps B2B marketing companies build a positive image, strengthen relationships with their customers, improve their reputation and increase revenue as a result of increased credibility and trust

Let us have a look at some simple, but effective PR strategies for your brand -

• Share your success stories or client testimonials on social media

• Optimize every press release, blog posts and other content for SEO

• Take advantage of influencer outreach

• Create and share engaging videos that tell your brand's story

As the nature of platforms and how they are used, as well as the customer behavior keeps evolving, B2B marketing companies and social media agencies find themselves in the need of refreshing their strategy every now and then. Let us see what the foreseeable future has in store for B2B social media -

 • More focus on humanizing communications – Rather than simply promoting products, engaging your audience in meaningful and personalized conversations will go a long way in building a trusting buyer-seller relationship

• Videos will continue to be in vogue – Videos convey the value of your solution far more than lengthy blocks of text, and are easy to consume on the go

• Increase in preference for chatbots – More and more people are preferring chatbots for their ability to give a swift response to customer queries, without any need of human intervention

• More use of User Generated Content – UGC increases your trustworthiness and credibility in the eye of new customers, and make your existing customers feel more involved with your brand

Rise in social listening –

You might always make it a point to earn your links organically; however, periodically assessing them is still important. If you have obtained the links a long time, chances are that the websites they are on might have become outdated or do not even exist any longer. These, and other such problems can lead to a negative impact on your ranking. 

Let us have a look at some quick tips to help you assess the quality of your backlinks -

• As far as possible, your backlinks should be from different root domains, rather than having many links from the same one. Too many links from the same website can cast you under suspicion of using link exchange practices for quick ranking

• Make sure that the websites you are linking from have a high domain authority

• In case you have made any major updates to content, check whether the keyword anchor text you are using for the backlink is still relevant to the content of your website/page

• Check whether the website you are linking from gets a good amount of traffic. If the website itself does not fetch good traffic, how can it be redirected to your own?

Being one of the digital marketing channels that fetch a very high ROI, marketers are always on the lookout for new ways to interact with and engage their target audience through emails. However, if you keep sending generic emails, it is just as easy to land yourself in the spam folder. Thus, you need to select the right email format to get maximum of your subscribers to engage and convert.

Let us have a look at the most important types of emails B2B marketing companies should be focusing on -

Email newsletter

Newsletters are a great way to keep both new and existing customers into your company's loop. The benefits of a well-designed and well-written newsletter include -

• Update customers about a new product or upgrades

• Provide valuable content such as a blog compilation

• Send promotional offers

• Direct traffic towards your website and/or social media accounts

• Increase brand awareness

You can choose a particular theme for your newsletters and make sure you send them on schedule. A good quality newsletter will make your subscribers wait eagerly for the next one, greatly improving your open and engagement rates.

Lead nurturing emails

The nature of the B2B buying process entails that a prospect has to go through multiple steps before he/she reaches the final decision. Lead nurturing emails are usually a series of emails designed to take a prospect from the top to the bottom of the sales funnel. Through these emails you can provide helpful content such as case studies, whitepapers and tutorials to help your prospect make an informed business decision, or offer discounts/offers to entice them into the final purchase.

Behavioral emails

These emails are tailored to a particular behavior of a buyer, and offers a greater level of personalization. For example – a customer that has already purchased a product would find it odd, not to mention irrelevant, to receive an introductory email of the same product.

Examples of behavioral mail include -

• Welcome emails

• Transaction emails (order confirmation, order receipt, billing statements)

• Product recommendations based on recent purchase

• Feedback on latest purchase

• Cart abandonment

• Downloading of ebook/case study/whitepaper

Getting customers or subscribers to forward emails can greatly help B2B marketing companies to spread their brand message to new audience, increase their email list as well as brand awareness.

Let us see some tips to help you increase your forward rate -

• Include a CTA with a share and forward request to work as a reminder to share your email with their peers who might be interested in your offering

• Include a promotional offers like deals, discounts and coupons to encourage more shares

• Focus on a single topic/subject line, so that your subscribers can simply forward the emails to their associates without the need of providing context

• Hold a time-limited contest or event, so that your subscribers will get a sense of urgency to share the news about the event

With billions of email users worldwide, countless marketers are using emails to attract, engage and retain customers. The way you design your emails will make or break your email marketing efforts.

 Let us see some tips for designing effective emails that will help you differentiate yourself from competitors -

• Have a single clear purpose or focus for the email, i.e., decide whether you are simply welcoming a new subscriber, introducing a new product or whether you want to trigger a purchase

• Give the most important part of the email first, rather than waiting until the very end to reveal the core message

• Keep your Calls-to-Actions(CTAs) in a prominent place such as the top portion of the email, as many of your subscribers may not go through the entire email

• Do not choose too wide a width for your email layout, or your subscribers will have to keep scrolling horizantally to read all your content and will most likely abandon your emails

• Break big blocks of text through sub-headers, bullet points, or smart font formatting to make information processing easy for your subscribers

• Don't forget to optimize your emails for mobile devices

• Images are great, but do not overwhelm your audience with too many of them