Digital Marketing Strategies to Revv up B2B Sales Post Covid-19

The digital marketing space became a lifeline for many businesses as we battled the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many did more than stay afloat. They underwent organizational changes to adapt to the situation while others discovered new markets and tapped into them.

Technology created opportunities for B2B sellers to increase visibility, connect with wider audiences, and boost sales.

As we shake off the effects of the pandemic, it’s unlikely these sellers will turn back to the old marketing methods. If anything, they will be on the lookout for novel ways to increase their market share.

So, if you don’t want to be left behind aka need to boost sales, here are five digital marketing strategies worth considering.

1.  Leverage Marketing Analytics

Post pandemic, businesses were affected—positively or otherwise. Their needs may now look very different from what they were prior.

You’ll need to re-imagine their journey and consider new pain points, motivations, and concerns.

How? Using marketing analytics of course

With the help of marketing analytics software, you can collect, analyze and interpret data to understand new consumer behavior.

From identifying content that produces high engagement to email campaigns that increase revenues and everything in between, you’ll have actionable insights for better decision-making.

Here is how you can employ marketing analytics for a better understanding of your market:

• Set business objectives. What do you hope to achieve through marketing analytics? To understand your customers better, identify new opportunities, or analyze your marketing strategies?
• Identify performance indicators. Come up with performance indicators that you can measure to determine whether your team is meeting your objectives.
• Collect data. Marketing analytics tools collect all kinds of data, but if you don’t know how to interpret or apply it to your objectives, it’s useless. Set clear expectations of the data you need and how you want it captured.
• You have your goals, performance indicators, and a report that you can interpret. Now it’s time to analyze it and identify actionable insights that you can implement and drive business results.

2.  Host Live Interviews

Live interviews with noteworthy industry experts, including those on your team, are a fantastic way for bringing attention to your brand.

Unlike other forms of content marketing, you lean on the subject matter expert to tell the story on your behalf.

Through the conversations, you uncover industry insights and help audiences put a finger on the challenges they face. They learn more about their needs and how they can solve them.

Here are some ways to make your live interview successful:

• Prepare the questions and send them to your interviewee ahead of time. People can get a little edgy if they don’t know what to expect from the interview. By sending them the questions in advance, you’ll help them prepare and bring more insightful answers to the show. It shouldn’t be an ambush, rather a joint effort to educate audiences.
• Promote the upcoming interview. Get the word out on your social platforms, website, and email campaigns to maximize reach. If the interviewee doesn’t work in your organization, co-create promotional content for broadcasting to both audiences.
• Keep time. Honor your interviewee and audience’s time by starting and finishing on time. Where you find the interviewee veering off on tangents, don’t cut them off, rather steer them back gently.
• Maximize the content. Repurpose the content by creating snackable sound bites or identifying shareable quotes for posting on social platforms. You can also turn the interview into long-form content for readers.

3.  Maximize Landing Pages

As a principal component of digital marketing, landing pages facilitate customer acquisition through lead generation and conversions. An ideal landing page is memorable, provides relevant information, and offers your audience tangible next steps for further engagement.

So it’s surprising when statistics show that, on average, landing pages have a conversion rate of 4.02 across all sectors.

Nothing to write home about, but something worth thinking about seriously. If landing pages are crucial for conversions, why the low rate?

Perhaps it’s because businesses don’t optimize their landing pages for higher engagement.

Here are some features your landing page should contain:

• Visitors mostly come to your landing page through ads or emails. Ensure the heading, font, images, and message they saw on the ad or email are consistent with the one on the landing page. It fosters continuity and facilitates quicker action.
• Make your value proposition clear. Some B2B products/services can be tough to explain. Look for emotion-provoking words to describe the problems your audience face and the solutions you provide. Clearly demonstrate audiences will derive by using what you offer.
• Offer something valuable. From ebooks to cheat sheets, templates, white papers, and webinars ensure the tool you’re offering in exchange for visitor information is worth their while. For this, you’ll need an in-depth understanding of your target market’s interests, motivations, and needs.
• Create video landing pages. A case study revealed that embedding videos on landing pages can potentially increase conversions by 80 – 86 percent. Need I say more?

4.  Make Cold Calls

According to a survey by RAIN Group, 71 percent of the buyers interviewed were open to new ideas that could help them drive business results.

The survey aside, isn’t every business looking for ways to attain stronger business results?

You’re in the market to provide solutions, right? If your solutions can help businesses become more successful, you’re already on the winning side. Now package your value proposition to demonstrate this, then make your cold calls.

Having said that, there are plenty of ways a business can jeopardize its cold calling opportunities. We’ll look at some mistakes you can avoid:

• Not researching the prospects. Research the company you’re targeting to identify indicators that the prospect will enjoy significant value from partnering with you. Look for trigger events like expansions, new funding, etc that open up opportunities for your business.
• Not tailoring your script to suit individual companies. With your research on hand, adjust your script to suit specific company needs. When you call up a company, you need to demonstrate how you can solve their particular problems, and not create headaches for them.
• Being overly familiar. We always recommend maintaining an upbeat voice, but don’t go overboard and act like you and your prospect have been buddies for years. Address them respectfully and let them draw the familiarity boundary.
• Insufficient knowledge of what you’re selling. There are prospects who know plenty about what you’re selling and will test you to know how extensive your knowledge is. Brush up on your knowledge to ensure you can answer questions appropriately.

5.  Promote Enticing Offers

From percent-offs to exclusive offers, and joint promos, businesses have employed sales promotions to attract new and retain existing customers.

Post-Covid, promoting enticing offers can help increase sales success by encouraging new and existing clients to take up the offers.

It’s a low-pressure way of encouraging target audiences to become your customers.

Yeah, but aren’t you short-changing your company?

Not really.

The law of large numbers comes to play. You may sell at a lower price or offer free trials, but as more people buy in, your profits will go up.

Here are other reasons you should leverage sales promotions:

• Help push slow-moving products/services. This is particularly true for aging products, those you want to stop producing, or services that buyers are a little skeptical of.
• Help increase profitability. Short-term offers typically enhance urgency which can push sales upwards considerably.
• Help pull in new consumers. A well-orchestrated strategy including joint promotions (with companies offering complementary products/services) can draw in new customers.
• Facilitate customer retention. Exclusive deals and discounts may help rouse dormant customers and keep existing ones happy and loyal.