Uncategorized Archives - Yellow Ruler Marketing

How to do marketing for B2B products or services – manufacturing or industrial sector

Rosemary — Thu, 09 Jan 2025 14:10:18 +0000

Read time: 4 mins

Author: Rosemary Lafferty, Owner of Yellow Ruler Marketing

How to Market a Technical or Industrial Product: Simple Steps for Success

If you’re a business owner with a highly technical or industrial product or service, you might feel that marketing it is very difficult because the product is not “attractive” on social media or perhaps friends and family get a glazed look in their eyes when you begin to explain your product or service!

Key Takeaway: As long as your product solves a problem or improves the work life of people in your target market, there is a way to successfully market it. However, you will need a clear strategy, including a detailed implementation plan, before you commence marketing activities.

Here’s a straightforward guide to help you market your technical or industrial product.

Start with a Clear B2B Marketing Strategy

First things first: you need a written marketing strategy. Having a clear, structured plan will guide every action you take and help avoid wasting time and resources. A marketing strategy consists of 6 broad steps* outlined below. *(There are many other details to a marketing strategy)

Situation Analysis and Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats(SWOT)
Objectives
Strategy Choices, including Target Market Definition, Buyer Persona, Brand Voice, etc
Tactics
Implementation i.e. specific Actions recommended
Control i.e. analysis of results data and adjusting actions where required.

Building Market Awareness for an Industrial or Technical Product: Key Steps to Started

1. Set Clear, Measurable Objectives
You need to define specific goals for your marketing efforts. For example, do you want to increase website traffic by 20%? Generate 50 new leads? Be specific so you can measure success.

SWOT: List all your businesses’ strengths, weaknesses and the opportunities and threats facing your business today.

2. Identify Relevant Search Terms
Think about the search terms your prospects will use when looking for a solution to their problem. Optimize your website for these terms. By doing so, you can attract traffic to your site without spending large sums on advertising. A well-optimized website can bring in leads for years to come.

3. Create Problem-Solving Content from your Customers “Pain Points”

What Are Pain Points?

Pain points are the problems or frustrations that your potential buyers face. For example, if you sell software that makes end-of-year accounting faster, your customers’ pain point is likely that they’re spending too much time on this task. Identifying these pain points is crucial because it tells you what problems your product solves.

Once you understand your customers’ pain points, you can build your content around showing them how your product addresses these problems. The goal is to clearly communicate, “We understand your problem, and here’s how we can fix it.”

4. Tailor Content for Different Stages of the Buying Process
Not all prospects are at the same stage of the buying journey. For example:
– Those at the beginning of their buying journey may prefer a simple infographic that summarizes your solution.
– Prospects who are closer to making a decision might want to dive into a detailed blog post or case study.

Offering content in different formats ensures you’re meeting their needs no matter where they are in the decision process.

5. Share Content Across Multiple Platforms
Once you’ve created your content, share it across all your platforms: website, social media, email newsletters, etc. The goal is to get your message in front of as many eyes as possible.

6. Be Repetitive (in a Good Way)
Don’t be afraid to re-share your content multiple times. People often need to see the same message several times before it sticks. Consistent, repeated messaging will keep your product or service top of mind for your audience.

7. Engage with Your Audience
Social media isn’t just for posting—it’s for interaction. Make sure to monitor your platforms, reply to comments, and connect with people who engage with your posts. Some of these individuals may be your next customers, and building relationships is key to nurturing leads.

8. Schedule and Stay Consistent
Use social media scheduling tools like Buffer, Hootsuite, or OneUp to post consistently. This ensures you maintain your online presence even during busy times, and consistency is critical to staying relevant.

9. Monitor and Adjust
Regularly check the results of your marketing activities. Which posts or campaigns performed best? Which search terms brought the most traffic? Use this data to tweak and improve your strategy over time.

Conclusion

Marketing a technical or industrial product may seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. By understanding your audience’s pain points and following a structured marketing plan, you can build awareness, generate leads, and ultimately drive sales. Stick to the basics: set clear objectives, create helpful content, engage with your audience, and be consistent.

If you’re ever in doubt, don’t hesitate to consult a marketing expert to help refine your strategy—sometimes, a little guidance can go a long way in making your efforts successful.

Need help?

The post How to do marketing for B2B products or services – manufacturing or industrial sector appeared first on Yellow Ruler Marketing.

What is a Buyer Persona and why do you need one for your B2B business?

Rosemary — Tue, 28 May 2024 16:53:12 +0000

What is a Buyer Persona?

A Buyer Persona, also known as an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), is a detailed representation of your ideal client/s. In B2B marketing, it’s essential to create a distinct Buyer Persona for each customer segment or target market. For instance, if your product caters to the construction industry, you might have separate personas for Architects, Quantity Surveyors, and Building Contractors. Each customer type will likely have unique needs, decision-making processes, and buying behaviours, requiring you to tailor your Buyer Persona to reflect these nuances. It is important that all marketing and sales staff are familiar with your Buyer Persona/s so that all sales and marketing actions are focused on the correct target markets.

Key Elements of a B2B Buyer Persona

Location: Where are they based? Are they local, national, or international?
Pain Points: What challenges do they face that your product can solve?
Problem-Solving Approach: How do they currently seek solutions? Do they consult colleagues or conduct online searches?
Knowledge Level: Are they well-versed in your product category, or do they have limited awareness?
Decision-Making Process: Is the decision made by a team, or is there a single decision-maker?
Social Media Preferences: Which platforms do they actively use, if any?
Content Preferences: Do they engage with videos, in-depth blogs, infographics, or other formats?
Ideal Solution: What does the perfect solution to their problem look like in their view?
Search Behaviour: What specific search terms or keywords do they use when looking for solutions online?
Budget: What budget will the buyers have?
Sources of Information: Where do your buyers go to find information for their buying decisions? They may refer to colleagues, social media, AI, search engines etc

B2B Buyer Persona – Example

Let’s say your business, XYZ Ltd. sells a new sustainable building product to the construction industry. Your target market includes a number of different buyer types, including some who may be involved in the purchase decisions (e.g. architects, specifiers, quantity surveyors) but will not be the end user/final buyer. Therefore each buyer type is unique and will require different marketing tactics.

Below is an example of Buyer Persona for the Architect.

Reasons Why a Buyer Persona Important for your B2B business

A well-crafted Buyer Persona is crucial for directing your marketing strategy. For example, identifying the search terms your target customers use allows you to optimize your website’s SEO. If these terms aren’t already incorporated into your site’s title tags or meta descriptions, your web developer should update them to improve search engine visibility.

Moreover, understanding your buyers’ familiarity with your product can shape your content strategy. If your target audience is relatively unfamiliar with your offerings, focus on creating easily digestible content, such as infographics or short videos, rather than long-form blogs.

Lastly, having an agreed-upon Buyer Persona ensures consistency across all marketing and sales activities. Whether you’re working with a marketing agency or outsourcing sales, it aligns everyone on who the ideal customer is and how best to reach them.

Book a free consultation with us today: Discuss your marketing with us. Email us on hello@yellowrulermarketing.ie

The post What is a Buyer Persona and why do you need one for your B2B business? appeared first on Yellow Ruler Marketing.

Using Marketing to Turn B2B Prospects into Customers (infographic)

Rosemary — Mon, 20 May 2024 09:41:48 +0000

How Does Marketing Turn Your B2B Prospects into Customers?

The journey from prospect to customer in the B2B (business-to-business) world is a gradual process that requires consistent, properly planned marketing. Think of it like planting a seed and nurturing it over time before you see the fruits. Marketing is the nurturing process that helps turn your target prospects—who may never have heard of your business—into loyal, paying customers. This article explains: 1. Why having a well-thought-out marketing strategy is crucial. 2. How to begin marketing effectively for your B2B business.

Why Do You Need a Marketing Strategy?

A marketing strategy is your game plan. It outlines the steps and tactics you need to reach your target prospects, build trust with them, and convert them into customers. Without a strategy, you’re simply throwing random messages out there and hoping something sticks, which rarely works. Having a focused approach ensures that every marketing effort, from social media posts to email newsletters, serves a purpose and moves prospects closer to buying. The marketing plan, if properly executed, will guide your prospects through their Buying Journey, from stage 1 (see Illustration below) right through to stage 10, where they make their first purchase from your business.

The B2B Customer Journey Explained

The journey of a B2B prospect involves multiple stages. Here’s a simple breakdown: 1. Awareness: At this stage, your prospect likely has never heard of your business. Your goal is to introduce them to your brand through channels they frequent, like LinkedIn, Facebook, industry blogs, or even YouTube. 2. Interest: Once a prospect becomes aware of your business, they’ll look for more information to see if your products or services can solve their specific problem. Here, having helpful content on your website, blog, or social media channels can keep them interested. 3. Consideration: As the prospect gathers more information, they will compare your business with others. This is where strong, well-designed content (like case studies, testimonials, and detailed product information) can tip the scale in your favour. 4. Decision: After weighing their options, your prospect decides whether to move forward with your company. This step may involve additional touchpoints, like phone calls, product demos, or meetings, to help them feel confident in their decision. 5. Purchase: Finally, the prospect becomes a customer by making a purchase. But remember, this process doesn’t happen overnight.

Key Marketing Tips to Turn Prospects into Customers

1. Consistency is Key for Effective B2B Marketing

Consistency in marketing builds familiarity and trust over time. Even if you post just once a month on social media, the key is to be consistent. Frequent posting keeps your brand top of mind for potential customers. In B2B marketing, the decision-making process often takes time, so repeated exposure to your brand is essential.

2. Create Content that Helps Your Audience Solve their “Pain Points”

Your content—whether it’s a social media post, eNewsletter, blog post, or web page—should aim to help your prospects achieve their goals or solve their most pressing business problems . Think about what problems they are trying to solve and how your business can help. For example, if your target market is struggling with improving productivity and you sell, for example, a software that improves manufacturing productivity, then create content that shows you understand their problem and then show, in a simple way, how your software will help solve this problem.

3. Multiple “Touchpoints” are Essential

A touchpoint can be any form of contact with your business—whether that’s reading a blog post, seeing your social media ad, visiting your website, or talking to a salesperson. It’s very rare for someone to become a customer after just one interaction with your business. In fact, on average, a B2B prospect needs at least 7 touchpoints before they make a purchase. Therefore, you need to create plenty of opportunities for touchpoints to happen, such as the content discussed in 2. above or having a well-designed, easy to navigate website.

4. Focus Your Marketing on the Right Platforms

To make your marketing efforts effective, you need to know where your target market spends their time. For B2B prospects, LinkedIn is often a key platform, but don’t overlook others like Facebook, industry forums, podcasts, or even YouTube. If your audience prefers to consume video content, prioritize those formats. The point is to be where your prospects are. The research that will have been carried out in order to create your digital marketing plan will give your guidance on which platforms you need to use to effectively target your ideal customers.

5. Segment Your Target Market and Create Buyer Personas

Not all your prospects are the same. Different businesses will have different needs, challenges, and pain points. To tailor your message effectively, you should segment your audience and create detailed Buyer Personas for each group. A Buyer Persona is a semi-fictional profile representing your ideal customer in a specific segment. For example, if you sell software, your personas might include an IT manager for large enterprises and a small business owner looking for affordable tech solutions. Each will need different content tailored to their specific needs.

6. Measure and Adjust Your Strategy

Marketing is not a “set it and forget it” activity. To make sure your efforts are working, regularly track the performance of your campaigns. Measure things like website traffic, social media engagement, and conversion rates. If something isn’t working, adjust your strategy. Maybe your audience prefers different content formats (like video instead of text), or maybe your messaging needs refining. Conclusion Marketing is a powerful tool that can transform your B2B prospects into loyal customers. However, it requires a clear strategy, consistent efforts, and a deep understanding of your target audience. By creating multiple touchpoints, sharing valuable content, and targeting the right platforms, you can gradually build trust and drive sales for your business. The key takeaway: B2B marketing is not a quick fix, but a long-term investment in building relationships and providing value. When done right, it will yield measurable results. Get started with your marketing today! Book a Call Today to Discuss your B2B Marketing Goals

The post Using Marketing to Turn B2B Prospects into Customers (infographic) appeared first on Yellow Ruler Marketing.

Why You Need a Digital Strategy before Revamping your B2B Website

Rosemary — Wed, 11 Oct 2023 14:00:23 +0000

Thinking of Improving your B2B Website? Read This First.

by Rosemary Lafferty

Read time: 2 minutes

Thinking about refreshing your B2B website? While it’s tempting to dive into a redesign, it’s critical to first establish or refine your digital marketing strategy. It’s a cliché but ….if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.

In this blog, we look at the reasons why it is essential to have a digital marketing plan before you begin to redesign your website.

What your B2B website needs to do:

Your website should work as a “digital sales rep,” 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, attracting prospects, engaging them with helpful information, and generating leads. In order that it can do that, your website needs to:

Attract suitable prospects only. ( You will want to avoid having a lot of website traffic from unsuitable prospects. Unsuitable prospects will quickly bounce out of your website almost as soon as they land when they realise that they have no interest in what you are offering. Google and other search engines will interpret this low level of engagement as a signal that your website is a low quality website)
Clearly show who your business serves and how you help them (e.g. “Here at XYZ Company, our software helps SMEs effectively track all sales and order processing in easy-to-use to package”)
Cause these suitable prospects to spend time on a number of your website pages as they read useful content that helps them to do their jobs better or more easily
Make it easy for prospects to navigate your website
Showcase your expertise in your industry
Build trust by showing prospects who you are e.g. on the “About Us” page, make sure you include photos, names and job titles of key staff members and customer-facing staff.

What does a B2B digital marketing plan include?

To achieve this, it’s essential to analyse all facets of your business, industry, and competition before making any changes to your B2B website. A solid digital marketing strategy helps guide these efforts and consists of six overall steps as listed below. (Note: There is much more detail in a complete digital marketing strategy, these steps are the basic foundations only)

1. Situation Analysis & SWOT
2. Objectives
3. Strategy Elements – target markets, buyer personas, customer journeys, competitors
4. Tactics – specific tools and channels
5. Actions – website revamp, content creation, etc.
6. Controls – metrics for tracking and improvement

As you can see, updating your website (step 5) is only effective if it’s informed by the prior steps. Without this foundation, your website will lack focus and impact.

Need a B2B Digital Marketing Strategy? Let’s Talk.

After creating or updating your strategy, the path to redesign becomes clear. Use the checklist below to evaluate the essential elements of a top-performing B2B website.

11 Key Elements of an Effective B2B Website

1. Clear Business Statement on the Home Page
Your homepage should immediately communicate what your business does and who it serves. Place this message prominently at the top of the page, above the “fold”(i.e. the top part of the website page that users see first before they have to scroll down to see more), and make it specific.

For example:
– Good: “We help accountants and actuaries find talented staff.”
-Poor: “Our services help businesses achieve their goals.”

2. SEO-Optimized Keywords
Optimize your website so potential customers find you via search engines. List key phrases related to your products and services, like “high-quality printed colour brochures,” and share these with your developer to include in visible content and backend tags (e.g., title tags, alt text, headings).

3. Customer Pain Points
Identify common challenges your customers face. Reflect these “pain points” on your website to connect with your audience.

4. Content that Solves Problems
Create valuable content, like blog posts and downloadable eBooks, that addresses these pain points. Ensure it’s accessible to readers outside your industry by explaining technical terms.

5. Lead Capture
Capture visitors’ contact information with newsletter sign-ups, guides, or eBooks. GDPR guidelines mean you should only ask for email addresses when necessary; however, downloadable resources can still serve as lead-nurturing tools.

6. Mobile Responsiveness, Navigation, and Readability
Your website must be mobile-friendly, easy to navigate, and readable. For best results:
– Ensure responsiveness across all devices.
– Use a readable font size (16px is ideal).
– Keep navigation straightforward, following common patterns that users expect, like the “Contact” button at the end of your menu.

7. Fast Load Times
Ensure your website loads quickly across all devices, especially if it has media-rich content. Test load times and ask your developer to make adjustments if necessary.

8. Social Media Links
Include social media links and encourage visitors to follow your channels. This helps build brand awareness and credibility.

9. Building Credibility, Trust & Authority
Establish your business as a trustworthy source. Add testimonials with full names and company details, display quality certifications, and showcase industry-related content.

10. Focus on the 4 Most Visited Pages
Prioritize high-traffic pages like the Home, Products & Services, About Us, and Contact Us pages. Make sure they are clear, engaging, and SEO-optimized. Personalize the About Us page with real stories about your company, key team members, and community involvement.

11. Content Management System (CMS)
Install a CMS, such as WordPress, so you can update your content easily. Frequent updates signal search engines to prioritize your website, which boosts visibility.

Before You Start: Prepare for Success

1. List Current Website Dislikes
Survey relevant team members (e.g., sales reps, customer service) about your site’s shortcomings.

2.Walk Through Your Website as a Customer
Imagine you’re your ideal customer. What questions would they have? Would they understand the terms and images used? What actions would you want them to take?

Gather these insights and share them with your developer to guide a focused and effective redesign.

Get Started with your Digital Marketing Strategy today!

The post Why You Need a Digital Strategy before Revamping your B2B Website appeared first on Yellow Ruler Marketing.

Will using AI for content creation negatively affect your rankings on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPS)?

Rosemary — Wed, 26 Apr 2023 13:04:02 +0000

We all now have easy access to artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as Chat GPT to help us speed up content creation for our websites or social media. However, this raises an important question – if you use AI to create your website’s blog posts or website page content, will this negatively affect your rankings on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPS)?

Google have answered this question in their webpage, entitled Creating Helpful, Reliable, People-first Content.

Content should Answer the User’s Query

They clarify what it is that Google is “looking for” when it chooses which webpages to rank highest.
In summary, Google wants to help its users/searchers as much as possible when serving up results. Therefore, whether you have used AI or written the content yourself, your content should always aim to help the user find the answer to their query.
Helping your user should be your first priority and basically it doesn’t matter or not whether you have used AI in part or not at all as long as your user leaves your page feeling satisfied that they now have the information they wanted.

AI Disclosures in your Content

However, Google does suggest that in some cases, “AI disclosures” may be a good idea because “sharing details about the processes involved (in creating the content) can help readers and visitors better understand any unique and useful role automation may have served.”

Questions to Ask before you Publish Content that has used AI.

Google suggests that publishers should ask “who, why and how” about their content.

In the “how” part, they suggest that in some cases, AI disclosures may be useful in order to be fully transparent as shown in this extract below:
“If automation is used to substantially generate content, here are some questions to ask yourself:
Is the use of automation, including AI-generation, self-evident to visitors through disclosures or in other ways?
Are you providing background about how automation or AI-generation was used to create content?
Are you explaining why automation or AI was seen as useful to produce content?
Overall, AI or automation disclosures are useful for content where someone might think “How was this created?”

Content Creation for your B2B business

Excellent content, optimised with your industry keywords can drive traffic to your website on an ongoing basis and can generate suitable leads if it is promoted on social media. Contact us today if you need help with content creation for your B2B business

The post Will using AI for content creation negatively affect your rankings on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPS)? appeared first on Yellow Ruler Marketing.

What is a Brand Voice and why does it matter?

Rosemary — Wed, 11 Jan 2023 17:34:39 +0000

by Rosemary Lafferty

Read time: 2 minutes

Thinking about what your business’ brand voice is might not seem like a big priority but it is important to have at least thought through what your brand voice is – i.e. what you want people to think/say about your business, in other words, how your brand or business personality is perceived by your target audience.

For example, do you want your business to be seen as a high-end, expert, market leader who probably won’t be the cheapest? Or is your brand voice that you won’t be beaten on price? The target audience needs to be able to clearly see what sort of business you are from any of your social media posts, website etc.

A Brand Voice is a part of your Digital Marketing Strategy

Your brand voice should be decided as part of your overall digital marketing strategy because it needs to be in line with all other aspects of marketing and sales.

If your B2B business doesn’t have a clear, current digital marketing strategy, then you may be haphazard in your approach to marketing which will negatively affect your results from marketing activities as a consistent approach is essential for effective marketing.

Do you have a clear, current digital marketing strategy for 2023?

Read about how we create a B2B digital marketing strategy here.

Get your digital marketing strategy started today. Get in touch rosemary@yellowrulermarketing.ie

The post What is a Brand Voice and why does it matter? appeared first on Yellow Ruler Marketing.

Social Media Marketing Tips for B2B – Video

Rosemary — Thu, 16 Jun 2022 14:04:50 +0000

The post Social Media Marketing Tips for B2B – Video appeared first on Yellow Ruler Marketing.

How to Build Brand Awareness on LinkedIn with 30 minutes Weekly Activity

Rosemary — Mon, 09 May 2022 11:53:03 +0000

Written by Rosemary Lafferty

(Read time: 3 minutes)

LinkedIn Activity Recommendations for Brand Awareness

LinkedIn can be a very useful, free* tool to build brand awareness, remain “top of mind” in prospects heads and can allow you to build a reputation as an expert in your field if you share good quality content. To do this, you need to do this following two things – Optimise Your Profile and take 15 -30 minutes once a week to stay active on LinkedIn. (* A premium option is available but I recommend doing everything advised below and measure your results with the free version before investing in a premium profile)

Optimise Your Profile

To maximise the return from LinkedIn, ensure that your profile is fully completed, optimised for search engines using keywords and that you have featured some of your company’s best content in your profile if it is available.

Weekly Activity

Once that is complete, take 15 – 30 minutes once a week to do the following.

Level 1

Connect with as many suitable prospects as possible. As we know, sales is a “numbers game” so the more suitable prospects you are connected to, the better. (Ensure you have a clearly defined Target Market and have spent some time creating Buyer/Customer Personas before you begin connecting. Thousands of connections are no use to you if they are not in your target market)
No Messaging until a Relationship is Established. When the prospect accepts your invite, do not message them immediately! If you do, it will most likely irritate them that you are trying to sell to them with no value in the interaction for them. Instead, share your company’s original or curated content. See more about this in point 3 below.
Share your company’s content* regularly or, if your company doesn’t produce original content, share suitable curated content (*Ensure that any content you share helps your prospects do their job better or helps their lives. For example, if you sell Accounting Software packages, a post such as “7 Ways to Speed Up Your Accounting Processes” will help your prospects as this is a topic they are likely to be interested in. If possible, set up automated sharing of company content so that you don’t have to remember to share the content. (Social media scheduling software tools such as Buffer, OneUp and Hootsuite are popular. If you wish to reshare posts in the future, you will need to check that the software permits this as not all tools allow this. Buffer allows easy re-sharing of posts and has free and inexpensive starter plans)
Respond to any comments as soon as possible, and where it is sincere and logical to do, like, comment or share your prospects posts. Avoid liking posts etc just to get the prospect to notice you.
Connect with anyone who engages with your content if they are not already a 1^st degree connection

If you want to take your LinkedIn activity to a higher level, follow steps 6 to 10 below.

Level 2

Follow the LinkedIn Company pages of your prospects so that you can learn more about your prospect’s business in order to be better able to help them with their needs.
Publish articles providing high-level value to your prospects – i.e. articles that address their pain points and is an in depth examination of the subject.
Join suitable Groups where your prospects are likely to be in and share the articles and useful content** from your website to these groups. (** Only share original content to groups – i.e. do not share curated content)
If your company has its own Company LinkedIn page, check who is following the page and connect with any followers who look like they may be suitable prospects. (Note: you may find the majority of your followers are not suitable prospects, e.g. they may be competitors, students, followers who are located outside of your geographical selling area etc)
Ask for Recommendations and /or Endorsements from existing happy client

The post How to Build Brand Awareness on LinkedIn with 30 minutes Weekly Activity appeared first on Yellow Ruler Marketing.

Creating Content for B2B – Two Important Tips

Rosemary — Wed, 11 Nov 2020 15:47:04 +0000

If you are creating content for social media or your website in the B2B space, then take a moment to watch this very short video where I outline 2 very important tips. If you follow these two fundamental tips, your social media content and website will help achieve your objectives.

Like to receive digital marketing tips into your inbox? Sign up for our newsletter here. (You can unsubscribe any time)

The post Creating Content for B2B – Two Important Tips appeared first on Yellow Ruler Marketing.

How To Reach your Target B2B Audience on LinkedIn – for Small Business

Rosemary — Fri, 31 Jul 2020 23:41:54 +0000

Written by: Rosemary Lafferty Read time: 15 minutes

How can you reach your target audience on LinkedIn?

In this post, we will look at a plan to reach your target market on LinkedIn. We will outline clear, actionable steps to help you generate suitable leads and nurture these leads.

Specifically, we will cover:

Digital Marketing Plan B2B – why do you need one?
Six Elements of a Digital Marketing Plan
Target Market Segments
Buyer Personas
Target Prospect database
Optimizing your Profile
Create Useful Content
Publishing your Content
Connecting on LinkedIn
Build Relationships through Engagement
LinkedIn Stories Feature coming soon
Conclusion

Digital Marketing Plan for B2B – why do you need one?

If you dive into taking action on social media platforms with no clear plan, your results will be poor because your actions may not be based on a thorough understanding of your prospects, competitors, your businesses’ strengths and weaknesses and other important factors etc. A digital marketing strategy consists of 6 overall steps (see below), of which the 5th step is the Actions section. Regardless of how urgently you need to generate new business, your first step must be to create a Digital Marketing Strategy/Plan for your business or get a Digital Marketing Strategy created for your business by a suitable agency. Contact us if you would like to discuss the creation of Digital Marketing Strategy.

(Note: This post looks at the non-paid ways to reach your audience. If you need to reach your audience in the short-term, then paid advertising such as LinkedIn Ads, Google Ads are an option. However, paid advertising is not covered in this post.)

For the purposes of this post, I will give a brief outline only of how to create the Digital Marketing Strategy. However, we will look in detail at 3 key parts of the plan – defining your Target Market Segments, Buyer Personas, and your Target Prospect database.

2. Elements of B2B Digital Marketing Plan for an SME/small business

In this section, we look at each element and their component parts.

Six Elements of a Digital Marketing Plan

Situation Analysis including SWOT

Ensure that you have fully completed your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Benefit: Understanding your SWOT will ensure that you exploit opportunities and your strengths when you get on LinkedIn. See an example of a SWOT from an online fitness client.

Objectives

Clearly define your objectives. Start with an overall goal (e.g. I want to get more leads from my website) and then break it down into specific objectives. (e.g. I want to build awareness of my business through social media, I want to get build relationships with suitable prospects through LinkedIn)

Strategy including Strategy choice, Target markets, Buyer Personas, Prospect Databases

Tactics: what tools will you use to achieve your objectives, such as SEO, Email marketing, Social Media, Paid ads, Partnerships etc

Actions specific measurable actions such as “who will do what, when, how often” etc. This should be a very detailed, specific list and should be the largest part of your marketing plan. For example, “I will create a Blog every two weeks to deal with the following customer pain points and share it on 2 social networks” is a specific action whereas “I will increase awareness through social media” is not an action, it is an objective.

Controls this is a plan for how you will measure the effectiveness of your marketing activities. Set Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and benchmark all the key metrics before you start to implement your plan. For example, on LinkedIn, your KPIs may include the number of leads generated from LinkedIn connections, number of profile views, the number of followers of your LinkedIn Company page, amount of engagement from target prospects etc

Let’s assume you have created your SWOT analysis and outlined your overall and specific objectives in detail.

Strategy

In order to reach your target audience on LinkedIn, you must complete the strategy section of your plan very carefully. Let’s look at the three important parts of the Strategy: a) Target Market Segments, b) Buyer Personas, and c) Prospects Database.

In order to reach your target audience on LinkedIn, you need a very clear detailed picture of who the ideal target audience is. Let’s look at an example of my target audience for Yellow Ruler Marketing.

a) Target Market Segments

In theory, I could say my target market are all businesses in Ireland. However, that is too broad and non-specific. Instead, I have identified four segments in the overall market that are a good fit for Yellow Ruler Marketing due to my specific strengths and also the opportunities in the market place right now.

Identify important Target Market criteria

Create a similar table for your business, identifying all the criteria that matter to your business. For example, for Yellow Ruler Marketing, I am targeting businesses that do not have their own digital marketing manager/staff as they are more likely to need to outsource their marketing. Other criteria include the location (companies often still prefer to deal with a supplier who is local), the size of the company, etc.

It is a good idea to create one, put it to one side and come back to it later as thinking of all the relevant criteria can take some time. Looking at your existing customers and thinking about why they are a good fit for your business can help you create these criteria.

b) Create Buyer Personas

Once you completed this, create a Buyer Persona for each target segment. A buyer persona is a detailed description of each type of customer from each target segment. It is a fictional person who has the characteristics of your best potential customers.

Below are examples of a B2B and a B2C Buyer Personas from the Alexa Blog.

The Pain Points are an extremely important part of every persona as these will be the basis for your content marketing when you return to LinkedIn. ( We will look at that in more detail further down in this blog)

c) Prospects Database (B2B)

Once your Personas are created, create a Target Prospect Database. (This target database is required for B2B businesses only.)

This is a list of all the prospects (that fit your criteria) that you want to get seen by on LinkedIn. See the example below. You can do this using a simple spreadsheet or a CRM tool such as Less Annoying CRM which is an easy-to-use CRM. Populate your CRM or spreadsheet with the names of actual businesses that you want to target. The fact that you have created your Buyer Personas above means you know exactly the type of businesses that you want to target. In order to find the names of suitable prospect companies, you can refer to lists/sources such as Google, Kompass, and numerous other sources.

You can do detailed searches for prospects using a range of filters.

When you have populated your database with your ideal prospect companies, you can now return to LinkedIn.

Return to LinkedIn to Find the Decision-Makers Names

1.Log in to your LinkedIn account and do a search on each company name from your target database.

The results will show your target prospects’ LinkedIn Company page if they have one. When you click into their page, you will see a button that says, for example, “See x employees on LinkedIn”.

Click this and a menu of all the employees who have LinkedIn accounts will appear. Scroll down until you find the person who is the decision-maker for whatever your product or service. E.g. if you sell office supplies, the decision-maker may be the Purchasing Manager, if you sell accounting software, the decision-maker may be the Financial Controller. Add the decision-maker name to your Target Prospect database. DO NOT send a connection request yet (unless you have already optimised your LinkedIn profile and created content that addresses your customer’s pain points in all formats. We will address how to Optimise your Profile and Create Useful Content below)

2. From the prospects LinkedIn their company page, follow the “visit website/contact us” link to visit their website and follow all the social media pages that they have. The benefit of this is you are now “digitally surrounding” this prospect and you will be able to glean useful information about what’s happening in their company. When you are ready, this may allow you to find a hook or something interesting to start a connection/ conversation with key decision-makers.

DO NOT send any connection requests yet! Later in this blog, we will explain when is the right time to send a connection request.

5. Optimise your Profile for LinkedIn

Your prospects may search in LinkedIn to find the suppliers such as yourself so you want to ensure that your profile “speaks” to them. Many business owners’ LinkedIn profiles are written like a CV or resume. Optimising your profile means writing your profile as if it were almost a mini-website for your business i.e write with your potential customer in mind and include all the relevant keywords or search terms that they might use. The most important parts of your LinkedIn profile are your Background Header Image (Banner) and your Headline as many prospects will only look at those parts.

Banner Image Address your prospects’ pain points in the text in the image. You can use free graphic design tools like Canva to create the LinkedIn Banner in the correct size image and you can add text over the image. Ensure you keep any text away from the area where your profile photo will appear.

Profile Photo

Ensure you use a clear, “head and shoulders” photo that is taken against a clear background and has no extraneous elements in it.

Headline

(shown in the highlighted text below): Incorporate keywords into your headline and use the “pipe” | symbol to separate the words.

However, it is important to fill out the rest of your profile as fully as possible. It can be helpful to break your “About” section into 3 parts as shown below. As formatting is not possible on LinkedIn, it helps if you use uppercase text to make these subsections stand out as shown below.

WHAT I DO
WHO I HELP
WHY IT WORKS

6. Create Useful Content to address your Prospects Pain Points on LinkedIn

You will have outlined your prospects’ pain points in your Buyer Personas. Create a blog post that answers each of these pain points. Your customers’ FAQs are also a great source of ideas for good content. For example, this blog post has been written in response to feedback from my prospects that they struggle to reach their target market on LinkedIn.

Any prospect who views your profile or comes across you in his/her newsfeed needs to see your content and immediately feel that you can provide a solution to some business problem that he or she has. Therefore you need to have written articles, shared posts, infographics videos etc that will all deliver an answer to these prospects pain points as people/prospects who view your profile will often scroll down to view your “Activity”

For example, as a marketer, I always on the lookout for easy to use video creation software. Therefore if I see a post with, for example,”6 of the best video creation software” I will click on that post and read it as it addresses as my pain point. Therefore you need to create at least 4-6 pieces of content with a clear title that “nails” the prospect/customer pain point.

7. Publish Content in different formats over the next 4 – 6weeks.

Over 4 – 6 weeks, take each blog post and convert it into other formats such as an infographic, PDF document, video, or polls. This will mean that you get maximum “mileage” out of each content idea. Publish the content during the 4 – 6 weeks. Ensure that some of your longer blog posts are published as “Articles” when you share them for the first time (as opposed to sharing as a post). This will build your reputation as an authority on your product or service area. Blogs that are published as “Articles” have a longer shelf life within LinkedIn and while they get fewer views than posts, they get higher engagement. Infographics get a high number of views but less engagement. (Ensure that the text on the infographic is large enough to be readable in the newsfeed without having to click on it)

Posting Times

Share your content in the various formats and test which different times of the day and days of the week get the most engagement. As a general rule of thumb, Wednesdays and Thursdays 11.30 am through to early afternoon are the best posting times.

8. Connecting with Prospects on LinkedIn

Does your network connections consist largely of family, friends, former and existing colleagues, customers, and suppliers? While you may have a large number of connections, it is not the size of your network that matters but the number of connections who are target prospects,

If most of your first-degree connections are not in your target segments, then your LinkedIn efforts will not be effective. Start to send the connection request to all the decision-makers’ from your prospect database to ensure that your network contains your target audience.

More Connections Benefit Everyone

Why would any of them want to accept your invitation to connect? It is beneficial for everyone to grow their network, therefore there is a good chance that many of your invitations will be accepted.

Invites that are Ignored

You may find that some people will not accept your invite. This is a clear signal from them that they do not need/want your product/service right now and you simply need to move on to the next prospect in your database.

Invites that are Accepted – Avoid the Classic Mistake

If they do connect with you, do not follow up by sending them a sales-type message telling about your product/service. Do not message them at all. Why not? In accepting your connection request, they have looked at your profile and will already know why you are trying to connect with them. So what is the point of connecting then, you may ask? This is where the useful content that you have and will continue to create and share will “move the sales dial” and allow you to start useful business relationships with prospects.

Your Content is Your Salesperson on LinkedIn

Now that these prospects are in your network, they are more likely to be shown your content in their newsfeed. This content will address their pain points and as they begin to regularly see that you can be a solution to their problems, they may begin to engage with your content by liking, sharing, or commenting on it.

9. Engagement is the First Step to Building Relationships with Prospects

You can begin to develop a relationship with anyone who engages with your content by using the following methods:

Reply to all comments and thank anyone who shares your content.
Reply to the comments as promptly as you can as the LinkedIn algorithm favours content that has received comments very soon after being published. (known as the “comment velocity” factor of the algorithm) i.e. content that quickly gets comments will be shown in more newsfeeds that content that took a long time to get a comment.
Tagging people in the first comment when you publish new content is a good way to get people to comment quickly as (depending on their settings), they may get a notification that you have tagged them. (To tag somebody, type the @ symbol before their name in the first comment). Use this tactic sparingly and only when you are very sure they will find the content useful.
You may also find that as you publish content that is useful, people who are 2nd or 3rd-degree connections may engage with your content. Always send a connection request to these people – they have given you a positive signal by their engagement and they are highly likely to accept your invitation.
By replying to comments, you are starting a conversation with your prospects. These conversations have fulfilled the objective of creating awareness of your brand in the minds of your prospects, You can now develop these relationships by using other sales/marketing tactics such as inviting them to receive your eNewsletter (email marketing) or giving them a call to see if they would be interested in a video call to discuss how their pain points can be solved by your product/service. (telemarketing) etc

Give to Receive

Make sure that you take a few minutes every week to look through your newsfeed and engage with your prospects’ posts where appropriate and sincere. Everyone likes to get a Like, Share, or Comment on their content. This will remind them about your business again and may cause them to look at your profile again.

Set up a LinkedIn Company Page for your business

Set up a LinkedIn Company Page for your business and post your content to this page as well as to your personal profile. Read more about LinkedIn Company Pages.

Join LinkedIn Groups

Find groups that are likely to have your prospects as members. You can view what groups your prospects are in by Request to join and share your useful content to these groups. (They may have a moderator so you may not see your post appear for some time). You may not receive a massive amount of engagement from this but make to send connection invites to anyone who engages within the groups.

Hashtags

Use 4 relevant Hashtags with each item of content you post. Use different hashtags for each different topics.

Vanity Metrics – the Cat Rescue post

Content that is personal usually receives very high engagement on LinkedIn. For example, when somebody shares a post about overcoming adversity or photos of themselves receiving their Masters’s degree. This engagement may not be as valuable as useful content that gets less engagement. Let’s use a silly example to illustrate the point.

Mary Jane has a web design business that she tries to promote to small businesses on LinkedIn. Last week, Mary Jane has also just adopted 6 cats from the Cat Rescue so she posts a picture of herself with her 6 cats on LinkedIn with the accompanying text explaining the background story. This post gets 150 likes, 27 shares and 45 comments from everyone who knows Mary Jane.

Last month Mary Jane published an article entitled “6 Ways to Fix a Slow Loading Website”. It got 3 likes, 1 comment, and no shares.

Which post is better? While the Cat Rescue post gets Mary Jane’s name in many more newsfeeds and the LinkedIn algorithm may indeed decide that content from Mary Jane is worth showing to more newsfeeds, the problem is that the Cat Rescue post is not of particular interest to Mary Jane’ target prospects. If her target prospects see this post, they may indeed think that Mary Jane is a very kind lady but that won’t make them necessarily more likely to contact her for her web design skills.

Let’s imagine that one of Mary Jane’s target prospects is currently struggling with a website that is loading slowly and causing them to lose customers. They happen to see her “6 Ways to Fix a Slow Loading Website” blog post in their newsfeed and they are now very interested in Mary Jane’s business. Mary Jane’s post has shown them a solution to their problem. If Mary Jane has structured her blog post correctly, the blog will give them useful information to fix it and invite them to contact Mary Jane for further help.

So should you ever post a “Cat Rescue”- type content? I would recommend that 80% of your content is useful content addressing prospect pain points and about 20% of lighter content where you show your personality or a “sales” post.

10. LinkedIn Stories Coming soon

LinkedIn Stories is a new feature that has rolled out in 4 countries(Australia, Netherlands, Brazil and the UAE) so far (on August 1st 2020). It works almost exactly the same as the Stories feature on Instagram. Find out more about LinkedIn Stories here.

11. Conclusion

LinkedIn can be an effective way to reach your target prospects – provided you follow a planned strategy.

Need Help with your Digital Marketing Strategy, Social Media, or Content Creation?

We can help you with one-off projects, consultancy advice, or ongoing social media management. You can choose how many hours/sessions you need. Contact us today rosemary@yellowrulermarketing.ie or 086 306 1260

Published: 1st August 2020, updated September 2023

The post How To Reach your Target B2B Audience on LinkedIn – for Small Business appeared first on Yellow Ruler Marketing.