Marketing your businesses to other businesses isn’t rocket science, but it does take time and effort. Not only do you have to increase the exposure of your brand, you also have to build a strong reputation in order to gain the trust of the companies with whom you want to work. Fortunately, there are plenty of online marketing strategies to leverage and accomplish this goal. The following are eight B2B online marketing tips that you should implement in order to market successfully in a digital world:

  1. Focus on a niche – Focus your marketing efforts on a niche industry in order to attract a smaller but more targeted group of companies. If your focus is too broad, you’ll attract more businesses, but a larger percentage of them won’t be a part of your target audience, making your efforts less effective.
  2. Optimize your website – While search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t the end-all-be-all of online marketing the way it once was, it’s still a necessary component of your marketing strategy. To bring in more traffic, you’ll need to boost your website’s exposure, which is done by making sure your website is properly optimized for SEO so that Google can identify you and rank you.
    Where do you fit in this pie chart? Publishing content on a regular basis can be a challenge for any business. Dedicate the resources to do it regularly.

    Where do you fit in this pie chart? Publishing content on a regular basis can be a challenge for any business. Dedicate the resources to do it regularly.

  3. Focus on content marketing – Content, meaningful content, draws traffic to your website or blog. It is how you build a reader base, thereby boosting your brand’s reputation and your company’s image as a thought leader. Valuable content will help set you apart from your competition and will help establish your brand as an authority. Your content marketing strategy should include regular blog posts, infographics, videos, podcasts, eBooks, whitepapers and more.
  4. Use social media effectively – One of the biggest mistakes that businesses make is using social media solely for the purpose of sharing content. You should be using social media primarily as a way to engage with your followers. Sharing content isn’t just about getting more readers, it’s about creating conversation with your readers.
  5. Use email marketing – Email marketing is one of the oldest forms of online business marketing, and it’s still one of the most effective. Despite all of the noise about too many emails, multiple studies conclude that email marketing is darn effective! You can use your email newsletters to keep leads engaged and to guide them through the sales funnel. You can also promote blog content to your email list, thereby driving additional traffic back to your website.
  6. Don’t ignore mobile – Google’s new algorithm update ensured that websites that aren’t mobile friendly wont’ rank high on mobile searches. Because mobile search is growing so quickly, it’s important that your website is optimized for mobile use.
  7. Don’t be too sales-oriented – Focus on providing businesses with something of value instead of focusing on getting their business. By providing educational content, you’ll engage your prospects and have a better chance of sales down the road.
  8. Follow up on your leads – Once you’ve captured a lead, don’t just assume that they’ll be ready to do business with your company at any second. You need to follow up on the lead, maybe even call them! Even though much of business is conducted online, a good old-fashioned phone call is usually a great end-cap to help land a sale.