B2B Go-To-Market Strategy

B2B Go-To-Market Strategy

In 2021, we saw thousands of companies succumb to the growing trend of digital transformation. Forced to find new solutions for traditional business problems due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many businesses adopted digital marketing strategies.

How does this affect your B2B go-to-market strategy? Statistics from Hubspot’s ‘Not Another State of Marketing Report’ for 2021 show that businesses relied on social media more than any other marketing channel. That tells us several things:

• Social media can play a key role in your B2B GTM strategy
• Even though you’re marketing to other businesses, you don’t have to rely on traditional marketing channels such as email

In this guide, we’ll go through some of the key elements of a successful GTM strategy for a B2B market.

Define your audience

As with any marketing endeavor, your number one priority should be to define your audience. A B2C (business to customer) business will adopt a different approach than a B2B one.

Without an ideal buyer persona in mind as you formulate your go-to-market strategy for B2B, you’ll fall at the first hurdle. 

Why? Because you’ll enter a competitive marketplace without the faintest idea of who your customers are. Consider that your competitors will have dedicated resources to extensive market research and promote their products accordingly. Identify your target audience so you can sell to them.

In the B2B dynamic, it’s also important to get a handle on what your USPs are. Are you a software agency offering a variety of features to help clients manage their projects?

If so, you can change up your marketing approach according to the feature in question. For example, if your service includes Kanban boards for viewing project progress, you might want to focus on striking visuals in your messaging. If you want to convince clients to use your time tracking feature, you can focus your messaging on the idea of wasted time and lost productivity.

In short, as a B2B company, it’s important not only to define your audience but also to determine what your key features are. That way, you can mix up your marketing and appeal to everyone from the recruitment manager to the office worker.

Select your marketing channels

We can’t stress enough how important it is to select the right marketing channels to promote your product. If you get your messaging spot on but use the wrong medium, you won’t drum up as much interest as you anticipated. 

Just imagine what would happen if a company selling activewear to elderly individuals were to use a social media platform like TikTok to get through to their audience…

So what are the best B2B marketing channels to consider?

Social media 

Believe it or not, social media can be an excellent channel for communicating the benefits of your products to other businesses and building toward sales conversions.

However, it’s all in the platform you use. LinkedIn is hands-down the best social media platform to focus on when your clientele comprises entrepreneurs and working professionals. As the platform for professional networking, LinkedIn is full of people looking to connect and do business.

The best way to use LinkedIn to generate interest for your product is through content creation.

Content marketing

Before you start putting out content left, right, and center, think about what you want your brand voice to be.

• Do you want to present your company as an authority on a particular subject?
• Are you going to use lighthearted humor to discuss common pain points?
• Will you appeal to clients with statistics and case studies?

Whatever you decide on, make sure you stay consistent with your messaging across all platforms to lend weight to your online reputation and credibility.

Once you establish your voice and identity, start to think about a content strategy. Come up with blog post ideas that you can post for each stage of the buyer’s journey, for example, or outline which features you’ll focus on for each article. That way, you won’t find yourself stuck for ideas and unable to produce content regularly.

After all, that’s the key to success with B2B content marketing: quality and consistency.

SEO

To boost the visibility of your content, whether it’s on your website, blog, or social media page, you need to use SEO (search engine optimization) best practices.

That means refraining from stuffing your content with keywords. Strategic keyword placement goes a long way in convincing search engine algorithms that you’re producing a quality piece of content.

Even though SEO is often conflated with keywords, it encompasses so much more than that. Here are some ways to optimize SEO and increase the likelihood of success with your B2B marketing efforts:

• Optimize conversion rates throughout your sales funnel 
• Boost on-page traffic with backlinks
• Carry out a web page audit to see how you can improve it 

Once you’ve planned out your B2B GTM strategy, you’ll want to put it into practice. To speed up your progress to market, project management tools like Wrike can help you over the line with related tasks and projects. 

Wrike provides business owners and entrepreneurs like you with the tools to manage teams, collaborate effectively, and streamline workflows. Sign up for a free two-week trial to see how Wrike can help you get to market.