B2B Marketing Considerations
A quick overview for engaging your B2B audience.
In the B2B pharma sector, engaging your audience is key to marketing success. Without an engaged audience, what do you have? From finding your audience to building your social media presence, in this post we will run through some B2B marketing considerations which will ensure you connect with your audience.
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1. FIND YOUR NICHE
Sounds simple doesn’t it? But this is essential to B2B marketing. You have to market to your sector, meaning choosing the correct platforms, and marketing techniques that work for that audience. Once you have found your niche, everything else is quite simple because you know exactly who you are marketing to, their interests and potential dislikes.
2. DO YOUR RESEARCH
It’s the first step in any B2B marketing campaign or before a new pharma product is launched. A step that must be completed to ensure the success of the future marketing activity, begin a review of the current situation, and from a marketing perspective, an examination of the current (or previous) marketing plan and activities. Fully understanding the marketplace, and what goes on within, is the critical first step within the B2B marketing activity.
3. GO BIG AND BOLD
Don’t settle for less. It’s good to once in a while do something big and unconventional to see if it works and draws your audience. If it works, great! Try and build on that for your next big post and make it even better. If it doesn’t draw the attention you hoped for, analyse it and look for reasons as to why it may not have worked out for you. It’s always good to think outside the box and try something different even if it doesn’t work because then you can mend mistakes for next time.
4. STUDY PATTERNS
It’s a good idea to look back through historic posts, what worked the best? Can you repeat that to gain the same reaction? Also, what didn’t work as well? Can you mend that in any way to change the outcome for future posts? Also, it’s always good to study competitors to see what is working for them and how can you take this for your own.
5. GET PERSONAL
Tailor posts to specific clients or other business’ that follow your social media. Create blog posts that relate to a specific part of your business that maybe only a niche audience will understand and appreciate. Use personal language, make the reader feel as though you are talking directly to them and trying to persuade them you know exactly what you are talking about. This way your audience feels appreciated and as though you have thought about them.
6. DON’T OVERCOMPLICATE
It’s easy to over complicate and over think your social media. Make sure you keep it simple and to the point. Never ramble on, and try to include the key words your audience are going to be searching. This ensures your post will always appear in the search results. If posts are too long, your audience may lose interest or not bother reading it at all. However, if the information you are posting is quite lengthy, use the correct punctuation to grab their attention like capital letters and exclamation marks or even the odd emoji!
7. BUILD YOUR LINKEDIN PROFILE
LinkedIn is the best platform to use to connect with your clients or prospects. Therefore, you are going to want to build this up to showcase everything you and your business can do as this is one the first places a business could look when they are wanting to work with you. Keeping your LinkedIn constantly updated with posts and business updates is crucial. Creating a following on LinkedIn may help you out in future.
8. CREATE YOUR BUYER PERSONA
In the pharmaceutical and related industries, due to its complexities, it's more important than ever to segment audiences to create stronger marketing campaigns. A buyer persona is a research-based profile that depicts a target customer. Buyer personas ensure that all marketing activities are aligned and striving towards the same goals. Do not underestimate this exercise as it underpins your entire B2B marketing plan.
9. GO THE ABM ROUTE
Account-based marketing (ABM), commonly referred to as relationship marketing and key account marketing, is a strategic approach to identifying, marketing to and building relationships with a target prospect or organisation. It is present and highly relevant for B2B pharmaceutical, life sciences and technology marketers, business development and commercial professionals at enterprise level where often the only differentiator between suppliers are relationships. It also works within our industries as there are often multiple decision-makers during any purchasing process.
10. …OR THE INBOUND ROUTE
Inbound marketing is a strategic mindset different from traditional marketing because it’s a more efficient way to create the experience that people are looking for instead of paying to interrupt one. Inbound marketing brings with it a number of advantages for B2B life science organisations, many of which complement each other.
11. CREATE NEW CONTENT
Be different. Be unique. Spend time researching marketing techniques and competitors to find what works but make it your own. This doesn’t mean everything you do has to be unique and something that’s never been done before but try and make even just one aspect of your marketing unique to you. This may help you stand out from competitors and be that extra aspect that makes a client choose you over someone else.
B2B MARKETING CONSIDERATIONS
Multiple decisions makers and generally longer sales cycles makes B2B marketing significantly different to B2C marketing. But you are still marketing to humans within those big corporate organisations; never lose track of this. Your marketing campaigns and approaches should be personal but they should also be strategic. Don’t forget, B2B markets are smaller than their B2C counterparts - people talk.
