10 B2B Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Professional Services Firm

by | Apr 9, 2020 | Blog

Many B2B marketing strategies focus primarily on direct and outbound techniques, such as targeting clients or prospective buyers directly. This approach requires the strategy to be compelling and persuasive enough that the audience responds and engages with your services.

While it is still important to incorporate these techniques into any marketing strategy, research indicates that the B2B funnel has changed. Buyers are much more likely to do a Google search to find and evaluate a prospect than to check personal references. This has broadened the range of B2B marketing strategies at your disposal, and staying ahead means using those strategies to their fullest potential.

There are 10 strategies that can be used to form a solid foundation to promote your B2B organisation to an active audience.

1) Research

Research is the start point of any marketing campaign. Using marketplace research and brand research, as well as detailed studies, you will be able to make more informed decisions. They’ll give you an objective basis for your marketing and provide you with valuable baselines for measuring your results.

By conducting research, you’ll know your clients better — which puts you in a position to serve them better. Market research also gives you insight into how your processes are performing. You’ll know which aspects of your firm are performing most successfully and develop a better understanding of which services you should offer.

Studies have shown that firms that conduct systematic research on their prospects and clients grow three to ten times faster and are up to two times more profitable than peers that don’t pursue research.

2) Niche-driven Strategy

One of your most important business considerations is specialisation and niche targeting. Research has shown that the fastest-growing firms are those that serve a niche market. This means that your business can become an undisputable expert and leader.

Specialisation makes all of your marketing efforts easier. You are able to easily define your service and immediately distinguish yourself from the competition. A specialisation is a differentiator that proves itself.

3) A High-Performance Website

Your website is one of your most crucial assets. It needs to be an information-rich projection of your expertise. It is often the first stop for new customers and the first point of contact for your regular customers.

Your website is a critical tool for building visibility. Potential clients search online to find service providers, and they need to be able to find your firm’s website first. Your site needs to demonstrate your level of expertise and show your customers how you respond to their pain points.

And as new visitors reach your site, robust educational content and carefully targeted offers can drive leads to closer and closer engagements, eventually bringing qualified leads straight to you.

Your site design can influence your audience’s perceptions, aid recall, and differentiate your business. The power of design to engage audiences is often under-appreciated. It is important that your website be the face of your business.

The functionality of your site across devices is also important. If your site does not perform well on a smartphone, people will lose confidence in your business. Attention to detail is important.

4) Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Your target audience has to be able to find your site for it to be effective. That’s where search engine optimization comes in.

SEO is complex and ever-changing, yet it is still considered one of the most important aspects of your online marketing strategy.

On-site SEO uses targeted keyword phrases to communicate the concepts on your site that matter to your audience. These keyword phrases typically focus on your services and expertise. The purpose of on-site SEO is to communicate to search engines what your website is about. This allows search engines to produce more relevant results to searchers. And when audiences search for insight on your area of speciality, they’ll find you.

Off-site SEO takes the form of links to your website, either through outside engagement or guest articles in other publications, for example. These efforts work to increase your site’s authority as a widely recognized leader on your topic. As more high authority and relevant websites link to your website, search engines will begin to see your site as more credible – resulting in higher rankings.

5) Social Media

In recent studies, more than 60{d1a1694403c5660430dc420b8f142668f13097a51a1c1fc172179b975fdf78b3} of buyers said that they check out new service providers on social media before searching for a website, ahead of personal recommendations.

A recent study on referral marketing has found that 17{d1a1694403c5660430dc420b8f142668f13097a51a1c1fc172179b975fdf78b3} of expertise-based referrals are made on the basis of interactions on social media. Social media is an accelerator for the reach of your reputation, expertise, and content. It allows you to network and connect with valuable contacts and influencers, as well as monitor your brand by social listening.

6) Advertising

There are a number of platforms on which your firm can advertise effectively:

  • Industry publications and websites
  • Social media
  • Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
  • Retargeting – A cookie-based technology that uses a simple JavaScript code to anonymously “follow” your audience across the Web and serve relevant ads

Advertising doesn’t just promote your services, it can also play an important role in driving content downloads, increasing both your expertise and visibility.

It’s important, however, to use forms of advertising best-suited to professional services. LinkedIn, retargeting, and other industry-focused advertising tends to work best, because they allow you to most directly target appropriate industry audiences, which leads to more conversions, higher click-through rates, and lower cost per download.

Social media advertising is rapidly changing. From LinkedIn to Facebook, Twitter to WhatsApp, there are millions of people using social media who are researching for professional firms and looking for solutions. You can reach this audience by keeping your interactions open and inviting.

7) Referral Marketing

Studies of referral marketing strategies in professional services have revealed that more than 81.5{d1a1694403c5660430dc420b8f142668f13097a51a1c1fc172179b975fdf78b3} of providers have received a referral from someone who wasn’t a client. The vast majority of these referrals are based on a firm’s reputation for specific expertise.

Content marketing used in conjunction with the other tactics in this list can build your brand awareness and further your reach. An understanding of your expertise among audiences can lead to referrals and new business.

8) Marketing Automation, CRM, and Lead Nurturing

Marketing automation replaces high-touch, repetitive manual processes with automated ones, supported by technology solutions. It brings together all of your online marketing channels into one centralised system for creating, managing, and measuring programs and campaigns.

As with any technological tool, it’s essential to select the right marketing automation software for your firm. Make sure the size, complexity, and scalability of a prospective solution is a good match for your needs.

CRM: Another essential software is a Customer Relationship Management System (CRM). CRM can be used to track and organise opportunities and client information. The system can help you stay organised and connected with clients as your operations grow.

Your CRM serves as the database for all the information you collect about opportunities and clients, including specific interactions with them. The information can be entered, stored, and accessed by employees in different firm departments, synchronising efforts across your firm.

Lead Nurturing: Email marketing still ranks highly as one of the most effective forms of B2B marketing. Targeted, analytics-driven email marketing campaigns allow you to deliver soft and hard offers for specific buyer roles, tailored to a buyer’s particular place in the buying process.

Similarly, drip email campaigns enable you to send more targeted offers to segments of your audience over a set period of time. This builds closer engagement (and educates further) through successive, relevant content and offers.

9) Testing and Optimisation

Testing and optimisation allow you to iterate your marketing efforts and make ongoing decisions based on hard data. You should never stop testing your marketing campaigns and adjusting them accordingly. This includes:

A/B testing of emails and landing pages to learn what customers are responding to. You should also test the rendering of emails so you know how they will look on different front ends.

10) Analytics and Reporting

Analysing the right metrics to measure results effectively help guide your campaign. Google Analytics is an essential tool for measuring and analyzing site traffic. MOZ can help you study and improve your SEO results, while tools like Hootsuite provide detailed social media analytics.

Analytics and testing help you to truly understand what is working and what is not. Embrace them, use them. They will help you turn your marketing efforts from an art form into a science.

Conclusion

To remain competitive, your firm must constantly assess your B2B marketing strategies and understand how you can reach a new audience.

The world of online marketing is evolving and to remain competitive you must engage, establish and nurture relationships. To understand those relationships, you need to know who your audience is, and that is as simple as looking at your marketing strategy and analytics.