While there are many challenges that businesses face when marketing to other businesses, two stand out. First is the long sales cycle, from the generation of demand to actually closing a sale. Second is the fact that businesses are marketing to other businesses, which can be very different from marketing to consumers.
It can be difficult to stand out from a large group of competitors.
Covid-19 has made it so that traditional marketing and sales tactics cannot be used to get leads and close deals.
It’s not that B2B companies aren’t succeeding, they are just managing it differently.
The main point is that every company has to face its own set of obstacles and difficulties. How successful you can be depends on how well you’re able to overcome these issues.
In this article, we will discuss the five most common B2B marketing challenges and how to overcome them.
But let us begin with the first things first.
The Types of B2B Marketing
B2B marketing has changed a lot in recent years. Cold calls, organizing seminars, and participating in trade shows are no longer enough. This is because buyers are looking for information about B2B businesses in other places.
The buyers are spending most of their time online, as you guessed. According to research, 75% of B2B customers use social media to make a purchase. This is why B2B marketing is moving online.
Here are the main types of digital B2B marketing that are in full swing today:Â
Social Media Marketing
Most businesses have an online presence, including social media.
As stated above, social media plays an important role in the decision-making process of B2B buyers. Therefore, businesses in all industries are creating content on platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Facebook to reach their target audience.
An excellent social media marketing strategy can help you in a number of ways, including increasing the amount of organic traffic you receive, establishing you as a thought leader, and making you stand out more in comparison to your competitors.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is the most important aspect of marketing. Content marketing includes blog posts, articles, white papers, ebooks, YouTube videos, Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook posts, infographics, and more.
The type of content a business uses depends on what stage of the sales funnel the lead is at.
An example of this would be if you were to post articles and introductory videos about your product or services in order to generate interest and awareness. This is the first stage of the sales funnel, where potential customers become aware of what you have to offer and realize that they need it. Ideally, this content should be free and accessible to everyone, without requiring customers to give away any personal information.
The next step in the sales funnel, after the buyer has reached the interest and decision stages, is to get the prospect to sign up for a mailing list in exchange for gated content. Gated content can be an ebook, whitepaper, or any other piece of long-form content.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the most effective outbound marketing practices today. It is one of the traditional marketing strategies that still holds its ground. Businesses of all types and sizes use emails as a way to nurture existing customers, follow up with prospects, and revive the connection with dormant customers. However, very few companies know how to use email marketing effectively.
They are also useful for communicating with other businesses. Emails can be a great way to generate leads and keep buyers updated on the latest offerings from the company.
Emails are a great way to connect with potential customers on a personal level. You can tailor each email to the individual depending on what stage of the process they are in, which will make them more likely to engage with your company.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
If you cannot find a company on Google’s Search Engine Results Pages, then thare missing o0ut on some large opportunities. It does not matter how good their product or service is, if they’re not findable online, they will probably struggle.
Content marketing with the help of SEO is the best way to get organic traffic to your B2B website. Social media marketing and email marketing can also help get traffic to your website, but they are not as effective as content marketing.
An effective SEO strategy must be implemented throughout the buyer’s journey and sales funnel to be most effective. Although SEO can be very beneficial for B2B businesses, that is beyond the scope of this article.
Now that you are aware of the types of marketing that are predominantly used by B2B businesses, let us discuss the challenges that these businesses face in terms of marketing.
Top B2B Marketing Challenges
Just like any other business, B2B companies face their fair share of challenges. And, while some of the challenges might be specific to industries, here are the common ones that ail most B2B companies that are new to the digital marketing arena:
1. Setting Yourself Apart
The most obvious challenge for B2B marketers is standing out.
In the past, large companies with lots of money for marketing would do better than others in the market because they could afford to buy ads on TV and radio. But the internet has changed that.
Small and medium-sized businesses are competing with large corporations by using internet marketing. These businesses have realized that they need to use this type of marketing to be successful in today’s market.
The internet has made it easy for just about anyone to create a brand and start selling. However, the downside to this is that it is easy for your competitors as well. In today’s business climate, it can be difficult to set yourself apart from the other brands in your niche.
The only way to stand out and drown out the noise is to become a trusted thought leader within your industry. How do you achieve that? We will discuss this later in the article.
2. Insufficient Resources
One of the biggest barriers to content marketing that many businesses face is a lack of time. Another barrier is a lack of sufficient budget. The problem with this approach is that, since it takes skill to produce great content, many would-be content producers are faced with what is known as the project management triangle: How cost, time and scope constrain quality.
How to Overcome It
If you want high-quality content, you will have to pay for it in some way. This could mean investing your own time to produce it or paying someone else to do it for you.
Although outsourcing may be less expensive, it has potential dangers. For one thing, another company controls your production schedule. Also, you could end up with content that is of poor quality, irrelevant to your brand, or does not meet your standards, which could damage your reputation.
You can save money by producing your own content, but unless you can balance running a business and running a blog, you may have to put in more hours.
Even though content marketing may seem like a free marketing strategy, it’s important to remember that there are still costs associated with it. Before you write your first post or hire someone to do it for you, be prepared to deal with the financial aspects of content marketing.
3. Increasing Competition
There has already been a lot of blogging about your topic, whether it is a small needlecraft business or enterprise-level IT hardware. And it is only getting harder to get people to pay attention to what you have to say because there is so much competition for their attention.
The problem is that this makes the first challenge worse. As competition for a limited number of readers (even large ones) gets stronger, you have to work harder to create better content, which takes more time and money. The result is a race to see who can produce the best content most regularly. And as competition for readers’ attention gets more intense, their expectations of what you provide get higher, putting you under even more pressure to deliver great content all the time.
How to Overcome It
There is no guaranteed success in content marketing, but if your content is bad, you will definitely fail. Every post you publish must be the best it can be, and you may need to keep this up for years if you want to build and maintain a really large audience.
It is very difficult to always produce great content – even the most successful blogs occasionally publish material that is only average. However, you should always aim for greatness. Additionally, you must take steps to ensure that your content gets seen by as many people as possible (for example, posting it on Medium and other websites where it will be seen by new readers).
The good news is that the increasingly intense competition in content marketing has created a unique challenge and opportunity for savvy content marketers.
4. Keeping Quality Consistently High
Some well-known sites publish subpar content because they can rely on their name recognition to bring in readers. In contrast, some of the best content I’ve read recently has come from small blogs run by just a few people. This means that there are opportunities to publish great content if you’re willing to put in the work.
How to Overcome It
Although it may seem that an article published in a well-known magazine would be more successful than a post on a new blog, if you work hard and only publish high-quality content, eventually your postings will be better than much of the other content online. Don’t give up even when it seems like no one is reading your blog.
Additionally, you should not frequently compare your work to that of other publications. Although it is beneficial to be cognizant of general editorial standards and recent content developments, you should instead concentrate on improving your most recent article more than your previous one – rather than agonizing over whether your latest article is stronger than something you read in Wired magazine last week.
5. Shifts in Trends Toward Paid Promotion
There is no single answer that will work in all cases for the problem mentioned. Only relying on organic social methods of promotion may work for a time, but if there is a need to reach a wider audience or grow more quickly, paid promotion should be considered. Just as you need to financially invest in the content itself, you may also need to pay to ensure it has the desired impact.
How to Overcome It
There are dozens of variables that will dictate the best social media advertising strategy for your business, such as:
- Budget
- Target market demographics
- Typical social media consumption habits of your audience
- Content type
- Device compatibility of content
- Desired business outcomes
It is important to set goals for your content promotion campaigns, regardless of how much money you are willing to spend. Do you want to increase your number of followers, generate referral traffic, capture emails for your newsletter, or get external links from industry publications? Consider what you want your campaign to achieve before making an investment.
6. Impatience and Unrealistic Expectations
One challenge that marketers face is impatience from management when discussing how long it may take for content to impact the business. Even with a large and skilled team, it can often take several years for content to have the desired effect.
Many executives and managers are used to the relatively immediate return on more traditional marketing strategies, so it’s difficult for them to fund content marketing projects and potentially wait several years for them to pay off.
How to Overcome It
The most popular blogs have been around for two to three years, and some of the most successful ones have been around for five to eight years. Content marketing does not provide overnight success but rather takes time to establish an audience and build credibility.
Managing your expectations is important when embarking on a content marketing campaign. Be realistic about traffic and engagement targets to avoid disappointment. Achieving manageable goals is more successful than missing ambitious targets.
If your content marketing campaigns turn out to be more successful than you thought they would be, change your goals accordingly. But make sure you have enough data to support changing your plan.
Every good B2B practice mentioned in this article is associated with content that is either created or recycled to be used for different platforms, target audiences, and situations. In other words, good content is material that people find both interesting and informative.
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