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How To Improve Your B2B Customer Acquisition Strategy

June 14, 2023 No Comments

By Samuel Thimothy,

Acquiring new customers is the cornerstone of business growth, and crafting the right acquisition strategy plays an important role in achieving that goal. However, there are several reasons why these strategies may fail, from poor communication between sales and marketing teams to poor positioning and messaging.

With the right approach, you can win more customers and drive sustainable growth for your business. Below are the most common mistakes businesses make when developing their acquisition strategy and steps you can take to improve your organization’s approach.

Siloed Sales And Marketing Teams

One of the most common reasons why customer acquisition initiatives fail is because there’s a disconnect between sales and marketing. If they aren’t sharing data, it’s difficult to create an effective strategy. I’ll give you an example.

Let’s say your marketing team spends months creating targeted content for a specific persona. They invest time and money in ads, promote content on social media and drive lots of traffic to the company’s website. But when those leads convert, your sales team immediately disqualifies them.

It can be a huge problem, but the solution is very simple. Make sure these departments communicate and agree on what a “qualified” lead means so there are no unmet expectations. Also, implement a system where leads are automatically sent from marketing to sales so that nothing falls through the cracks.

Sales’ Focus On Existing Clients

Another reason why customer acquisition strategies fail is that sales teams are too focused on existing clients. It makes sense because existing clients are low-hanging fruit. They already know who you are, they already trust you, and they’re more likely to buy from you again. So why bother trying to acquire new customers?

The problem with this line of thinking is that it ignores the fact that many clients will eventually leave. It’s just a matter of time. That’s why it’s important to have a constant stream of new customers coming in the door: so that you’re never left high and dry.

How can you fix this problem? Set quotas for your sales team and create incentives for bringing in new business. Be sure to give them all the resources they need to succeed, such as access to a customer relationship management (CRM) tool or lead generation software.

Poor Positioning And Mixed Messages

If your company has expanded its products or services over time, it’s possible that your positioning and messaging are now confusing. This can make it hard for potential customers to understand what you do and why they should buy from you.

Imagine you’re a digital marketing agency that started out by offering SEO. You’ve since expanded into content marketing, paid advertising, email marketing, social media management, web design and video production—essentially, anything that fits into the “digital marketing” category.

Now when potential customers come to your website, they have no idea what you specialize in. Unclear positioning makes a company look like a jack-of-all-trades. Someone looking for SEO services will now go and hire another SEO agency that has one specific offer.

Fixing this problem is all about getting back to basics and making sure your positioning and messaging are clear and concise. Define who your ideal customer is and what problem you’re solving for them. Everything else should fall into place around that core message.

How To Improve Your Customer Acquisition Strategy

Not feeling particularly optimistic about your company’s acquisition strategy? You’re not alone. Most businesses struggle to keep up with customers’ ever-changing needs. Fortunately, there are some simple ways to improve your approach. Take the following steps:

Step 1: Make It Flexible

Your customer acquisition strategy has to be flexible, especially if you are accounting for future growth. Without the ability to adapt and change with your business, acquisition strategies just won’t cut it. Make sure that there’s enough flexibility built into your plan so that you can adapt as needed—whether it’s due to big successes or major industry disruption.

Step 2: Make It Sustainable

Good acquisition strategy can be sustained in the long term—and all too often this isn’t taken into account when businesses are making decisions. Before picking any particular path forward, ask yourself if you’ll be able to do it in five or even 10 years. Lasting success boils down to finding something that works now and keeps working in the future.

Step 3: Make It Targeted

A lot of businesses make the mistake of trying to appeal to everyone with their acquisition strategy, but this is rarely effective. Instead, it’s much better to focus on a specific target audience and tailor your plans accordingly. When you know who you’re trying to reach, you can create an acquisition strategy that’s much more likely to be successful.

Step 4: Make It Diversified

Another common mistake businesses make is putting all their eggs in one basket. This can be very risky because if something happens to that one channel, your entire acquisition strategy could come crashing down. To protect yourself against this, make sure your efforts are diversified and include multiple channels.

Improving your customer acquisition strategy doesn’t have to be complicated. With the right amount of research and effort, you can build effective strategies that will help you reach your goals and grow your business into something bigger.

Feature Image Credit: Hinterhaus Productions 2016

By Samuel Thimothy,

VP at OneIMS.com, an inbound marketing agency, and co-founder of Clickx.io, the digital marketing intelligence platform.

Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invitation-only, fee-based organization comprised of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs 45 and younger. YEC members represent nearly every industry, generate billions of dollars in revenue each year and have created tens of thousands of jobs. Learn more at yec.co. Questions about an article? Email [email protected].

Sourced from Forbes

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The ‘Flippening’ will usher in a Golden Age of B2B marketing

May 3, 2022 No Comments

By Peter Weinberg & Jon Lombardo

Brand marketing creates more financial value than short-term performance marketing – the sooner B2B marketers flip their perspective and start allocating budgets accordingly, the better it will be for everyone in B2B.

Should you be optimistic about the future of B2B marketing?

We are optimists, believe it or not. We believe B2B marketing is on the cusp of a Golden Age, a glorious revolution that shall be ushered in by a momentous event.

And we call this event…the Flippening.

To understand the Flippening, first you must understand the three numbers that explain everything that’s wrong with the B2B marketing industry.

80%, 95% and 8%.

First, 80%. If you talk to a financial analyst, they’ll tell you something like 80% of your share price is based on cash flows that are 10n years out into the future. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Wall Street is not short term. The market values businesses on their future cash flows.

Second, 95%. According to our research with the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, something like 95% of buyers are not ‘in-market’ to buy your products right now. That means effective marketing works primarily by reaching the 95% of customers who are not yet in-market, increasing the odds your brand gets remembered when those customers do enter the market in some future period.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, delivering short-term sales isn’t the most important job for B2B marketers, because only 5% of customers are ready to buy today. The most important job is influencing the 95% of future buyers who generate future cash flows.

And finally, 8%. According to LinkedIn data, B2B marketers spend around 8% of their budgets on brand awareness objectives. Something like 92% of B2B budgets are dedicated to short term, bottom funnel objectives like lead generation.

This so-called performance marketing may capture sales from in-market buyers, but it has little to no effect on future buyers. Brand marketing is much better at building the lasting memory structures that determine future sales.

85%. 95%. 8%.

One of these numbers makes 0% sense. If 80% of your stock price is based on future cash flows and 95% of your buyers are future buyers, why would you spend only 8% of your budget on brand marketing, which increases future sales from future buyers? Why would you spend 92% of your money chasing after 5% of your customers? Isn’t that a massive misallocation of capital?

Yup!

But don’t worry, the correction is coming.

Brace yourself for the Flippening.

The Flippening: When 8% brand becomes 51% brand

So what the flip is the Flippening?

The Flippening is that magical moment when B2B businesses realise that brand marketing creates more financial value than short term performance marketing, and B2B CMOs begin to allocate at least 51% of their budgets to brand marketing.

The Flippening will spark a positive chain reaction, which will be good for everyone in B2B.

The shift to brand will benefit businesses, since brand 1) increases long- and short-term sales, 2) improves pricing power, 3) reduces talent acquisition and retention costs, 4) unlocks growth in new categories, and much more.

Sales does not share power. The bottom of the funnel is the land of Mordor, where sales torments marketing for all eternity.

By creating more commercial value, marketing will enhance its status within B2B organisations. Instead of sitting in the basement, colouring in our whitepapers and sales collateral, marketing will get back to the boardroom with the decision makers.

Moving up the funnel will also make the job of B2B marketing a million times more enjoyable. The problem with the bottom of the funnel is that marketing has to ‘share’ its success with sales. And as Gandalf once said to us: “There is only one Lord of the Rings, and he does not share power.”

There is only one department that will ever get credit for delivering short-term sales, and it’s the sales department. Sales does not share power. The bottom of the funnel is the land of Mordor, where sales torments marketing for all eternity. The top of the funnel is the Shire, where marketers can frolic like happy little hobbits. Marketing has a monopoly at the top of the funnel. Only we can influence future buyers at scale through brand advertising.

The Flippening will even benefit performance marketers, both by lowering their precious cost-per-leads and by increasing their budgets. That’s right – we don’t believe brands’ growth will come at the expense of lead generation. It’s incremental. Businesses need to both influence ‘out-market’ buyers and capture in-market buyers. The Flippening will grow the overall marketing budget. Performance marketing will receive a smaller slice of a much bigger pie.

Yum!

Feature Image Credit: Shutterstock

By Peter Weinberg & Jon Lombardo

Sourced from MarketingWeek

In News

B2B video marketing strategy. Tips on how to produce successful video content

June 17, 2021 No Comments

Sourced from appPicker

Many newbies overlook the importance of video marketing. It appears to them that no one is going to waste their time watching even short clips, not to mention the long ones. Nevertheless, there are plenty of successful video marketing examples out there to contradict this point of view.

That being said, let’s delve more into B2B video marketing.

B2B video marketing – Why is it a thing?

Video production is a blessing for the employees of both producing and consuming companies. The first ones get the chance to express themselves, while the others can rest a bit from textual information and enjoy someone’s creativity.

So, back to the point. For B2B businesses, video promotion is a part of a digital marketing campaign that still maintains its important role. Video articles, tutorials, interviews, and many other forms of video content marketing stay popular among approximately 80% of consumers. Creators find this way of promotion effective as well. Almost 82% of businesses currently use it in their marketing strategies and plan to continue in the future.

Top 7 tips on how to start a video marketing strategy

While it’s clear that videos attract and engage a variety of people, how does the behind-the-scenes process of developing a cost-effective B2B video strategy look? There are 7 relatively easy steps to follow.

Step 1. Make sure you actually need videos

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Video series can be completely unnecessary and redundant for some companies. Marketers and business owners must define whether they really need to develop and use video content strategy. And if they do, it’s worth thinking about how to do it effectively.

Step 2. Define the goal of your strategy

The next step is to understand why a company needs to introduce business videos. Sales funnel conversion rate won’t increase itself simply because a couple of cat videos were uploaded to the blog posts. There must be a purpose behind the content, and certain video goals should be defined:

how many views should videos get?
how many likes (and dislikes) are expected?
how high should the content be on the search results page?

It’s necessary to think about these and other content marketing goals a company could benefit from.

Step 3. What does your audience think?

If your target audience appreciates videos, B2B marketers should conduct research on which content will suit their needs best. Usually, it includes such brand videos as:

event videos;
explainer videos (tutorials);
customer testimonials;
product reviews;
interviews, and many others.

Step 4. Choose your marketing platform

Choosing the right video platform requires knowing your audience’s preferences. While the majority of people use YouTube, there are other possible options for uploading a product brand video:

Twitch;
Dailymotion;
9GAG TV;
TED, etc.

Step 5. Analyse

Promoting a product or service is impossible without collecting the data and analysing it. It’s vital to understand:

what types of videos receive the most attention;
what time is the most optimal for a video to be uploaded;
how many new clients were attracted by videos;
which people leave most comments and likes, and many other things to consider.

Step 6. Adjust

Learn from your mistakes and make some corrections to your B2B marketing video strategy if necessary. It’s almost impossible to get it right the first time unless there is someone experienced and competent to assist.

Step 7. Enjoy the progress

Watch your views and likes grow and feel free to start working on the next project.

To sum up B2B marketing videos

It’s more natural for people to actually see the subject rather than read a text about it. This applies to B2B companies as well. There is always a person behind every firm, not some sort of collective intelligence to whom it’s easier to process enormous textual information rather than simply watch a video on YouTube or other platforms.

Companies can get a piece of advice from professional marketing teams concerning all types of marketing, including video promotion. Such agencies can be found in the USA, Europe, Canada, USA and other parts of the world. While it’s entirely possible to develop and launch a marketing company by own efforts with 7 easy steps, opting for a skill never hurts.

Sourced from appPicker

In News

B2B Influencer Marketing Strategy: 5 Questions to Ask First

March 26, 2021 No Comments

By Lee Odden

It’s no mystery that we’re big fans of influencer marketing where B2B brands engage with industry experts and key opinion leaders to drive conversations, consideration and conversions.

Marketing leaders at B2B companies large and small are realizing how much influence can play a role in virtually every customer communication. As 2021 picks up steam, the practice of influencer marketing presents unique opportunities to optimize digitally transformed B2B marketing.

That said, while the role of influence can be universally present in content and communications, the approach that will work for any given B2B brand is by no means cookie cutter. Influencer engagement is not simply an advertising buy or some kind of programmatic marketing tactic. It’s simultaneously dynamic and open to certain kinds of optimization and scale through process, operations and expertise.

Before embarking on a pilot, campaigns or an evolved always-on influencer program, it’s important for B2B marketers to answer a few key questions to make sure the rationale is sound, the approach has merit and the expectations line up with resources and goals.

At TopRank Marketing we’ve helped numerous B2B brands run their very first influencer marketing pilot projects and campaigns. Our work with B2B brands like LinkedIn, SAP and Dell over the past 9 years has taught us that there are many key questions to be answered in order to ensure

Influencer marketing makes sense for a particular B2B brand
That a specific approach matches goals, resources and expectations
The tactics of identifying and engaging influencers are appropriate to content formats, channels and audience
The program reaches expected KPIs and drives value both for the business and influencers
Early efforts set the stage for future success

To help B2B brands thinking about launching an influencer marketing initiative, here are 5 of the most important questions to answer:

1. What is a B2B influencer for our brand? Our customers?

Success with B2B influence means avoiding falling into the popularity trap and thinking that all influencers must have a massive following.

An influencer in the B2B world is someone that has domain expertise, is recognized by peers for that expertise, creates content or communicates about that expertise, and has attracted the attention and trust of a network.

B2B influencers are also often called subject matter experts, key opinion leaders, or simply experts about a certain topic. This differs than in B2C where popularity and being able to publish influencer-created content on their own channels to a large audience reigns supreme. B2C influencers are most often very self aware of their actual or aspirational influence and bring content creation, personality, persuasion and publishing skills to the situation.

For B2B influencers, the idea of being an “influencer” may not be a priority, so B2B brands need to find ways to activate and engage them in ways that might be new to the influencer. Fortunately, there are best practices around how to nurture both external and internal subject matter experts to collaborate with marketing in ways that can drive authentic conversations amongst a desirable audience.

There are several key characteristics to look for in a B2B influencer: Proficiency, Popularity, Personality, Publisher, Promoter. For a deeper dive into what top B2B influencers look and sound like, check out Season 3 of Break Free B2B in progress.

Understanding that everyone has some degree of influence is as important for a new influencer marketing effort as is understanding that B2B brands need to be clear about what topics they want to be influential about. Finding B2B influencers for a specific brand means identifying the topics that matter to customers in the context of the B2B brand’s marketing narrative. Topics of importance to customers relative to the B2B brand’s key messages, products and solutions helps us understand whether a particular influencer has the attention and ability to influence their network. We do that by using software that helps evaluate a given influencer’s audience for topical relevance, resonance and reach.

There are different types of influencers to engage according to the type of influencer marketing project being implemented. Some programs might call for celebrity level “brandividuals“, others might focus more on those with industry analyst level expertise, or niche influencers that have deep product expertise and specific media creation skills that align with the content preferences of a B2B brand’s audience. At the same time, some influencers might already be fans of your B2B brand and others might be strong advocates of ideas that align with your brand but not be advocates yet.

The opportunity in identifying what a B2B influencer looks like for your brand starts with understanding the topics of influence that matter to your customers and that are most relevant to your solutions. That topic understanding can be extended to the creation of an ideal influencer profile and the matching of influencer types to the expectations and experiences created for customers.

To answer, “Where can I find B2B influencers?” marketers need to look beyond their own opinions and experiences and towards data. Influencers that create evidence of their expertise through digital content can be identified with influencer marketing software or social media software. However, keep in mind that many B2B influencers do not focus solely on social media to proclaim their expertise and more in-depth research into industry associations, special interest groups, events, publications, email newsletters and emerging formats like Clubhouse should be conducted.

2. What can we expect to achieve working with influencers?

Virtually all B2B brand communications with customers is a consideration for including 3rd party expertise for credibility and help with distribution.

Fundamentally, influencers can create value for B2B brands in a few different ways:

Add credibility to brand content
Help brand content reach new audiences through promotion
Provide B2B brands with advisory services
Perform as a brand advocate through ongoing content engagement
Help create content for thought leadership and demand gen purposes
Add signals of credibility to content for SEO
Facilitate content distribution and brand social network growth
Provide expertise for earned media, events and marketing content

In our research as reported in the State of B2B Influencer Marketing Report, we found that the measurable benefits for B2B brands to work with influencers included:

What’s important for B2B marketers to understand when it comes to what’s possible with influencers is that we’re talking about partnering with people, not simply using them to some brand end. Rather than thinking of influencers only as a means to an end or a tool for content creation and distribution, it is more valuable for all when B2B brands think of influencers as partners they can work with to achieve mutual goals. That partnership can turn to authentic and enthusiastic brand advocacy more quickly than a transactional approach.

For more specific ideas, check out this list of 25 B2B influencer marketing campaign and engagement ideas.

3. What are some good influencer engagement models?

Many early stage influencer programs start with micro-activations as part of a nurturing effort to develop relationships between brand and influencer. In many cases, an agency is tasked with creating these connections because they have unique expertise at influencer outreach and/or may already have the desired influencers in the agency network.

The right engagement model really depends on the approach.

For a pilot influencer content marketing campaign designed to create a business case for potential expansion of an influencer marketing program that has some lead time, it might be best to develop quick rapport with influencers by recognizing their expertise publicly. Then follow up and invite them to collaborate on small asks with great exposure. Through these early micro-activations, the right influencers can be sorted for a larger contribution to the pilot content project. See this case study on how LinkedIn has taken a relationship building approach to their always-on influence program working with sales and marketing influencers.

Alternatively, if there is not much lead time for organic relationship building with a pilot, then professional influencers can be engaged for their services to contribute to the pilot. The cost and perceived authenticity of content disclaimed as sponsored may be worth it to get a pilot out quickly. Or some combination of organic relationship building and paid influencer engagement might be most appropriate.

Understanding the right engagement model can be helped in part by reviewing solid B2B influencer marketing examples and case studies to understand what goes into successful B2B influencer marketing campaigns.

Also, it’s important to understand that working with influencers for an industrial or manufacturing business might be a bit different than how influencer marketing for tech companies might work. The topics of interest to customers and of most relevance to influencers and the brand will help identify the right influencer program approach, influencer identification and engagement.

Many pilots lead to sequences of campaigns which may engage the same influencers or different influencers each time. Lack of engagement in between campaigns will make securing influencers more difficult. B2B brands that are more mature in their influencer marketing efforts engage in always-on influencer programs. In fact, the State of B2B Influencer Marketing Report found that 12X more B2B marketers using an always-on approach were very successful with their influencer marketing compared to those marketers that implementing periodic campaigns.

Working with a small group of influencers can be a great place to start, but that small group should be backed by a much larger list of researched candidate influencers. As relationships develop through the course of different collaborations, B2B marketers will refine and find the right influencers. A VIP group of influencers might be created as Adobe has with its 60+ Adobe Insiders being activated at individual, small group or large group levels depending on the situation.

4. How does “dark influence” fit in our mix?

Understanding the channels where customers are spending time discovering, consuming and engaging with content is central to identifying sources of influence. But not all B2B influencers are social media rockstars. To understand where and how the right experts are influential to the customers of a B2B brand, thoughtful research must be conducted to identify customer preferences for content and people that they trust, subscribe to and are influenced by.

In some cases, the social media connection to B2B influence is indirect. While many business people are doing business during their 9-5, increasing numbers of business people are following industry experts on social channels. They access those channels before and after work as well as periodically during the day.

For those influencers and customers that are not engaging via social media, content discovery, consumption and engagement preferences research will reveal the email newsletters, publications, associations, events, groups and even search terms they use to connect. These non-social media channels are opportunities for influence as well. B2B marketers need to do the research to map these sources of engagement and identify influencers that might be good partners for those channels.

Another consideration is the role that LinkedIn plays in terms of influencer performance tracking. Since the vast majority of LinkedIn is not public nor do they provide easy access via API, the social data cannot be crawled in the way that Twitter, some Facebook content and other social networks are. Influencer engagement on LinkedIn may require use of tools made available from LinkedIn like Sales Navigator. Here are some ideas on how to engage influencers on the LinkedIn platform.

Working within the world of dark social for influencer marketing means connecting with influencers that use these channels and engaging them on collaborations where they exert influence.

5. What are the most important operational considerations for a B2B influencer marketing program?

For large enterprise organizations, there is often a debate about how much influencer marketing should be centralized in the organization vs. with business units, divisions and regions. When influencer marketing is new to an organization, there is centralization and programs are dictated as such. Some influencers may be universally relevant across and organization but within each market where a B2B brand operates, there will likely be more niche influencers specific to those markets.

How an influencer marketing program is defined will often include both the universal truths that are relevant for the brand overall and specific programs with unique goals, topics and measures of success.

Some of the most important operational considerations for an influencer marketing program include:

What department owns influencer marketing?
What processes will be used to to perform the functions of influencer marketing to ensure consistency and quality?
What software will be used to identify, engage, communicate with and measure influencers?
What budgets, staffing and external resources will be needed short and long term?

Beyond measures of success, software and ownership with the B2B brand of an influencer program is how to work with a specialist B2B influencer marketing agency to help develop strategy and planning, influencer identification and recruitment, collaboration and creation of influencer / brand content assets. In the State of B2B Influencer Marketing Report that surveyed hundreds of B2B marketers, the top tasks handled by agencies included:

Identifying influencers 79%
Managing influencer relationships 76%
Developing the strategy 71%
Measuring effectiveness 66%
Integrating with other marketing efforts 63%
Implementing campaigns 60%
Managing influencer marketing technology 44%

While there are many B2B marketing resources out there to help brands with everything from research and strategy to planning, implementation and measurement, there are simply not that many B2B influencer marketing agencies that have:

Established influencer marketing strategy frameworks based on years of experience
Extensive relationships with a network of B2B influencers in various verticals
Tried and true tactics for accelerating B2B brand and influencer relationships
Content creation and repurposing capabilities that are unique to influencer collaborations
Influencer marketing measurement and reporting expertise
Savvy on how to maintain ongoing influencer relationships in between campaigns

The good news is that the number of B2B influencer marketing agencies with legitimate skills and experience is growing as awareness grows around the role of influence across the entire customer lifecycle for business customers.

There are certainly more questions than these to be considered as well as variations on the questions that have been listed in order for B2B marketers to gain confidence that their particular approach to an influencer marketing effort creates the expected value for all involved. In many cases, marketing missteps can be avoided by ensuring the fundamentals are solid and that’s what this list of questions is meant to do – cover the bases that are essential for a thoughtful, meaningful and productive influencer marketing effort.

Influencer marketing is a relationship focused business and that means it’s dynamic and there are no silver bullet answers.

Remember, influencer marketing is a relationship focused business and that means it’s dynamic and there are no silver bullet answers. B2B brands that stumble blindly into an influencer engagement effort may experience disappointing results without the “been there, done that” and “we do this every. single. day.” type of expertise that is rare, but available through specialist agencies and consultants.

By Lee Odden

@LeeOdden is the CEO of TopRank Marketing and editor of TopRank’s B2B Marketing Blog. Cited for his expertise by The Economist, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, he’s the author of the book Optimize and presents internationally on B2B marketing topics including content, search, social media and influencer marketing. When not at conferences, consulting, or working with his talented team, he’s likely running, traveling or cooking up something new.

Sourced from TopRank Marketing

In Uncategorized

Five B2B SaaS Marketing Tactics That Most Organizations Overlook

September 24, 2020 No Comments

By Brian Schofield.

Digital marketing consultant at Market 8, specializing in search engine optimization. He is mainly focused on the SaaS industry.

Growth-minded SaaS companies need to find strategic ways to stand out online. And while it seems like many marketers tout “the next best thing” when it comes to software-as-a-service (SaaS) marketing, I find that there are a few tactics that are routinely underrated.

It’s become all too common to see SaaS companies getting caught up in the “shiny object syndrome” of the latest growth hacks. Although some of these “hacks” can produce results, it’s important to remember the basics.

In fact, having stood the test of time, these tactics prove that it’s not always necessary to reinvent the wheel. So here are five marketing strategies that we leverage for our B2B SaaS clients at Market 8 and that I find most software companies ignore — tactics that could be the difference between being overlooked and winning over new customers.

1. Leverage searchability around competitor brand names.

With such stark competition in the SaaS space, companies need to find a way to elevate themselves above their competitors. This often means positioning your software against your competitors’ software in a way that acknowledges yours as the superior choice.

To get in front of prospects looking for your competitors, you can target your competitors’ branded keywords through Google Ads (or Bing Ads, depending on the market). Then, direct these prospects to a landing page that showcases why your solution is best.

What’s great about these landing pages is that they often attract organic traffic, especially if you’ve included comparative keywords such as “Brand A vs. Brand B” in the meta page title and header tags.

2. Fully optimize your review listings.

It might seem obvious, but this one is often overlooked.

Be sure to claim and optimize your review listings on G2, Capterra and similar directories. This means thoroughly filling out your company description, specifying the categories you do business in, and adding high-quality images and demo videos.

Next, you’ll want to make sure you have an ongoing plan in place to collect reviews, especially on the directories that your target audience is routinely browsing. Lastly, address any existing negative reviews in a tactful way to show that your brand values and listens to customer feedback.

While doing all of this will most certainly improve your brand’s reputation, it may also improve your search engine optimization (SEO) on and off the directory website.

3. Become more visible in the search engine results page (SERP).

Schema markup is a type of code that can be placed on webpages to help search engines better understand what a page is about. This code also allows search engines to display rich snippets in the search results.

FAQ markup and AggregateRating markup are two types of structured data that our agency is seeing great results with right now, simply because the click-through rate of these listings goes through the roof. It makes sense — if users are able to get their most important questions answered right away while seeing your company’s glowing reviews, they’ll be more likely to click your listing than your competitor’s.

4. Extract more value out of existing content.

Many SaaS firms are so focused on creating new content that they forget about their existing content. To get the most out of what you already have, revisit your blogs, and optimize based on data you find in Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Update, remove or add sections of content, and add a new lead magnet to the page.

The same can be done for your important product or service pages. Add power words, modifiers on keywords and conversion-focused long-tail keywords to attract targeted users and convert that traffic into buyers. Highlight your strongest selling points, and add compelling calls to action (CTAs) to entice users to click, buy or subscribe right away.

Updating existing content improves user experience, but what it also does is provide “freshness” signals to search engines, improving your rank in search results.

5. Focus new content on customer retention, not just acquisition.

Build your content strategy with the goal of retaining users, not just acquiring new ones.

It’s a well-known fact that retention is less expensive than acquisition, so why do many SaaS businesses focus on acquisition as a top growth strategy?

Having a retention-focused content marketing strategy could set you apart from the vast majority of your competitors. Successful SaaS firms that do this have “learning centers” on their sites, answering every question users could possibly have and addressing any confusion users might have about their products.

A great example of a company that does this incredibly well is Ahrefs. Its content acquires new customers, but it also creates product experts out of existing customers, too. These customers go on to be brand advocates who direct even more customers to the software.

Conclusion

While it may be tempting to chase the next best marketing “hack,” it’s important not to forget the fundamentals. The above B2B SaaS marketing strategies routinely generate amazing results for SaaS companies that implement them on a regular basis.

Brand positioning, reputation management and having a retention-focused content marketing strategy are all tactics you can use to increase your online visibility, even in a highly competitive industry. What is your SaaS company doing to stand out in your market?

Feature Image Credit: GETTY

By Brian Schofield

Digital marketing consultant at Market 8, specializing in search engine optimization. He is mainly focused on the SaaS industry. Read Brian Schofield’s full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

Five B2B SaaS Marketing Tactics That Most Organizations Overlook

August 11, 2020 No Comments

By Brian Schofield,