The B2B Guide to a Better Digital Marketing Strategy
Adopting a digital strategy is no longer optional for B2B companies—it's essential. With evolving buyer behaviors and increasing digital interactions, having a strong online presence is critical for reaching and engaging your target audience.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through the key components of a successful B2B digital marketing strategy, including goal-setting, channel management, digital advertising, data privacy, and performance measurement.
1. Setting Up Your Digital Strategy for Success
To build a successful digital marketing strategy, begin by setting specific goals that align with your overall business objectives. This focused approach ensures that every marketing tactic you implement directly supports your path to success.
Lay a Strong Foundation with Clear Goals
Start with clear, well-defined goals that align with your business objectives—this is the bedrock of any successful digital marketing strategy. Digital marketing should be a driving force behind your business growth. Yet, 57% of organizations say their marketing analytics haven’t delivered the impact they expected. This underscores the need for tighter alignment between your goals and how you use your data to hit those desired results.
Develop a Roadmap for Success
Map out a detailed plan that includes both short-term and long-term objectives, like improving lead quality or boosting sales. Leading brands constantly fine-tune and innovate their approach across digital channels, with 64% of B2B marketers placing lead quality at the top of their priority list.
Define Team Roles and Boost Skills
Having clearly defined roles within your digital marketing team is key to executing your strategy smoothly. Make it a point to regularly assess and enhance your team’s skills to close any gaps. With only 42% of B2B marketers feeling confident in their content marketing effectiveness, a well-prepared team is more important than ever.
Here’s some bonus content on 5-must haves for a digital approach.
2. Perfecting Multichannel Marketing
Reaching your target audience across multiple channels is a must in today's digital world. With more than 70% of B2B buyers kicking off their research with a generic search, managing your channels effectively can make a big difference in your business results.
Leverage Multiple Channels
To maximize your reach, make sure you're using a mix of channels—like your website, social media, search engines, and email. Taking a holistic approach to performance measurement is crucial; in fact, 86% of organizations find it easier to gauge their marketing effectiveness when their efforts are seamlessly integrated across all channels.
Here’s another Orchid blog on how to select the right channels for your startup.
Personalize Across Channels
Personalizing your content across different channels can boost customer engagement, but finding the right balance is essential. If your communications feel too invasive or miss the mark, you risk losing customers—55% of consumers say they'll cut ties with brands that overstep or communicate in ways they find intrusive.
3. Optimizing Digital Advertising for B2B Success
Digital advertising is a powerful tool for B2B companies, but it must be strategically aligned with business goals.
Align Channels with Goals
Tailor your advertising strategies to specific goals and target audiences. Given that B2B companies spend an average of 6-9% of their revenue on digital marketing, it’s critical to ensure every dollar is strategically allocated to the right channels.
Address Personalization Challenges
Personalized marketing can do wonders for engagement, but it also comes with its fair share of challenges. With 63% of marketers finding it tough to get personalization right, it’s important to understand what makes this so tricky to avoid turning customers off. The main obstacles? Dealing with data privacy concerns, managing all the customer data, and blending different data sources to create a seamless experience. The key is finding that sweet spot between being helpful and respecting privacy, ensuring your messages actually enhance the customer experience.
This brings us to our next point - data privacy!
4. Navigating Data Privacy and Customer Data Management
As privacy regulations become stricter, B2B companies need to adapt their strategies to balance maintaining customer trust with leveraging data effectively.
Leverage First-Party Data
First-party data is crucial for crafting personalized and relevant digital experiences. However, 57% of organizations still struggle to make the most of their marketing analytics. Building a strong data foundation is more important than ever to harness the full potential of your first-party data.
Navigate Privacy Challenges
Finding the right balance between complying with evolving privacy laws and executing effective, data-driven marketing is essential. With 40% of consumers ready to stop doing business with a brand that doesn’t meet their expectations, it’s vital to adjust your strategies to stay relevant and respectful of their privacy.
5. Measuring Performance for Continuous Improvement
Tracking your digital marketing performance is a must if you want to keep improving. Surprisingly, only 21% of B2B marketers are confident in measuring the ROI of their content marketing efforts. That's where benchmarking comes in—comparing your performance against industry standards can help you see where you stand and what needs to change to sharpen your strategy.
Understand the Importance of Benchmarking
Benchmarking is about comparing your marketing efforts with audience behaviors, competitor strategies, and market trends to gauge your impact. Yet, 80% of digital marketing leaders admit they struggle to find a consistent set of metrics to measure success. That's why looking at your performance in context—relative to others in your space—is more important than ever.
Adopt a Holistic Measurement Approach
Taking a “big picture” approach to measuring performance can be way more effective than looking at metrics in isolation. Organizations that use a holistic view—integrating data from all channels and activities—report fewer issues with identifying the right metrics compared to those using a siloed approach (86% vs. 67%). The more comprehensive your measurement strategy, the clearer your path to success.
Key Takeaway: Thriving in the Digital B2B Landscape
Digital marketing isn't just a nice-to-have—it's essential for growth and staying competitive. By setting clear goals, managing your channels effectively, optimizing your advertising, navigating the ever-changing world of data privacy, and benchmarking your efforts, you can position your business to thrive in today’s digital landscape. As the B2B space keeps evolving, keeping your strategy fresh and staying up-to-date with the latest trends will help you maintain that all-important competitive edge. We are here if you’d like to chat more.
