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Date of Publication: 9 April 2023
20+ Fixes for Common Mistakes in B2B Marketing
Tools, technologies, and audiences are fast changing in Online B2B Marketing. However, there are several classic blunders that every B2B marketer should be aware of while developing a marketing strategy.
There are a few typical pitfalls that B2B marketing teams should avoid. Not optimizing for mobiles or failing to leverage technologies or not properly updating your database, all have a negative impact on its long-term growth.
In this blog, we will learn 20+ Fixes for Common Mistakes in B2B Marketing.
Anirban Guha
Digital Marketing Expert | Media Strategist | Entrepreneur
Table of Contents
1# Fixes for Common Mistakes in B2B Marketing
Don't make it all about you...It's what your client wants to know
Your prospects aren’t interested in hearing about your brilliance. People want to know what they stand to gain.
Many B2B marketers place a strong emphasis on bragging about how fantastic their product or service is. While having a superior product or service is certainly advantageous but what’s more important is whether your prospect finds what they want in you communications.
Some usual questions prospects have when visiting your website are,
- How does your offering add value to them, address an issue, or make their business more money?
- Do you provide a free, full-featured trial?
Hence, if your marketing copy includes lines like “our service is the greatest in the industry and better than everyone else,” rather than “our solutions help you simplify internal workflows, submit invoices with simplicity, and boost the productivity of your teams,” you’re making a significant B2B marketing mistake.
It’s all about audience research as well as looking from a different perspective. Examine your website and its copy from the audience’s point of view.
Are you addressing the user’s problems? If not, edit your wording to show your visitors how your company can help them.
2# Fixes for Common Mistakes in B2B Marketing
Be responsive while designing for web
79% of people are more likely to revisit and engage with content if the website is user-friendly on mobiles.
Mobile now accounts for more than half of all web traffic worldwide: Mobile devices (excluding tablets) contributed 54.8% of global website traffic for the period Jan Mar 2023, and this has been the case since 2017 hovering around the 50% mark.
Furthermore, Google’s mobile-first indexing means that the mobile (rather than the desktop) version of your website is the standard for how Google indexes and ranks your website. Furthermore, 79% of consumers think they are more likely to return back and share a mobile website if it is simple to use.
If you fail to have a responsive design for your website, or any content or landing page, it is going to hurt not just your ranking but user experience as well.
Make the mobile experience a priority, which includes utilizing a responsive design. In addition, here are some best practices for ensuring a mobile-friendly experience:
- Reduce the amount of typing required by combining numerous form fields into a single field,
- allowing autofill wherever possible,
- allowing users to connect existing accounts (such as Facebook, Google, or Twitter) rather than signing up from scratch.
Optimize mobile site performance by compressing pictures, minifying code, eliminating needless redirection, and enabling browser caching and compression.
- Instead of a navbar, use a hamburger menu (≡)
- Use AMP frame work for static contents.
- Optimize your content arrangement for the “thumb zone,” which is the part of the screen that is easier to access with the thumb while holding the device with one hand.
For the first time, more than half of B2B ads will be placed on mobile this year, according to Insider Intelligence.
It’s a good time to address the most persistent mistakes B2B advertisers continue to make with mobile ads, particularly nit-picky to holistic customer understanding.
Yes, B2B marketers should nail the desktop experience first since it’s still where we see most quality conversions happen. But neglecting to optimize over half of their opportunities to engage users has ripple effects down the journey cycle.
User flow and user experience on mobile are different than it is on desktop. Layout, sizing, attention span, intent and ease of use fundamentally differ on mobile. Yet, B2B advertisers often forget this when they build mobile flows.
3# Fixes for Common Mistakes in B2B Marketing
Developing mobile-specific creative
For video, shorter attention span matters. Getting to the point in the first 3 seconds of a video is critical on mobile.
There is a common practice among B2B marketers to make fit-all creatives.
I have already defined the thumb zones on mobile phones. For design and communication visual zoning play a key role. Creatives for mobiles must be recalibrated for everything from landing page layout to images and videos.
For starters, marketers can’t just resize page dimensions to fit on a mobile screen without considering what visitors view above the fold.
- Is it the most attention-grabbing message you can use?
- Does it provide users with a clear CTA or a path forward?
You have significantly less space to work with on mobile, so make the most of it.
There are still opportunities to improve ad sizing. Marketers frequently use squares/rectangles for social ads and overlook larger mobile sizes.
Instead of going vertical and captivating, some large businesses employ square or rectangular creative on social media for mobile-sponsored content.
You have to understand the difference as to when we hold the phone vertically and then horizontally. Generally, when viewing websites, landing pages, images, emails, etc we hold the phone vertically. When we want to watch a video we change the orientation.
Use text overlay, include your brand logo up front, and reach the point immediately. Try keeping the logos in assurance area throughtout the video.
4# Fixes for Common Mistakes in B2B Marketing
Don't replicate desktop strategies
While some channels – particularly search and social – provide significant value on both desktop and mobile, don’t assume that every channel that performs well on desktop should also perform well the same on mobile.
Display is a medium you should think hard about employing for mobile audiences unless you have a truly innovative, thought-provoking message.
It can work if you have a completely fleshed-out ABM Plan (Account Based Marketing Plan) with clearly defined content, messaging, and goals, as well as a fully engaged sales team. But, it must be part of a larger picture.
5# Fixes for Common Mistakes in B2B Marketing
Don't use excessive jargons
When you are communicating specifically for B2B, the use of jargon in digital marketing collaterals like ebooks, newsletters, and mailers, may look cool and show that you belong. But using it excessively may alienate your audience, even overwhelm rather than help. This ain’t good for business.
It always helps to spend time to know your audience. When you take a closer look at your audience and try to understand them, you may customize your writing to better connect with them. In other words, write as they do.
Always consider your prospects’ level of expertise and knowledge about your specialty before delivering content in relevant and easy-to-understand terms.
6# Fixes for Common Mistakes in B2B Marketing
Understand your clients
Whether you’re marketing to businesses or consumers, you should always take the time to get to know your customers.
A major mistake made by B2B marketers is treating all clients equally.
This is not to mean that you should not deliver a similar level of service. It simply means that each customer or lead is unique and should be approached accordingly.
Divide your targeted client base into segments. Your segmentation could be based on specific characteristics like firm size, niche, region, and so on. This allows you to develop a tailored marketing approach that is far more relevant to specific categories.
You most certainly already have a large amount of client data. Make it more valuable by cleaning it up.
7# Fixes for Common Mistakes in B2B Marketing
Clean your database
As previously mentioned, you already have a lot of customer and competition data, and in order for it to be genuinely valuable, you must clean it up on a regular basis.
Taking the effort to clean your database is much like eating your green salads – you know it’s good for health but you seldom eat.
However, due to the current rate of job-hopping, your B2B data has a half-life of around 18 months. And only 45% of your B2B database is still viable after two years.
For every given B2B prospect list, database half-life means:
8# Fixes for Common Mistakes in B2B Marketing
Be aware of your target audience
Knowing your target audience, whether you’re a business or an individual is critical for B2B success. B2B brands frequently fail to define their target audience early in their marketing activities since it does not appear important at the time.
Over the period of time, buyer generations have changed. With younger generations now into B2B purchasing, old ways do not work anymore. To be successful B2B marketers must understand the change in habits and practices of new buyers. See where they are found and how best they can be engaged. In a previous blog, Don’t Generalize Buyer Generations – Understand the Defining Traits and Communication Strategy, I pointed out a report by Forresters that the new generations seek third-party sources for making informed decisions. In addition to your platforms they also seek info through,
- Technology information websites (47%)
- Forums (42%)
- Industry websites (38%)
The Reports also pointed out that younger buyers are likely to be more critical throughout their buying journeys, as 90% cited dissatisfaction with the sellers in at least one area compared to 71% that of the of older buyers.
So to be with the new generation buyers have,
- A fantastic influencer network
- Presence in industry-specific websites and blogs
- Have user-generated and their self- posted testimonials on social channels other than yours
- Build branded community
9# Fixes for Common Mistakes in B2B Marketing
Focus on branding
‘Why do I need branding for my B2B business? Isn’t that for consumers’ brands?’, this mindset has hampered more businesses than you can think of. It shuts you from potential growth. Say, when you go to buy TMT bars for a construction project, you generally put a known brand at a slightly higher preference than the ones that are not, even before considering the specifications and quality. The perceived value of commodities is in most cases lesser than products. Branding transforms commodities into products.
The majority of B2B companies undervalue the importance of branding because they fail to recognize its long-term benefits for both company and its clients. A strong brand presence with a brand identity, voice, and emotion-centric branding efforts is the best way you as marketing can avoid making this first mistake.
Creating a brand using digital channels can help you connect emotionally to your potential buyer. It indeed requires a lot of effort. The more your potential buyers can relate to their needs and connect with you at an emotional level, the more customer-centric your brand will be able to be. This connection is strong and overrides a lot many other disadvantages that you may have in terms of pricing, unforeseen delays, etc.
However, branding is not a one-time activity, neither it is about putting up an advertisement on publisher platforms or social media sites. You need to understand how you are perceived and how you can increase your value to your potential buyers. You need to be relentless and consistent.
10# Fixes for Common Mistakes in B2B Marketing
Align assets to flywheel marketing strategy
In a previous blog, I explained how flywheel marketing works.
These days, people make decisions by asking their friends for advice, searching for mentions of your company on social media, and reading third-party reviews.
Attract → Engage → Delight
If you can align your assets with the flywheel marketing strategy it is not just you who is working towards your business goal. Your delighted clients become your promoters and help you get your business going.
As explained earlier, about new buyer generations, most of their purchase decisions happen based on information received from third-party sources, peer-to-peer recommendations, and word of mouth, this strategy becomes key to your sustenance and growth even when faced with tough competition.
11# Fixes for Common Mistakes in B2B Marketing
Align your sales and marketing
Having assets aligned with the flywheel marketing strategy will help you bring marketing and sales together. However, if sales and marketing work in silos instead of working as a team it could disrupt and create a lot of friction.
What you can do to fix this is,
- Establish a common customer persona
- Build a single, unified customer journey
- Define what a marketing qualified lead (MQL) is and when to hand it over to sales
- Measure the same high-level KPIs (revenue, CLV, CAC, etc.)
- Gather customer feedback to revamp marketing strategy and sales messaging
- Ensure that you have consistent messaging across all touchpoints of the funnel
- Let the marketing team provide the assets for every sales stage
- Once a customer is acquired, marketing and sales must team up to maximize retention
12# Fixes for Common Mistakes in B2B Marketing
Have clear definition of your brand's unique selling propositon
Your brand’s USP, or Unique Selling Proposition, is what distinguishes it from the competition. Not understanding your USP results in ineffective marketing and a possible decrease in the volume of traffic to your designated landing pages. Furthermore, effectively promoting your USP has an indelible impact on your audience, which is only great for your B2B business. Analyze what attracts, engages and delights you target audience, link them to your USP, and communicate it to them in a way that demonstrates what your brand can do for them.
13# Fixes for Common Mistakes in B2B Marketing
Use and upgrade technologies cautiously
The digital space is utterly chaotic. Every day new technology comes in that outdates existing ones. But, with so many amazing tools and software available, digital can be overwhelming.
As a result, you require a digital transformation strategy – a structure that acts as a solid roadmap to guarantee that you’re investing in the correct tools and procedures to keep your firm on course for improved performance.
It is one thing to invest in tools and technology, but it is quite another to ensure that all of your team members understand how to use them to their best potential.
Before investing in the latest technology, consider how your team will use it to its maximum capabilities, how it will fit into your existing processes and infrastructure, and how the tool will optimize your marketing ROI. Otherwise, you risk wasting your investment or, worse, disrupting the effectiveness of your marketing communications.
Training and teambuilding exercises can be helpful when it comes to digital adoption. When going digital you should invest in training and internalizing the system. Sporadic, stop-gap, impulsive decisions in digital space always backfire.
Through AGsDigitalTales I always tell you to make informed decisions only.
14# Fixes for Common Mistakes in B2B Marketing
It is a must for B2B business to invest in SEO
61% of B2B decision-makers start with a web search. Investment in SEO and inbound marketing is critical for any B2B company.
For more stats visit >> AGsDigitalTales – Stats & Quotes
Previously here, I spoke about a holistic approach when entering digital space. Search Engine Optimization is one of the foundation stones for your digital infrastructure.
It is important for your B2B business website to appear on the first page of Google search results. Ignoring SEO results in a significant loss of visitors and leads. Aside from increased visitors and leads, the higher your website ranks on Google, the greater is your brand awareness and authority.
They’ll be more likely to be attracted to you because they know that if you’re ranking for relevant keywords in a competitive space, your offerings must be truly valuable.
As of February 2023, 97.37% of all searches happened through Google. So when we speak of SEO we are talking in terms of optimizing your website for Google’s search algorithms. Since Dec 2022, Google Quality Rating Guidelines, with E-E-A-T, is the new Bible for SEO.
SEO is a long game that most educational institutions cannot afford in terms of time or resources. The stats suggest steep competition. Search Engine Journal reports, 25% of people click the first Google search result. The first page has just about 10 organic results and only 10% of people go beyond the 1st page.
Have you ever looked beyond page 1 of the Google search result?
There are many competing for small real estate. It takes time and effort.
Getting good results requires,
- Extensive keyword research and implementation
- Image Optimization – size optimization, caption, alt text, Title & description.
- Good technical SEO, ie, having title tags, meta tags, snippets, excerpts, and optimized content.
- Generate schema for your content
- Social Bookmarking
- Backlinks
- Cross-posting
- Article Submission
- Feed Submission
and many other strategies to be implemented.
Whenever you are writing content for a webpage see to it that it demonstrates E-E-A-T even for AI-generated content. But in general, try to maintain some basic technical hygiene:
- Put focus keyword in the SEO title
- Put focus keyword used inside the SEO meta description
- Put focus keyword used in the URL
- Your focus keyword must appear in the first 10% of the content.
- Webpage should have at least 600-800 words
- Use H1, H2, H3… tags with the focus keyword and combinations
- Have a keyword density of at least 1-1.5%
- Link to external resources
- Use optimized images and infographics.
- Maintain data compliance.
What You get:
- Free unlimited traffic to your webpage
- Improves the visibility of the website
- Grows your brand awareness
- You get more opportunities for engagement
No matter how long it takes or the resources required, an involved SEO strategy is essential to your survival in the digital space.
15# Fixes for Common Mistakes in B2B Marketing
Importance of organic & paid search
I have done an entire blog on this topic – Searching for Success: How Paid and Organic Search Can Fuel Business Growth. It keeps coming back every time. This show how important this is for any business whether B2B or B2C. However, when it comes to B2B the search intent is much different than in B2C.
Basically, when you classify search queries, there are 3 type:
- Informational: Searches performed to answer questions or learn something, with keywords revolving around “how-to,” “what,” “why,” etc.
- Navigational: Searches performed to locate a specific website with branded keywords.
- Transactional: Searches performed to buy something, with keywords revolving around “buy,” “discount” or specific product names.
There are people, who have purchase intentions, but first, spend time researching more information. Say, for example, there is an industrial factory that needs to curb pollution due to dust. So the purchasing team may first what to know more about dust pollution, Government norms, alternative approaches to prevent dust pollution, players involved, etc. They look into from various third-party sources. Then they would follow it up with navigational searches involving players and better solution available. Now after this, they funnel down their searches to Briquetting Machines. Finally, they search for local and international players who manufacture briquette machines, the price offerings, quality, and specifications before reaching out through a contact form on their potential supplier’s website or calling up or shooting an email inviting quotation.
16# Fixes for Common Mistakes in B2B Marketing
Be creative with CTA (call-to-action)
When the potential buyer finally gets into your website or any other platform to get in touch, you must have appropriate call-to-actions on those pages.
CTAs provide the bridge for clients to engage with you. Essentially, CTAs provide your audience with a clear direction to the next step once they’re done consuming your content. They lead your audience to the next stage of the buyer’s journey.
Whether a visitor is exploring your website or seeing a social media ad, you want to use well crafted CTAs to direct them to certain actions and eventually convert them into leads for your brand.
17# Fixes for Common Mistakes in B2B Marketing
Use social media to your advantage
For B2B social media pages can be your propaganda mouthpieces. Understand the intent and audience of each platform and place content to attract and engage.
What works for LinkedIn may not work for Facebook or Instagram. After you have mapped your audience, see the stats of what audience feature in which platforms and how they choose to engage there.
As a business, social media enables you to converse with your customers in a more “human” and direct way. But a common and potentially off-putting mistake many B2B marketers make is seeing social media as a channel to simply broadcast their promotional messages and nothing more.
Trying to make it conversational. Post helpful content that benefits your followers. Ask them what they want from you, content- or product-wise. Don’t go on and on about your product’s bells and whistles. Instead, strive to spark two-way communication and make connections rather than merely pushing your products.
18# Fixes for Common Mistakes in B2B Marketing
Run Split Tests for improvement
How do you make something better? By trying out alternatives – test and analysis. The same holds true for business-to-business marketing.
For example, the first version of your landing page copy is almost never the most effective. If you try a few variations of the copy over a few weeks, you’ll very likely find one that converts considerably higher than the original.
Split testing is not just for optimizing your campaign landing pages, it plays a crucial role in improving outcomes across all facets of your marketing initiatives, including but not limited to,
- SEO features such as title tags and meta descriptions
- Social media captions and forms
- Email subject lines, copy, and images
- Ad copy and images
- CTA buttons
Continue to split-test the key elements of your marketing campaign. Determine whether the updated version converts more effectively and understand why. It’s the only way to transform average outcomes into amazing ones.
If you’re wondering, “Where do I even begin?” here’s the PIE framework to help you decide which sites to test first and in what order:
- Potential: How likely is it that the page’s conversion rate will increase? Try prioritizing your lowest achievers.
- Relevance: How important is the traffic to this page? Evaluate the pages with the highest volume and highest cost of traffic.
- Ease of Implementation: How difficult would it be to put a test on this page or template? The less time and effort required to achieve the same results, the better.
19# Fixes for Common Mistakes in B2B Marketing
Keep tracking metrics - Analytics Tools
Analytics tools, as any B2B marketer will tell you, are Indeed the way to track and measure brand performance over time. Analytics are vital for a successful marketing plan, whether it be website conversions, email sign-ups, or the number of people who signed up for a demo call. B2B companies frequently overlook the most critical component of marketing: measuring results. Knowing which channels are bringing in better, more promising leads and which channels need to be optimized is helpful when allocating resources and brainstorming ideas for each of these channels.
Choosing the correct analytics software for your brand’s needs is extremely important, and the only way to do so is to undertake extensive research on the numerous options available. Social media platforms, too, offer dedicated analytics dashboards for business accounts, which are excellent resources for understanding audience behavior.
Source: Single Grain
You could use,
a) Google Analytics: measure website traffic and track user behavior
b) Social Media Analytics: measure the engagement and track user behavior on social media platforms
Paid Tools are,
- Sprout Social: It is a social media management and engagement platform that helps businesses grow their presence on social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. It includes features for monitoring conversations, scheduling posts, tracking analytics, and more.
- Hootsuite Analytics: It is an analytics platform that provides insights into the performance of social campaigns. It provides detailed reports on website traffic, post engagement, and more.
- Brandwatch: It is a social media analytics platform that helps companies analyze conversations and trends across the web. It provides insights into topics, demographics, and influencers related to a brand.
- Keyhole: It is an analytics platform that provides real-time insights into social media conversations. It provides metrics such as reach, impressions, sentiment, and more.
- BuzzSumo: It is an analytics tool that helps companies discover and analyze content across the web. It provides insights into topics, influencers, and content trends.
- Iconosquare: It is a social media analytics platform that helps companies measure their performance on Instagram and Facebook. It offers insights into engagement, reach, and audience demographics.
You can also avail of free social media analytics tools,
- Facebook Insights
- Twitter Analytics
- Google Analytics
20# Fixes for Common Mistakes in B2B Marketing
Balance quantity and quality with lead forms
Finding a balance between quantity and quality with your lead forms is a good idea, whether you’re using direct lead gen forms on paid social or simply sending people to a direct-response landing page.
As discussed earlier, most form integrations support auto-fill, which is beneficial to the user and may allow marketers to include a few more fields for additional qualification (easy form attracts excessive spam).
The ideal balance is to obtain the required information and to determine whether the lead is qualified and not more.
Facebook provides B2B marketers to add custom questions to their lead generation forms. This makes entry a little difficult but can help to eliminate spam.
LinkedIn also includes custom question and custom check-box flexibility, as well as the option of requesting a business email, which will help you evaluate quality.
Whichever technique you take, even if it’s to open the tap as wide as possible and filter spam as you go, keep track of conversion rates, lead quality, and major changes in mobile and desktop behavior.
21# Fixes for Common Mistakes in B2B Marketing
Combine automation and artificial intelligence
Most B2B organizations fail to leverage automation and artificial intelligence to increase efficiency.
Marketing automation and artificial intelligence (AI) are distinct concepts. Marketing automation software is designed to assist humans in doing simple and repetitive tasks. This still necessitates designing routines around specific scenarios and manually optimizing them using data. AI, on the other hand, uses data to simulate human intelligence and reasoning in order to generate predictions, suggest optimizations, and apply them dynamically.
Mixing automation and artificial intelligence provides you the best of both worlds: the efficiency and time savings of automation, as well as the capacity to recommend and alter automation based on data-driven insights.
These are a few instances of how AI can create synergy with automation:
- Tools that create highly customized subject lines or sections of emails within your email automation software.
- AI-powered Platforms for optimizing Paid Search Ad Campaigns
- Utilizing historical data to improve lead scoring in a CRM.
Further Reading…
How are AI-Engines Revolutionizing Paid Search Ad Campaigns?
AI-Engines are changing the game in paid search ad campaigns, making it more refined and precise. They can help marketers understand and analyze user behavior, preferences, and search history to create highly targeted ads that are more likely to convert. AI-powered automated bidding, ad optimization, audience segmentation, and dynamic ad creation are some of the ways AI-engines are revolutionizing paid search ad campaigns. There are several AI-powered ad platforms available, such as Skai, MarinOne, Adobe Advertising Cloud, Acquisio, and Quarizmi, which can optimize poorly performing search ads and help you get the most out of your ad spend….>>CLICK TO READ MORE
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About the Author - Anirban Guha
Anirban Guha is an MBA graduate from Amity University, Noida. Starting his career with The Times of India Group, he has spent over 16 years in advertising and has been the founder-director of an award-winning digital marketing agency, Tejom Digital for over 6 years. He has worked with some of the top brands in India and beyond. He is an expert in creative design and digital marketing. He is passionate about helping businesses reach their goals. Beside his professional life, Anirban is an avid reader, a movie buff, a passionate gardener, an art enthusiast, and a foodie.