B2B is a marketing term short for business-to-business. This form of marketing and business revolves around the concept of selling a product or service from one business to another. For example, fabric businesses sell materials to clothing makers. Stores buy shelves from storage and inventory display companies. Security companies sell video cameras to retail stores and commercial properties.
We’re even a B2B business! At SEO Design Chicago, We offer website development, SEO, analytics, and many other digital marketing services to other businesses.
According to one study, the global B2B e-commerce market is five times the size of the business-to-consumer (B2C) market. If you are a B2B business, the way you market your services and products should be slightly different than the way other companies market their services and goods to “regular” people. In this post, we’ll describe some of the best B2B marketing tips and tools to help your business grow.
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Why Is B2B Marketing Different from B2C Marketing?
In B2B marketing, you can expect your customers to know certain terminology or jargon. You’re not starting at ground zero when it comes to explaining the benefits of your goods and services.
They also need your services or goods. There’s a difference between needs and wants. In B2C marketing, you’re often trying to encourage people to purchase something they want but don’t actually need. But in B2B marketing, companies usually need your goods or services in order to function. Using some of the examples we mentioned earlier, a brick-and-mortar business needs security systems. A clothing store needs shelves. A restaurant needs knives.
But you shouldn’t get too comfortable assuming a business will buy your goods or services just because they need them. You are still in competition with other companies like yours that offer the same things. So here are some marketing tips and tools you still need to know about.
Make Your Web Content SEO-Friendly
You may have a long list of satisfied clients but you still want to get new clients, right? Remember that most people will turn to Google to find what they’re looking for. So, you want to get your website to surface on the few first pages of Google search engine results pages (SERPs). To do this, you’ll need to learn how to make your content search engine friendly. This process is called search engine optimization or SEO.
This is a complex process, which is why many companies choose to outsource the responsibility to another company. At SEO Design Chicago, you guessed it, SEO is our specialty. We offer customized SEO-friendly content to companies for an affordable price. A few of the factors that we focus on include the following.
Post Content Regularly
Websites should be posting new content on a regular basis. One good idea is to start a blog you post once per week about your business. Google is always evaluating websites for new content. The more new content they have, the higher they rank in SERP.
Link Building
Websites should also have working hyperlinks to other pages on their own website as well as other sites that aren’t their competitors. This is a strategy called link building. Google penalizes companies that have a lot of hyperlinks to sites (including pages on their own sites) that are “broken.” This means when a user clicks on a click on a link, they see “404 error. Page no longer found.”
Include Keywords
Keywords or key phrases are the words people enter into search engines to get their desired results. You can use Google’s Keyword Planner tool to find keywords, or just think like your customers do. For example, store owners might type, “Security cameras for clothing stores” into a search engine. Use those keywords in your page titles, and a lot on your website if this is a product you sell. We can teach you more about keywords or create content for you based on keywords.
Make Sure Your Website Design Is Current
One problem B2B businesses have is that they’re too confident that their current clients won’t leave them. But the truth is, especially during times of inflation, people are always looking for cheaper deals. So you want to make sure you’re proving to your existing and new clients that you’re not yesterday’s model of a good B2B business.
Make sure you update your website to reflect current web design styles. Design changes over time. A website that looked cool ten years ago probably looks outdated now. Is this really that important? Yes! According to HubSpot, 38% of people will stop engaging with a website if the content or layout is unattractive.
Make Sure Your Website Loads Quickly
How quickly a web page loads is one of the most important factors that people consider (perhaps unconsciously) when making decisions about your company. Imagine you are a potential customer visiting your website and thinking about purchasing a product that has an image on the page. If the image takes too long to load, you will probably become frustrated and the impulse to buy that product may disappear. In fact, a survey by Digital.com found 52% of potential digital shoppers will close a website’s browser if they have to wait more than six seconds for a page to load.
So getting your website to load quickly is essential. Unless you have the technical knowledge of how to do this, the task can seem impossible. This is another situation when you might want to reach out to an experienced team to help you. At SEO Design Chicago, we know a ton of ways to improve your website’s page load times. Reach out to us to get more information on how we can fix your website so it loads faster, maintain your site, or offer you more in-depth training on maximizing website performance.
Buy and Create Strong Google Ads
You’re probably most familiar with the Google Ads that appear at the top of search engine results pages after a person enters certain words into the search bar. They also offer other types of ads, including:
- Running your ad with a corresponding image when people check their Gmail
- Showing any products you may sell when people search in Google Shopping
- Running video ads in the middle of or at the beginning of a video someone clicks on through Google videos
The cost of a Google ad isn’t set in stone. There’s no minimum or maximum amount set by Google. The process works like this: You bid on keywords that people search for that are related to your business. There’s a chance (which we’ll get to later) that your ads will appear in Google search results. Then you pay whatever you bid if – and only if – the user clicks your ad to visit your website.
Let’s start with the average prices of cost-per-click (CPC) ads. In 2023, the average is $1 to $2 for the Google Search Network and $1 for the Google Display Network (that’s the websites, apps, and Google-owned properties like YouTube and Gmail).
Google suggests starting small with a budget of $10 – $50 per day (but you must be willing to do this for a month, so the true cost is $300-$1500). While Google suggests starting small, most experts agree that most companies spend $1000-$10,000 per month in Google Ads.
Get B2B Marketing Help From SEO Design Chicago
SEO Design Chicago has helped many B2B companies improve their marketing efforts so that they can enjoy increased revenue. From website design to Google Ads, we are experts at all the B2B marketing strategies your business needs. Get in touch with us today to learn more!
FAQ:
- What does B2B stand for?
- How quickly should your business website load?
- What does B2C stand for?
- How do you make your website SEO friendly?
- How much should you spend on Google Ads each month?
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