There are many challenges that businesses face when it comes to B2B marketing. The sales cycle, from demand generation to closing a sale, can be a long and difficult journey.
It can be difficult to stand out from the competition.
Covid-19 has made it so that traditional marketing and sales tactics cannot be relied on to generate leads and sales.
So even though B2B companies are struggling, some are still managing to succeed. How are they doing it?
The main point is that every company will face difficulties and struggles at some point. How successful you are depends on how well you can overcome these obstacles.
In this article, we will be discussing the most significant marketing obstacles faced by B2B businesses and their potential solutions.
But let us begin with the first things first.
The Types of B2B Marketing
A few years ago, most B2B marketing was based on strategies like cold calls, seminars, and trade shows. However, these strategies are no longer as effective because buyers can get information about B2B businesses from other sources.
As you guessed, most buyers are spending their time online. Did you know that, according to research, 75% of B2B customers use social media to make purchases? This is why B2B marketing is shifting online.
Social Media Marketing
Most businesses these days have some sort of online presence, including being active on social media.
As mentioned above, social media plays a crucial role in the decision-making process of B2B buyers. Hence, B2B businesses across all niches are enticing these buyers by putting out content on Instagram, YouTube, Linked In, Facebook, etc., because that’s where their target audience is.
A great social media marketing strategy typically drives a lot of organic traffic, makes you a known leader in your industry, and sets you apart from your competitors.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is essential for any business that wants to succeed. A business cannot survive without a content marketing strategy. Content marketing includes blog posts, articles, white papers, ebooks, YouTube videos, Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook posts, infographics, and more.
The content a business uses depends on the stage of the sales funnel the lead is at.
This means that you should post articles and videos about your product or service in order to generate demand. During the awareness stage of the sales funnel, potential customers realize that they need your product or service. The content you create should be free and accessible to everyone, so that customers don’t have to give up any personal information to view it.
When potential customers progress to the later stages of the sales funnel, the next step is to get them to sign up for mailing lists in exchange for access to gated content. This content can take the form of an ebook, whitepaper, or any other type of long-form content.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is an effective way to reach out to potential and current customers. It is a traditional marketing strategy that is still popular today. Businesses use emails to connect with existing customers, reach out to new potential customers, and reconnect with customers who have not interacted recently.
Email can be used to generate leads and keep people updated on what your company is offering.
One of the best aspects of emails is that they can be customized to the recipient, based on what stage of the sales funnel they are in. Additionally, personalized communications are more engaging to B2B buyers than general ads.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Companies that don’t show up on Google’s search engine results pages don’t exist to many prospects. No matter how good their product or service is, if you can’t find them online, they might as well not exist.
Content marketing with the help of SEO is still the most effective way to organically increase traffic to your website.
If you want your B2B business to really take off, you need to couple SEO with content marketing at every stage of the buyer’s journey and the sales funnel. It might seem like a lot of work, but it’s worth it in the long run. For more information on this topic, check out this article.
Now that you are aware of the types of marketing that B2B businesses mostly rely on, let us discuss the challenges that these marketers face with these marketing types.
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:
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 control the market with aggressive TV and radio ads. But the internet has turned out to be a great leveler.
Today’s small and medium-sized businesses are proving to be tough competition for large corporations. These corporations have realized that in order to stay relevant in today’s market, they need to invest in internet marketing.
It is easy for anyone to start selling a brand online. However, this also makes it easy for your competitor brands to succeed. In an era where entrepreneurship is encouraged, it can be difficult to make your brand stand out from the crowd.
Trust is key when trying to build a successful relationship with your target audience. In a world full of noise, it can be hard to make your voice heard. However, if you establish yourself as a trusted thought leader, people will be more likely to listen to what you have to say. We’ll discuss ways to achieve this later in the article.
Insufficient Resources
It is easy to produce content, but it is much harder to produce good content.
Content marketing is a time and skill intensive process that many small businesses take on. The reasoning being that since you know your business the best, you would be the perfect candidate to blog about it.
If you’re constantly creating new content, it can be difficult to keep up with everything else.
Not having enough time and money are two of the biggest things that stop businesses from doing content marketing.
You will have to pay for content production whether you outsource it or keep it in-house. If you produce it in-house, you will have to invest time in it. If you outsource it, you will have to pay someone to do it for you.
While outsourcing content creation might be cheaper, it comes with its own set of risks. For one, you rely on another company to maintain a regular production schedule. Secondly, there’s a chance you’ll publish content that doesn’t take advantage of your industry knowledge or meet your editorial standards, which could damage your reputation.
Paying someone to produce your content can be expensive, but if you are able to manage your time efficiently, it can save you money in the long run.
Content marketing may seem like a free marketing strategy, but it actually requires a lot of financial preparation. Before you write your first post or ask someone else to do it for you, be ready to deal with the monetary costs that come along with it.
Increasing Competition
Although it may seem like there is already a lot of blog content out there about your topic, you can still be successful in gaining an audience’s attention. There is intense competition for people’s attention, but if you produce quality content, you can still stand out.
The challenge of creating content that will stand out from the competition becomes even more difficult when competition for audiences is intensifying. To meet the higher expectations of readers, content creators are under pressure to produce exceptional content on a regular basis.
I came across a blog post by Rand Fishkin while I was researching for this post. The blog post was published over a year ago and it was about how content marketers have become their own worst enemies.
TV shows like “Breaking Bad” were successful because they are great and not because the market is oversaturated. The problem is that it is very hard to make content that is as good as “Breaking Bad.”
Jon’s view that only the strongest content will survive in the market was met with some strong opposition.
There is no guarantee that your content will be successful, but if it is not good, you will definitely not succeed. Every article you publish must be the best it can be, and you need to maintain this quality for years to come if you want to build and keep a large audience.
It’s very hard to get everything right all the time – even the best blogs sometimes publish content that isn’t great. But you should always aim for perfection. You also need to actively promote your content and give it multiple chances to reach new readers (for example, by republishing it on Medium and other websites).
Keeping Quality Consistently High
I spend a lot of my day reading. As a content producer, it’s part of my job to read blog posts, news stories, and in-depth articles.
At least half of them are terrible.
I’m not going to name any names or point fingers at any publications, but I will say that even sites with huge audiences and large teams of professional writers and copyeditors frequently publish really bad articles that are full of mistakes, lazy writing, or incorrect facts. Why does this happen? Partly because they have to, and partly because they can.
Some sites that are well known can get away with publishing subpar content, while some of the best content I’ve read recently has been from small blogs run by only a few people. This means that there are opportunities to publish content that readers want if you are willing to put in the effort.
It is not realistic to think that an article in a well-known technology magazine would not be more successful than a blog post on a new website. However, if you keep working hard, improve your writing skills, and only post high-quality content, eventually you will be writing better than much of what is published online each day. Don’t give up even when it seems like no one is reading your work.
You shouldn’t worry about whether your latest article is better than something you read in a different publication. Instead, you should focus on making your latest post even better than your last post.