For Long-Lasting B2B Relationships.

WE SHOW YOU THE WAY TO SUCCESS.

Knowing your business inside and out helps marketers tell a better brand story. Rather than relying on the financial results or analytical tools to manage that story, there is a much more comprehensive approach to content marketing. It all begins with truly connecting with the people who shape your brand: the customer. Today’s marketing needs for a B2B audience must go beyond the basic tools. Instead, a strategic relationship is required where research and analysis lay the groundwork for a marketing plan that touches on both the interior and exterior sales values of a brand and positions them to thrive in their industry for decades to come. Here are four essential steps corporations should utilize for smarter communication and more creative B2B marketing solutions.

1) Become a part of the story of your B2B target group
How well do you understand your customers? While digital tools offer us valuable insight, a target audience is more than a concept with a numerical percentage attached. That is why industries must create strategies that analyze and reach their target audience online and offline (resulting in the omni-channel experience), understand a consumer’s interaction with the product, and give as much care to the internal side of sales as they do to the customer side of it. For example, don’t be afraid to take advantage of a niche market. Create content writing with long-tail keywords specific to your industry to better hone in on what your target audience is looking for. Overall, you want to create a sales experience that is an interpersonal story between the consumer, the sales team, and the product.

2) Cultivate an entire collection rather than stand-alone content
Some companies focus all their energy on the product campaign, while the brand’s multi-faceted identity is often creatively overlooked. Yet, the B2B audience requires different content for different points of interaction. While some marketing focuses solely on digital communication, many industries require creative print marketing that can show off the quality of the brand. Design and execution of a brand’s packaging as well as brand awareness at industrial events, trade shows, and points of sale require different types of marketing than that of PR and media outreach. Film, radio and television marketing also require specialized expertise that position a brand in a particular light yet build on the existing brand experience. A B2B target audience seeks different meanings from different forms of communication—whether visual or interactive—and they are smart enough to recognize when they are not receiving it.

3) Find specialized experts to realize your brand’s marketing
While an in-house marketing and sales team might know the brand and industry, oftentimes, their creative scope is limited to marketing alone. Yet, a good creative agency is able to realize the potential of a brand’s identity that the strategy or analytics alone cannot implement. However, a great creative agency goes even further to realize the brand’s full potential and recruits the best talent and experts to do it. Therefore, great results involve a strong network of specialists with experience in specific industries and who are exceptional at their craft—professional designers, photographers, copywriters, creative producers, UX developers, technical advisors, et al. Recognizing industrial market trends, insider knowledge of a specific industry, and expertise in a desired creative field leads to fully-integrated marketing success.

4) Focus on continuous learning and growing
The digital landscape is always changing and improving around us. As a result, B2B marketing is constantly undergoing new trends and requirements. But how can the right marketing plan be implemented without knowing what is out there or pushing the envelope? Advertising agencies like Schindler Parent offer a range of industry experts and creative mavericks that continually seek out and access new knowledge and skills. We develop our own interpersonal relationships with leading institutes and organizations and exchange information and studies relating to B2B audiences, entrepreneurship, industry sales, and much more. By doing so, marketing becomes more than a strategy, but the constant exploring and testing of the creative and scientific potential of the brand and the people behind it.

By creating a more personal marketing experience, industries can go far beyond the face value of their brand and build an interpersonal blueprint that creates a much more diverse connection than sales alone will allow. This blueprint is designed to offer many more viable channels where the brand, the entrepreneurs, the employees, and the target consumers are all interconnected with the product’s true value. Such efforts afford not only one straight line with a single projected goal, but rather many interlinking experiences that can never be exhausted.

This is a guest post by Christine.
Christine is an American copywriter and marketing strategist based in Berlin. Her background includes multi-platform copy for global brands, script writing for video campaigns, and marketing and PR planning for new startups. She currently freelances for a range of startup and agency clients, including Copywriter Collective.