12 steps to assist you in your business-to-business online marketing efforts

If you’re considering the use of business-to-business digital marketing to assist your pursuit of marketing and business goals, it’s suggested to have a decent plan in place to maximise return on your digital marketing expenditure. Here are twelve steps to think about before commencing with the implementation of your B2B digital marketing program.

1. Listen first

Employ the use of tools to monitor conversations regarding your company, industry and competitors. This is the primary and most vital step in building a solid digital marketing strategy. Focus on the following areas:

How many mentions of your company or brand and sentiment of the mentions? What are individuals saying about your company or brand? What types of people are talking about you and what are they like?

What sites are your competitors active on and what campaigns and social media activities are they busy with? What are they doing right and what are they doing wrong? How many mentions are there of your competitors?

What areas associated with your brand, product and industry is your audience talking about and what excites them about your industry? What issues do they have that are related to your industry or brand?

2. Define your strategy

Understanding the reasons why you’re participating on-line will assist you in defining a comprehensive strategy that will match your marketing and business objectives.

Why are you interested in on-line marketing? How do you suppose on-line selling will profit your organisation? What are you hoping to get out of on-line marketing? Are there specific business or marketing goals you’re hoping to achieve?

Rank your your marketing and business objectives for on-line marketing (e.g. positioning your organisation as an expert, acquiring new customers, lead generation, building awareness for your business, providing updates on company news, etc.).

3. Defining your target market

When defining your target market, reflect back on the marketing and business objectives you wish to achieve (Who is your target market, where are they online and what are they interested in?)

4. What content will you publish?

What will you post on your chosen platforms? What’s your target market passionate about that’s associated with your product? What distinctive and valuable content are you able to share that isn’t available elsewhere? What distinctive experience are you able to share? How are you able to build trust? What’s in it for the reader?

5. Your content checklist

Other questions to ask are: Is the content providing value and is it relevant to your target audience? Is it something your audience is passionate about?

6. Publishing choices

Here you need to explore publishing choices such as a blog, email newsletter or whitepapers.

7. Blogging

If a company blog is an option, you will need to address questions such as: Which marketing and business objectives are you hoping to achieve? What are the areas of expertise within your business and is your target market interested in these areas of expertise? You’ll also need to develop a blog plan, relevant blog categories to create, who within your organisation is able to write blog posts and who will own the blog.

8. Encouraging sharing

Identify content that your respective communities can share (e.g. photos, videos, stories, news, information and testimonials).

9. Which platforms

Spend time with every platform (e.g. Pinterest, Video, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter and email) answering questions such as:

Who do you need to reach and what do you hope to achieve? What are your competitors doing on these platforms? Which of your business and marketing objectives do you need to achieve? How can you build an audience on the platform and what content should you publish on the platform? What communities or categories should you create?

10. Collaboration

Explore the possibility of co-creating content to publish on your platforms.

11. Discussion and review

What keywords should you be using when monitoring discussion forums for relevant conversations? Identify specialists in your organisation are able to reply to questions raised in discussion forums. Identify review sites to monitor for your industry or company.

12. On-line public relations

Identify publications and key influencers with whom to develop relationships. You will also need to consider what information to share through on-line PR and relevant keywords to observe.

What would you add to this list? What queries do you have? Do you have any comments or feedback?

Image: Windell Oskay via Flickr