Category: Business Planning

LinkedIn is one of the most rewarding and result-oriented social media platforms. It helps B2B businesses drive traffic, make connections, establish partnerships, boost brand awareness, and generate leads. As a result, more than 30 million companies and 770 million people across the globe use LinkedIn. 

Earlier, LinkedIn was one of those social media accounts everyone had but no one used. But now, it is predominantly used by professionals. Most B2B marketers use LinkedIn as an essential marketing tool to establish a well-oriented marketing campaign and generate leads. When you use LinkedIn, you can expand your horizons and seek insights and opinions. 

In this blog post, we’ll share how playbooks help boost the LinkedIn marketing strategies of B2B companies. But, before that, let’s learn the importance of LinkedIn marketing. We’ll discuss some effective strategies to help B2B marketers boost their B2B business plan in order to get the most out of this social media platform.

What is B2B LinkedIn Marketing?

B2B LinkedIn marketing is when B2B marketers plan various marketing strategies for LinkedIn to build a brand or drive engagement towards their business. It helps businesses find and engage with relevant communities of professionals. LinkedIn is also a popular platform for professionals to connect and establish partnerships. New features are frequently added to LinkedIn, making it a perfect channel for B2B lead generation and driving traffic. More than 50% of all social traffic to B2B websites and blogs comes from LinkedIn, and 80% of social media B2B leads come from LinkedIn. So, if you want to boost your business and grow your audience, you must use LinkedIn marketing to its fullest potential. 

What are the Advantages of LinkedIn Marketing for B2B Companies? 

LinkedIn has become a reliable platform for B2B marketers because it has several advantages. We’ll share a few benefits your business can get from a LinkedIn marketing strategy.

1. Find Your Target Audience – The main motive for using LinkedIn is business communication. LinkedIn helps you find your target audience, and you can easily reach out to them. It is the right platform you can use for business communication and networking opportunities. 

2. Collaborate with the Business Community – There are various interactive features on LinkedIn. You can use it to create an online community of like-minded people. You can further communicate and collaborate with those professionals.  

3. Collaborate with Influencers – When you participate in communities and share quality content on LinkedIn, you become an influencer. But, along with that, you can also research influencers in your niche and collaborate with influencers that fit your brand. 

4. Thought Leadership – Thought leaders have a deep understanding of the business industry and the marketplace in which they operate. You can establish yourself as a thought leader on LinkedIn by discussing topics with groups or answering questions on LinkedIn’s answer board.  

5. Get Feedback – If you have a new idea for your business, you can start group conversations about it. It will allow others to respond and interact with you on the subject. Ultimately, you can get valuable feedback from opinion leaders and key influencers. 

Advanced LinkedIn Strategies for B2B Marketing

If you have included LinkedIn marketing campaigns in your B2B marketing strategies, but it is not delivering the expected results, the secret to cracking the right LinkedIn strategy can help. Go through this list of a few advanced LinkedIn strategies that could help you win more clients. 

1. The first thing that people notice about your company page is the image and description. So, use the logo or post a high-quality image and write an appealing company description to create a compelling company page. 

2. Posting content on LinkedIn is one of the best inbound strategies for B2B brands. You can either post informative articles from the company page or your personal profile. Keep the content original and unique.

3. When you write content for LinkedIn, be sure to use statistics and data in your posts. It will help make content effective & readable, which will ultimately attract quality leads. 

4. LinkedIn groups help market the brand and organically spread the word to the right audience. So, first, you can participate in other groups, and once you get an idea of how things work you can create your own LinkedIn group. 

Popular Playbooks You Can Use to Boost Your LinkedIn Marketing 

Company Expert offers a solution set packed with insights, examples, and actionable strategies to help grow B2B firms. The solution set includes playbooks and point solutions that provide ready-to-go tools to solve the issues of firms like yours. You can use our playbook products to boost your LinkedIn marketing strategies. We offer a definitive guide to LinkedIn marketing that includes the following playbooks. 

1. Optimizing Your Profile

Optimizing the LinkedIn profile is as important as keeping the website updated. So, make sure you invest enough time and resources to customize the LinkedIn profile of your B2B firm. It will help differentiate your business and result in more leads. You can use this playbook product as it outlines how to build and optimize a LinkedIn profile. Also, you will get a step-by-step model to optimize, review, and refine the profile regularly. 

2. LinkedIn Posting

If you want to drive more engagement and conversions, you can use the LinkedIn posting playbook. It can be used as a component of a broader marketing strategy on LinkedIn. In addition, the playbook will help leverage best LinkedIn practices, increase ROI, and grow a network of prospects. All the B2B marketers aiming to use LinkedIn as a key way to grow their client base must use this playbook. 

3. Optimize LinkedIn Company Page

When someone searches for your company name, your LinkedIn page will likely appear in the search results. B2B buyers also check the LinkedIn page before making a purchase. It provides social validation that your company is legitimate. Use this playbook that outlines how to build and optimize your LinkedIn company page. It walks you through writing and optimizing a LinkedIn company page and building the network. You’ll get a step-by-step model for optimizing, reviewing, and refining your LinkedIn page regularly. 

4. LinkedIn Campaign Planning 

An effective LinkedIn campaign helps B2B firms generate leads at every stage of the buyer’s journey. Usually, professionals spend a lot of time building campaigns to move users from one stage of the funnel to the next. B2B marketers must use this B2B marketing playbook product to build a successful LinkedIn campaign and utilize it to its full capacity. The playbook outlines a step-by-step model for planning, targeting, and developing LinkedIn campaigns. 

5. Content Repurposing 

Another playbook you will get in the definitive guide to LinkedIn marketing is content repurposing. Repurposing content means you take one content asset and alter it to create other pieces of content. It helps your firm increase the utility value while reducing the cost of producing content. Content repurposing is an important aspect of overall content development and marketing plan. Use the playbook to get started with the content repurposing, and the templates in the playbook will help guide you through the process. 

Take Your LinkedIn Marketing Strategies to the Next Level with Company Expert

Now that you are familiar with the endless possibilities of LinkedIn, you know that it is an important tool for every aspect of the marketing strategy. From research and planning to sharing content, you can use this social media platform in various ways to get your desired results. Company Expert can help you craft a well-planned LinkedIn marketing strategy. If you want to stand out from your competitors, you can also use our B2B playbook products to thrive on this robust and powerful platform. Partner with us to take your LinkedIn marketing to the next level. 

In recent years, content marketing has been moving at the speed of light. With the development of technology and the internet, people are tired of  old advertising and sales tactics. Now, people have the option to skip the ads and choose the brand they want to interact with. Buyers are attracted to a brand’s authenticity, transparency, and friendliness. So, if you want to win their money, you must win their hearts first. 

Content marketing is a cost-effective and customer-focused strategy that supports long-term growth. According to statistics, successful B2B marketers spend 40% of their marketing budget on content marketing. Every B2B firm should have content marketing in their B2B business plan, and marketing professionals should be familiar with content marketing best practices. Unfortunately, many businesses skip the planning and jump right into creating content, which is not the right approach. Read this post to learn more about B2B content marketing, its importance, and the top ways to prepare a successful content strategy. 

What is B2B Content Marketing? 

According to Content the Marketing Institute, “content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

This is a general definition that applies to B2B and B2C content. However,  B2B content marketing involves a lengthy and complicated process as it may take weeks, months,or longer to nurture a prospect. B2B content marketing refers to using the content in written, video, audio, or other formats to promote a brand’s products and services. It is about informing the other businesses what you do and how it can benefit them. B2B marketers aim to create useful, authentic, engaging, and high-quality content to boost brand awareness and generate more leads. A strong content marketing strategy guides the customers through the path to purchase. 

Why is Content Marketing Important for B2B Businesses?

Content marketing offers many benefits that help increase sales and contribute to business growth. Here are the top reasons to include B2B content marketing in your B2B marketing strategies. 

1.  Around 74% of B2B buyers study products/services online before making an offline purchase. You can attract B2B buyers with informative material highlighting your company’s knowledge and services. Either you provide what B2B buyers are looking for, or your competitors will. 

2. Content marketing is not only more cost-efficient than other strategies but also more effective. Businesses that effectively plan and execute a content strategy experience more benefits and growth. 

3. Content marketing enables you to communicate successfully with a range of customers. According to CMI and MarketingProfs, the popular and effective content formats that deliver expected results are – case studies, social media posts (excluding videos), e-books, and white papers.

4. Small firms with blogs get 126% more lead growth than small businesses without blogs. So, produce relevant, fresh, and authentic content consistently for your website to gain exposure. 

How to Create a B2B Content Marketing Strategy? 

According to B2B consultant experts, great content starts with a well-planned content strategy. It is a blueprint to align content ideas, objectives and efforts to gain traffic, generate leads and convert businesses into your clients. Here’s how you can create a winning B2B content marketing strategy from scratch.

Know Your Audience

You must educate yourself about your target market before you begin B2B content marketing. You can start by making a customer profile or persona for your ideal client. Then, gather information about buyers and their purchasing preferences to create a more accurate and detailed persona. In B2B content marketing, you may have to create a buyer persona of people responsible for making the purchasing decision. Finally, understand your target audience’s content requirements and expectations in order to develop the best approach and right content strategy.

Set Achievable Marketing Goals 

When you are unclear about what you want to achieve, you might waste time posting irrelevant content. A content marketing strategy should serve a particular purpose. So, before you plan the strategy, you must set quantifiable, achievable, and clear goals for your campaign and individual content pieces. 

Content Ideas 

Now that you understand your target audience and goals, the next step is conducting research for content ideas. The different types of content formats that can work wonders for B2B marketers in different stages of the buyer’s journey are – blog posts, podcasts, articles, case studies, white papers, and more. You can also use tools to find trending topics relevant to your industry. 

Choose a Distribution Platform 

If you don’t promote your material wisely, producing excellent content won’t help you. It is said that “It’s not the best content that wins. It’s the best-promoted content that wins.”

There are numerous platforms available to efficiently distribute your content. So it’s your responsibility to determine which one suits you the most. According to statistics, 89% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to generate leads. However, LinkedIn might not work for you. So, find out which platforms are most frequently used by your audience and use them wisely to share your content. 

Improve Your Content Marketing Strategy with Company Expert’s Playbook Products 

Do you want to establish yourself as the thought leader in your industry? If yes, you must have a content strategy that separates you from others. Here’s a list of Company Expert’s B2B playbook products that you should incorporate into your B2B content marketing strategy to stand out from the crowd.  

1. Content Planning

It is an effective tool that aims to create the right content to help you become a thought leader in your B2B industry. You can use the playbook for content planning, creating compelling content, content pillar and solution-oriented content. It also helps ensure brand consistency and tone across your marketing. 

2. Content Idea Generation

Writing engaging and effective content on trending, relevant topics is no more a daunting task with the content idea generation playbook. As the name suggests, this product will help you create interesting and engaging B2B blogs and articles that will resonate with your target market.   

3. Content Repurposing 

When you alter content to create other pieces of content, it is known as content repurposing. If you want to increase the utility value while reducing the cost of producing content, you can count on the content repurposing playbook. It provides a framework for content repurposing and addresses various questions like how to plan, develop, and optimize the existing content. 

4. Developing Effective Case Studies

Case studies help you share your client’s success with your prospects to position your company as a trusted leader. Our playbook provides a 6-step guide to developing robust case studies that capture the reader’s attention, keep their interest, and elicit a call to action. Use our playbook to prepare a well-written case study to convert prospects into clients. 

5. Editorial Guidelines

Every B2B firm must have editorial guidelines for its content writers. These will help them write blogs and articles that will strike the right tone and message with target clients and establish a consistent style for the firm. If you want to create or refresh the editorial guidelines for your firm, use our playbook. It contains five critical elements and walks you through a 4-step process to create consistent editorial guidelines. 

Set Your B2B Business Up for Success with Company Expert  

B2B content marketing helps increase traffic, generate leads, and earn revenue. With the right B2B content strategy, you can convince businesses to choose your products/services over your competitors. Whether you want to build a fresh content strategy or improve your existing content plan, Company Expert’s playbooks can take your content plan from dull to profitable. I 

Company Expert is a reliable B2B consulting firm offering specialized services and playbooks to develop clear and compelling messages and strategies to position your firm as a trusted expert. We work daily to refine, adapt, and optimize approaches designed to accelerate the growth of professional service firms. Use our playbooks to create an effective content marketing strategy for your B2B firm. 

Suppose a local business is searching for a good app development company in New York City on Google in order to develop a mobile app for its business. Your company happens to  provide app development services. There is a need for your services, and your company is there to deliver. All you need is to connect to the local business that wants the app development. That’s where the role of marketing comes into play. Marketing ensures when someone is looking for the services you provide, your firm is  visible to them.

The average sales cycle length in the B2B industry is 102 days. It starts from lead generation, goes through nurturing the leads, and ends with closing the sale and delighting the customer. This means that a business may have to connect with its customers numerous times.

Marketing automation focuses on managing those communications flawlessly and more coherently. It involves using marketing software and B2B business tools to automate repetitive marketing operations for enhanced workforce efficiency and improved ROI. It can lead to a 12.2% reduction in marketing overhead and a 14.5% increase in sales productivity.

This post will look at how marketing automation works, helpful marketing automation tools, and how marketing automation helps businesses.

How Does Marketing Automation Work?

Marketing automation uses software, data, and strategy to create, launch, and manage a marketing campaign. It focuses on streamlining and processing repetitive marketing operations and keeps track of every action to measure marketing efforts. Most businesses think of marketing automation as an automated tool to send personalized emails to a list of clients as per the scheduled calendar. But, the advanced marketing automation business tools can do much more than that.

A good marketing automation tool can help you with the following:

• High-quality lead generation, nurturing, and scoring
• Audience segmentation and targeting
• Analytics and reporting to optimize marketing and content strategies      
• Upsell and cross-sell activities
• Run a customer loyalty program to increase customer retention and more    

How Do Marketing Automation Tools Work?

Each marketing automation tool has its unique set of features, but the primary focus of each tool is to create, launch, and manage an effective marketing campaign.

Create a Marketing Campaign      

Marketing automation tools help marketing teams create dynamic campaigns that intelligently adapt based on a buyer’s real-time activities at every stage of the buying journey. Using integrated frameworks, your marketing team can easily create emails, social media ads, forms, and videos within minutes. There is no need to hire coding experts to create dynamic forms and interactive ads.   

Launch a Marketing Campaign

Launching a marketing campaign needs time, effort, and resources. Marketing automation tools allow marketing teams to launch a campaign on multiple channels within minutes. Using marketing automation tools, you can send personalized emails, run ads, send feedback forms, and more.

Measure a Campaign

Marketing automation tools keep track of every activity. It combines analytics with data to provide useful information. It provides an organization with behavioral and firmographic data from multiple sources to help in segmentation, data-driven targeting, lead management, and more. In addition, you can use detailed marketing reports and dashboards to track and measure the efficacy of your marketing campaign. Advanced marketing tools collect real-time data that help companies create effective, dynamic market campaigns.

What are The Benefits of Marketing Automation for Your Business?

Numerous statistics have shown that marketing automation can improve the marketing ROI. So let’s find out what key benefits you will enjoy after adopting marketing automation for your B2B professional services firm.    

Improve Efficiency

Marketing automation helps improve the efficiency of the entire marketing department. It takes care of the repeated processes, such as sending emails, posting on social media, and tracking clients’ interactions. It saves time for the marketing team. Thus, they can focus more on planning, creating new strategies, and finding creative ways to add value. This, in turn, helps improve the ROI as the marketing department is working effectively.

Increase Conversion Rate

Marketing automation uses real-time data for analytics that help increase the conversion rate. It collects the information from various touch points such as website visits, opened emails, and social media activity to target leads. Then, based on every interaction, marketing teams can understand the leads’ needs and deliver relatable content.

Nurturing the lead is very important, especially in the B2B industry, where leads are already educated. The more quality content you provide to your leads, the more chances of getting conversions.

Annuitas Group’s study shows that companies that use marketing automation to nurture prospects see a 451% increase in qualified leads.  

Personalized Communications

Marketing automation software allows marketing teams to create personalized content through segmentation capabilities and reporting. In addition, it captures data that helps in the behavior analysis of a client.

For example, your company has run an advertising campaign on social media. The marketing automation tool can provide deep insight into your post’s many visitors, where your visitors are located, and what posts they are interacting with.

Marketing automation software enables automatic scoring, qualifying, and prioritizing of leads based on data. Then, you can channel personalized communication according to the different needs of clients.

According to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement, 77% of buyers want unique, targeted content at each research stage.

Align Sales and Marketing  

One of the most common challenges of any business development team is to align its sales and marketing team. Poor quality lead generation can result in low conversion rates and waste of resources. Using marketing automation software, a company can perform data-driven lead management. Lead scoring helps sales teams understand what are the quality leads. It brings the business development efforts of sales and marketing teams into alignment.

According to Gleanster Research, 50% of the leads businesses generate are qualified, but not ready to buy right now. The synchronization between marketing and sales departments helps salespeople understand clients better and provides the right information on the leads for increased conversions.

Hassle-Free Analytics

Analytics is a key part of any marketing campaign. Marketing automation software keeps track of every activity and collects real-time data. For example, which email leads are opening and clicking, what posts are performing well on social media channels, how many leads are visiting the website, how they are converting to website visits, etc. Everything is tracked automatically.

Based on that, marketing automation software creates graphs and reports that help you improve your marketing strategy. A marketing automation platform provides a single platform for dashboarding, analytics, reporting, and storing data. It is the most comprehensive way of measuring campaigns and predicting consumer behavior. It eventually helps in a better marketing team performance, and improved ROI.   

How Can Company Expert Help You Scale Your B2B firm?

Company Expert is a B2B professional services firm growth consultant that helps B2B firms with a range of solutions. We help B2B financial services, technology, and professional service firms with proprietary frameworks and technology, business advisors, and a professional network of B2B businesses.

B2B firms can use our business playbooks to standardized operational procedures. We have also created a Growth Accelerator SystemTM (GAS).

Company Expert Growth Accelerator SystemTM (GAS) is an integrated set of proprietary processes, strategies, and frameworks in four key areas – Marketing, Sales, Planning, and On-Line Presence. We use these proven frameworks to inject speed, alignment, and accelerated growth into the DNA of B2B firms. You can leverage our proprietary frameworks and technology to fuel your firm’s growth.

The most common sales challenges faced by B2B companies are undefined sales processes, prolonged sales cycles, lack of control over the sales journey, increased  competition, and a deficiency of high-quality leads. More than 40% of salespeople say prospecting is the hardest part of sales. The very beginning of the sales cycle is difficult for nearly half of the workforce in the industry. And, it is no surprise that 40% of companies failed to meet their sales goals in 2021.

Sales is not an alien concept that is hard to understand for highly trained B2B sales managers and C-level executives. An organization needs a well-defined sales process, the right business tools, and resources to manifest the sales goals. The sales strategies of successful B2B firms are evidence of that. Best-in-class companies close 30% of qualified leads while average companies close 20%.

A sales cycle takes care of the process part. It includes a set of specific actions that salespeople need to take to close new clients. It defines everything from how to approach an interested buyer, to closing the sales, and even beyond to generate more sales.

This blog post will look at the seven stages of a B2B sales cycle that help organizations better manage the sales process and meet sales objectives.

1. Prospecting

Prospecting is the beginning of the sales cycle. The purpose of prospecting is to find good leads for the sales of the products or services of your company. The process starts with reaching out to the ideal prospects. LinkedIn is the go-to platform for sales professionals to reach out to ideal prospects. Prospects can be reached through referrals and social media groups as well.

Prospecting is an extremely effective process because 82% of buyers accept meetings when a salesperson reaches out first. Thus, an organization can earn an edge over its competitors with active prospecting.

But at the same time, prospecting comes with its share of challenges. In 2007 it took 3.68 cold call attempts to reach a prospect. Today it takes 8 attempts. An organization should use a well-defined approach to prospecting that helps to find and warm leads. If your organization does not have a defined process for prospecting, you can use a B2B playbook to create a defined prospecting process for your firm.

2. Connecting  

Once a B2B firm has identified the prospects, the next step is to connect with them. This is the first opportunity for a sales professional to convert a cold prospect into a qualified hot lead. The role of a sales professional is to introduce prospects to the company’s solutions, and determine whether prospects are interested in the company’s products or services. A sales team can reach out to the prospects on various platforms such as LinkedIn, email, or phone.

Connecting is a challenging part of the sales process because it is not easy to grab the attention of interested buyers. Especially if you are a new business in the industry, you might face even more challenges.

The following statistics highlight the challenges of connecting with prospects:

• It takes an average of 18 calls to connect with a buyer
• Only 24% of sales emails are opened
• The average salesperson generates roughly one appointment or referral from every 209 cold calls.

But at the same time, with the right prospecting and the sales approach, a professional services firm can create plenty of sales opportunities.

3. Research

Once a firm has identified the prospects interested in learning about its solutions, it is time to understand their needs. This helps a B2B firm understand whether or not a prospect is a good fit for the business. It is more of a discovery stage where an organization learns about the prospect’s needs. This step is vital for the success of the sales effort.

If an organization is qualifying poor quality leads, it will lead to wasted money, time, and effort. During the discovery calls, a sales representative decides whether to identify a lead as a cold lead or hot lead. At least 50% of prospects are not a good fit for the product or service that a firm is selling.

Researching also helps a prospect understand the solutions a B2B firm offers. 19% of buyers want to connect with a salesperson during the awareness stage of their buying process when they’re first learning about the product.

4. Pitch the Product

Once you have learned that prospects are interested in buying your company’s solutions, it is time to pitch the solution. This is the most important part of the sales process because prospects make decisions based on the product demo.

63% of sales leaders believe that virtual meetings are more effective than in-person meetings. An organization needs highly-trained sales professionals to pitch the solutions. Product presentations are built around the pitch templates.

Multiple decision-makers are involved in the B2B industry, and each business has unique needs. The pitch templates are often customized for each prospect’s unique business needs. A company needs to create an effective business strategy template to increase their success rate.

For example, the use of collaborative words positively impacted the calls, and using “we” instead of “I” increased success rates by 35%. If your organization does not have a pitch template, you can use the B2B Positioning and Messaging playbook to craft an effective pitch.

5. Objection Handling

A B2B sale is not an easy road. There are multiple decision-makers involved. For example, 60% of the buyers want to connect with sales during the consideration stage after researching the options and coming up with a shortlist. The study by Gartner suggests that there are typically six to ten decision-makers involved in the buying process of a B2B firm. These are called buying centers.

A sales professional needs to answer these buying centers’ questions about the product or service. These questions can be related to anything: pricing, budgets, competitors, product offerings, business challenges, or any other issues that your pitch might bring to light.

6. Close the Deal

Once your sales professional has answered all the buyers’ questions, it is time to place a follow-up call.  20% of the buyers want to talk during the decision stage once they decide which product to buy. There are two possible outcomes of this follow-up call. Either the prospect is ready to buy or not interested in buying the product.

If the prospect is ready to buy, you can draw up the contract and send it over for final review and signing. If the prospect is not ready to buy, you can instead schedule a follow-up meeting or place the lead in the sales funnel to approach in the future.
It is not uncommon to face challenges during this stage of the sale cycle. Here are a few insights:

• 80% of sales require 5 follow-up calls, whereas 44% of salespeople give up after one follow-up call.
• 57% of people said they would be encouraged to purchase from a salesperson who doesn’t try to apply pressure or hassle them when following up.
• 60% of customers say no four times before saying yes, whereas 48% of salespeople never even make a follow-up attempt.

7. Relation Building

The role of the sales team does not end here. A B2B professional services firm needs a dedicated customer success team to retain clients. A 5% increase in customer retention can increase profits by 25% to 95%. In addition, keeping in touch with existing clients increases your profit margins and reduces the churn rate.

Existing clients are gold mines. They bring cross-selling and upselling opportunities and may bring new clients through referrals. A good relationship with your clients allows a B2B firm to keep the sales cycle in motion, foster more relationships, and ultimately drive revenue.

These are seven stages of a sales cycle. The efficient management of the sales cycle allows sales managers to organize the sales pipeline, prioritize leads, and ultimately evaluate the efficacy of sales efforts.

Use Company Expert’s Growth Solutions to Manage Sale Process    

Company Expert is a leading business consulting firm that helps B2B Financial Services, Technology, and Professional Service Firms with its proprietary suite of solutions, technology, and advisors to inject speed, knowledge, and accelerate growth. We are 100% focused on B2B firms. We know how to influence multiple decision-makers, reduce the long sales cycles, build trust in your firm, and position your company in an overcrowded market. Get in touch with us.