Proven Strategies for B2B Product Marketing

How is your team approaching B2B product marketing? Is it working as well as you want? B2B product marketing is complex and requires constantly learning and keeping up to implement a strong strategy. B2B stands on it’s own because you are not just trying to sell something to an individual based on their perceived value, but you are trying to demonstrate how your SaaS product can save or generate money for someone else.There is quite a bit to consider. Often you are communicating primarily digitally, you will need to reach and engage gatekeepers and decision makers, and you will be dealing with the processes of other businesses to close your sale. Even if we’re talking about B2B products, 73% of B2B buyers say they want a personalized, B2C-like customer experience. The marketing strategies your team uses to create the right experience is key to the success of your product.

Here are proven strategies for B2B product marketing to boost leads and conversions:

1. Research & defining your niches and key personas.

As a B2B product or service, you likely have a multi-faceted product that can be of value to a number of customers. But don’t make them figure that out themselves. Know who your key customers are and tailor your product marketing strategy to reach and engage them. The best place to start with this is persona development. Developing personas means creating a complete profile of your target customers including their demographics, where they spend time online, how they purchase, what they are searching for, and their biggest questions and problems. With SaaS B2B, it’s even more specific. You want to identify their role within the company, their responsibilities, their background (are they technical or non-technical?), and where they do their industry research. Identifying these traits about your personas will help you determine where they are online and how you speak to them. This helps you to map out your strategy for creating the copy, landing pages, and content necessary to engage your key customers.

2. Offer something of value for your target markets.

The buying process for B2B customers is typically a bit more rigorous than B2C customers. Often times there are others who need to sign off, existing business processes to consider, and much more research and time involved before actually purchasing. You will want to present your brand as authoritative, as the solution to your customers’ problems, and stay top of mind to potential customers. In this case, content is still king. 62% of B2B buyers say they can make a business decision based on online content alone. Your company should have a focused and useful blog for your target customers. This helps to build brand awareness but also showcase expertise in your area. Customers genuinely appreciate when a company shares invaluable knowledge. It’s important your content speaks directly to your customer segments and shows your product/brand as their solution.

Offer something of value for free with an exchange of an email. Make it focused on a customer segment and use targeted landing pages for each. This way, your potential lead gets something helpful from your team that adds to your credibility while you get a way to contact that and begin the sales process in the future.

Some examples of what you can create are:

•        Guides
•        Ebooks
•        Trainings
•        Webinars

For example, if one of your target customer groups is marketing teams, you can offer a free guide on influencer marketing in exchange for an email and include how your tool can help them with their process. Webinars also give you the opportunity to partner with thought leaders and experts to help position your brand as authoritative. This is really important for B2B product marketing. 96% of B2B buyers want content with more input from industry thought leaders.

3. Real time, conversational business.

Customers expect an excellent customer service because the product they are buying is usually part of their internal processes and needed to run their business. It means that you do need to have a 24/7 approach to the buying process. Though your website, landing pages, and content may do a lot of the selling (most B2B buyers are 57% of the way through the buying process before speaking with a sales rep), personalized service is now an expectation online. More than 30% of customers expect live chat on your website. Timely customer support for answering questions and providing live demos is mandatory to keep leads interested.

“But I don’t actually like the term of conversational marketing. It’s more like conversational business because it applies to marketing, sales and service. People don’t want to email back and forth anymore. They don’t really want to talk on the phone anymore. They want to chat.”– Brian Halligan, CEO of Hubspot

A few good ways to provide customer support in an automated way are to:

• Create product demo videos that highlight top features that can be viewed anytime
• Have an auto-scheduler for live demos and sales calls
• Auto-response messages and emails to let customers know when your team will reach out
• Automatic forms to collect leads or user segmentation data (email, company, position, industry, etc)

Learn which are the top ways you can automate SaaS customer engagement on your website here.

4. Be proactive and transparent about product leadership and development.

The goal is to position your brand as authoritative and a leader in your market. As mentioned before, your goal through content creation should be to show customers that your product is the solution their looking for and provide information that engages them and makes your brand the “expert”. You want to show customers that your product is the solution and that your company will continue to provide solutions that are exactly what they need to build credibility and a loyal customer base. Be transparent and forthcoming about the evolution of your product and involve customers in the process by sharing what you’re adding and updating within your product. Communicate your product changes in a way that is effective and engaging. When customers feel they are involved and their needs are met, they are more willing to be loyal and advocate for your brand. A great way to include customers in your product’s development is Beamer. Beamer is a central changelog that sits within your product interface where you can announce just about anything: new content, product updates, new features, news, etc.. A sidebar newsfeed opens up on your site when a user clicks a “What’s New” tab in your nav or an icon. You can add videos, photos, GIFs, and enticing CTAs to get users clicking and exploring your product and site. You can segment updates as well by demographic, location, language, and past behavior to better engage those on your site with the most relevant content. Companies using Beamer have seen 10x more engagement from their users. It’s the best way to keep users engaged, excited about your product, and show them that you are leading with development to fit their needs.

5. Get reviews from satisfied customers.

Peer reviews are more powerful than ever in B2B marketing. 92% of buyers said they were more likely to purchase a product or service after reading a trusted review. Getting satisfied customer reviews and, even better, testimonial videos up is really important in pushing B2B leads in the direction of a purchase. Prompting your current satisfied customers to give you a review can be tricky. A few ways are to add a rating popup within your product or embed a NPS rating to know how many of your users would recommend your product. For top customers, you can offer to write a case study and do a short interview of their experience.This can go on your site for leads to reference when making a purchasing decision. Sharing reviews via social media and in social media ads is powerful as regular promoted content is losing its power over consumers. 75% of B2B buyers use social media to support their purchase decision.Video testimonials are very powerful but a little harder to get. If you can get one, they are very impactful on your landing pages and homepage. Adding videos to landing pages increase conversions by 86%. Incentivize video testimonials from your best clients by offering discounts or credits. As B2B marketing evolves, some new trends will come and go and some of the strategies will always be relevant. It’s important your team keeps up with what is working and what is expected of you from customers. Try these strategies for proven ways to improve your B2B marketing. To show your focus on product development and engage your users, try Beamer on your site.