To grow your B2B company, you need to generate leads. The key to reaching these potential customers is to use B2B marketing. However, finding the right channel to deliver your marketing message to your target audience is also crucial.
With many great B2B marketing channels, knowing which ones to use can feel overwhelming. This guide will provide you with the information you need so you can confidently choose the proper channels for your business.
Jump right to:
- What is a B2B marketing channel?
- The role of marketing channels in the B2B sales funnel
- 12 best B2B marketing channels
- How to choose and combine the right B2B marketing channels
<h2 id="what">What is a B2B marketing channel?</h2>
B2B marketing channels allow companies to promote their products or services to other businesses. These channels can be online, like email or social media, or offline, like direct mail or conferences.
Marketing channels allow your company to be in the right place at the right time to drive potential customers to your business. These channels help you get in front of customers and deliver your marketing messages.
Each B2B marketing channel serves a unique purpose. Depending on your company’s industry, size, and resources, some channels will work better than others. That’s why it’s essential to understand what each channel offers and to test out different ones to aid your overall B2B marketing strategy continuously.
What’s the difference between B2B and B2C marketing?
Business-to-business (B2B) marketing and business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing both focus on increasing sales and brand awareness. However, B2B and B2C marketing take different approaches.
Here are some essential differences between B2B and B2C marketing:
- B2B marketing focuses on specific industries and businesses, while B2C marketing is concerned with a wide, consumer-based audience.
- B2B marketing targets a company’s decision-makers and key stakeholders. B2C companies sell to an individual consumer. B2B marketing campaigns are thus tailored to your target audience’s industry and pain points.
- B2B businesses have a longer sales cycle than B2C businesses. This means B2B marketing often focuses more on nurturing, building relationships, and developing trust than B2C.
- B2B marketing emphasizes educational content to build authority and speak to target audiences’ pain points.
<h2 id="role">The role of marketing channels in the B2B sales funnel</h2>
B2B marketing guides your leads through all stages of the sales funnel. The objective is to turn leads into paying customers. Your leads can be at any stage in the sales funnel when they find your company, so it’s important that your marketing strategy responds to all stages.
Here is an overview of four key stages of a B2B sales funnel and a few marketing strategies that correspond to each one.
1. Awareness. In the first stage, your leads realize their pain points and research topics related to their pain points. Your goal at this stage is to provide answers to your leads’ problems through content and educational marketing materials.
Utilize the following marketing strategies to attract leads in the awareness stage:
- Content marketing
- SEO optimization
- Paid advertising
- Social media
- Influencer marketing
2. Interest. This next stage is where your leads are researching solutions to their pain points through your company and competitors. Your goal is to keep leads engaged with your company.
To engage leads in the interest stage:
- Send targeted email campaigns
- Share personalized content
- Invite them to webinars and exclusive events
3. Decision. During this stage, your leads are considering making a purchase and are deciding between your company and your competitors. Your job is to convince your leads that you offer the best solution.
To win over your leads:
- Offer discounts
- Share customer case studies
- Offer competitor comparisons
4. Action. In this stage, your leads have decided to become your customers. You should make it easy for your leads to convert and continue to nurture your customers post-purchase.
To close deals and nurture customers:
- Provide customer onboarding support
- Share customer success resources
- Send regular check-ins and updates
- Collect customer feedback with surveys
<h2 id="best">12 best B2B marketing channels</h2>
Each marketing channel can help you achieve different goals and support different stages of the buying journey. Here are 12 of the best marketing channels specifically for B2B companies.
SMS
While often considered a popular B2C strategy, SMS marketing can be a game-changer for businesses too. This mobile marketing tool involves sending promotional messages via text to improve engagement and close more deals. More B2B businesses are turning to SMS marketing because of its:
- High open rate. Text messages have a 98 percent open rate. Because texts are sent right to your recipient’s phone, it’s hard to miss SMS messages.
- Improved reach. Out of all the marketing channels, SMS marketing gives you the best chance of reaching customers. 97 percent of Americans own a cell phone and your audience is more likely to own and use a cell phone than they are to have an active social media presence.
- Increased engagement rate. With SMS marketing, your recipients must opt-in and give consent before receiving text messages. This increases engagement from your audience, as your recipients want to get your marketing messages.
- Instant communication. SMS messages are sent and received quickly. Research shows that 85 percent of people check a text within 5 minutes of receiving it. This makes it a great channel for urgent updates and follow-ups.
- Strong relationships. SMS gives your business a quick way to connect and converse with customers. You can easily reach your recipients and build stronger relationships with your customers.
- Lower competition. While SMS is growing as a business marketing channel, it’s still far less popular than email, social media, and other forms of marketing. You can take advantage of this low competition and implement SMS into your B2B outreach strategy.
Businesses can use SMS marketing to:
- Distribute personalized pricing quotes, content, or offers
- Announce product launches
- Send appointment reminders
- Share time-sensitive company updates
- Send text message surveys to collect customer feedback
Organic search
Organic search is a cost-effective B2B marketing channel that focuses on organically driving website traffic to your brand through high-quality content and search engine optimization.
Content marketing is a great way to draw attention to your brand. It involves sharing informative and entertaining content about your brand and industry to provide value to your audience. Examples of content marketing include:
- Blog posts
- Ebooks
- Infographics
- Videos
Through this content, you can share industry trends and helpful tips that solve your audience’s pain points. By providing valuable resources to your audience, you become a trusted authority. You also help potential customers make purchase decisions and increase your chances of making sales.
Search engine optimization (SEO) involves optimizing your website and content for specific keywords that match what your audience is searching for. You want to rank well on popular search engines like Google and Bing so potential customers see your brand when searching online.
When creating SEO content, ensure you target and use relevant keywords that your audience is looking for, such as how to solve various pain points.
Email marketing allows you to communicate with your audience at scale. Email marketing helps businesses build relationships, generate leads, and boost sales.
The top benefits of email marketing include:
- Wide reach. Over 4 billion people use email worldwide, which makes email marketing a great tool to reach lots of potential customers. With email marketing, you can also reach many people at the same time and efficiently distribute marketing campaigns.
- Easy tracking and evaluation. Email marketing platforms include metrics and KPIs that measure bounce rate, open rate, conversion rate, and unsubscribe rate. Use these insights to improve your email campaigns and better understand your audience.
- Targeted messaging. With email marketing platforms, you can segment your contact lists and send targeted messages based on specific interests. Targeting your messaging helps increase engagement and conversions.
- Cost-effective. Email marketing is cheaper than other marketing tools. With email marketing, you can send bulk emails at low rates to reach your audience in a cost-effective way.
- Customizable and visual. You can customize your emails to showcase your company’s unique style and create designs your audience will remember.
- Personalizable. You can personalize your emails by using your recipient’s name, location, and other specific information. This makes your content more relevant to your audience and boosts engagement.
Email marketing is best used for:
- Newsletters
- Promoting multiple products
- Visual announcements
- Long-form content
- One-way communication
Organic social media
Organic social media marketing allows you to showcase your brand and connect with your audience on various social platforms. You can use social media to post helpful content like information about your product, features, or awards.
LinkedIn is a particularly popular social media platform for B2B marketing. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 84 percent of B2B marketers say LinkedIn provides the best value out of all the social media platforms. LinkedIn is a great tool to have an organic social presence on because it helps get you in front of other business decision-makers.
Paid
Paid marketing channels focus on various kinds of advertising. The advantage of paid media channels is that you can get immediate visibility and faster results than organic marketing. On the other hand, these channels cost money so you need to use them strategically.
With an effective paid marketing strategy, you can:
- Get qualified leads and drive results quickly
- Create highly-targeted marketing campaigns with lookalike audiences and data
- Ensure your messages are seen by key decision-makers at the right time
Here are some essential paid B2B channels for your business to consider.
Paid search involves running ads on popular search engines with the goal of ranking at the top of the search engine results page for relevant search terms. Paid search is also referred to as pay-per-click (PPC) because your business pays a fee when someone clicks your link.
PPC is a smart paid strategy because your business only has to pay a small fee when the link is clicked rather than paying a larger fee upfront. Paid search also allows you to rank more quickly than organic search.
Paid social media refers to sharing sponsored content across social media platforms. Compared to organic social media, paid social media gives you more tools to target specific audiences and track behavior to improve your strategy. Paid social media can expand your reach and generate more qualified leads. Some great paid social media websites for businesses include LinkedIn, Reddit, and Facebook.
Display advertisements are ads shown on web pages. They often are in the form of visual banners, popup ads, or embedded ads that promote your business. They can be specifically targeted to reach key decision-makers in your industry. Programmatic advertising software can help marketers improve their results as it automatically optimizes their ad placements and targeting.
Connect TV (CTV) advertising promotes your brand on television streaming platforms. It’s a form of video advertising that will appear during a viewer's movie, TV show, or other content ingestion. Some examples of where CTV ads would pop up include AppleTV, Netflix, and Amazon Prime Video.
Benefits of CTV advertising include:
- High watch-through rates
- Precise targeting for highly personalized ads
- Great tracking abilities
If your business has the budget and resources to use paid marketing channels, implement them to expand your reach and drive quicker results.
Public relations
Public relations (PR) is particularly effective for building brand awareness and credibility. With PR, you can share announcements about new products and services with potential customers, media outlets, and business partners.
Using PR is also a great way to connect with journalists and get published in relevant news outlets. With your business featured in other credible sources, you build more authority and trust for your business.
Events
Attending trade shows and conferences is a great way to network with potential customers, evaluate your competitors, and learn from industry experts. Even though much of B2B marketing is heavily digital, don’t underestimate the power of face-to-face interactions. Set up a booth or give a talk to get your business out there and start building relationships with key decision-makers.
Here are some ideas to get the most out of industry events:
- Design a visually appealing booth to attract attendees
- Perform product demos or workshops to engage attendees
- Give a sponsored talk with other relevant companies to expand your reach
- Host giveaways to drive attendee engagement and collect contact information
Account-based marketing (ABM)
Account-based marketing (ABM) is an outbound marketing strategy that targets specific high-value accounts. It involves creating highly personalized outreach campaigns and developing strong relationships with key stakeholders.
The goal of ABM is to turn high-value prospects into paying customers. This marketing strategy focuses all its efforts on specific accounts and relies on a strong collaboration between sales and marketing teams.
The benefits of ABM include:
- Personalized marketing. With ABM, you can share helpful content that provides solutions to a specific stakeholder’s pain points. This personalized marketing drives higher engagement, boosts your relationship with key decision-makers, and ultimately leads to higher conversion rates.
- Sales and marketing alignment. ABM keeps sales and marketing departments on the same page. This alignment keeps your marketing messages consistent, which can improve lead quality.
- Shortened sales cycle. With ABM, you can cut down the time it takes to close a deal. Research shows that one company that implemented an ABM strategy reduced its time to close by 20 percent.
- High conversion rate. Due to its effective marketing strategies, ABM can boost conversion rates. Research suggests that ABM campaigns can increase conversion rates by up to 14 percent.
- Increased ROI. Targeting high-value accounts can help boost sales and decrease the amount of wasted resources. 76 percent of marketers said that introducing ABM as a strategy increased their overall ROI for the year.
Direct mail
As everyone moves toward digital marketing, direct mail can have a stronger impact and make a statement to your audience. You could send your audience specific resources that respond to their pain points or a fun flyer that gets your business name out there.
When personalized effectively, direct mail can grasp your audience’s attention better than other forms of marketing. For example, people get an average of 100+ emails a day, so your target audience may overlook emails and delete them from their inbox. Direct mail, however, is harder to dispose of as you can’t just get rid of it with the click of a button.
Print advertising
Advertising your business in local magazines or industry-specific print publications can help you reach your target audience.
Here are some benefits of print advertising:
- It builds credibility, as print media is viewed as authoritative.
- It targets your specific audience based on location or industry.
- It’s less saturated than digital media, which allows your business to stand out.
- There aren’t any ad blockers like there are for digital advertising.
Podcasts and webinars
Podcasts and webinars are both great opportunities to talk to your audience about your brand and help you establish yourself as an expert in your field.
With a podcast, you can interview experts in your industry to expand your audience and build authority. To engage your audience, discuss topics relevant to your business that your listeners will find interesting. You can create your own podcast or become a guest on one that your audience listens to.
Webinars are also a great way to connect with your audience. Rather than giving a sales pitch, cover educational and appealing topics in your webinars that engage your audience. Webinars are also conducted in real-time, giving people the opportunity to participate and ask questions.
Record your webinars, use them as a resource for potential customers who visit your website, and promote them across social media channels.
Influencer marketing
While a popular strategy in B2C, B2B companies can also utilize influencer marketing to drive traffic to their website and increase customer engagement. By partnering with influencers in the same industry who have large and loyal fan bases, brands can expand their reach and attract potential customers.
One example of influencer marketing is to have an influencer post sponsored content where they discuss and promote your service. Another example is to invite the influencer to speak at events and endorse your brand.
<h2 id="how">How to choose and combine the right B2B marketing channels</h2>
Now that you know the best B2B marketing channels, the next step is to decide which channels work best for your business. Here are some tips to help you choose the right marketing channels.
How to select the right marketing channels
Choosing the right marketing channels for your business involves a thorough evaluation of your company and your audience. Here are three essential components to take into account:
- Understand your audience. To effectively choose your marketing channels, it’s crucial that you understand your target audience. Learn their pain points, demographics, and online behaviors, as well as where they are in the buyer journey. Then, choose marketing channels that align with your findings.
- Define your goals. It’s important that you have a clear set of goals before constructing your marketing strategy. Each marketing channel supports a different goal whether it’s brand awareness, lead generation, or customer loyalty. Once you define your goals, you can choose marketing channels that best match them.
- Consider your resources. Each marketing channel requires different amounts of time and money. Evaluate your company resources to decide how to wisely distribute them across marketing channels.
- Start gathering data. As you test out different platforms, be sure to track and analyze performance. This will help you set a baseline, but also help you determine which channels are working to drive the best leads for your business. Google Analytics is a popular tool for tracking data such as, website visitors, bounce rates, and conversion rates. CRM tools like HubSpot can also help you track deals throughout the pipeline for more insights. With this data, you can adjust your campaign strategies and improve results.
Developing a multi-channel strategy
To create an effective B2B marketing strategy, it’s important to leverage multiple channels. For example, most businesses should aim to have some sort of paid and organic marketing strategy to help boost visibility online. Plus, using both online and offline channels can help you get your marketing messages seen.
When marketing channels are used together, businesses often see better results, as each marketing channel is a new opportunity to find potential clients.
Integrating channels
You don’t want your marketing channels to feel siloed. When you integrate marketing channels and work together, you’ll see improved performance. It helps you keep messages consistent across platforms and provides your business with more data to make informed decisions. With consistency, integrated marketing campaigns can reinforce your company’s message and improve your overall marketing strategy.
Seamlessly add SMS marketing to your B2B strategy with Textline
With its high open and engagement rate, there’s no doubt that SMS marketing is an effective way to reach your business audience, especially when it’s combined with other marketing channels.
If you want to take advantage of the benefits of SMS, Textline is a powerful SMS platform that integrates into your existing toolkit.
Ready to add SMS to your marketing strategy? Try out Textline’s SMS marketing platform for free. Sign up for your free 14-day trial today.
