There are a ton of B2B marketing ideas out there on how you can best spread the work on your product or service. But most of this information isn’t targeted to B2B, instead focusing on B2C businesses. The good news is that there is plenty of cross-over. But how do you know what works for B2B and what doesn’t?

Well as a digital marketing consultancy, we’ve tried and tested most of the B2B techniques out there. Here are the top 17 ideas that we’ve found, makes the greatest difference to our clients.

1: The Bandwagon Effect

When possible, indicate how many people have signed up for an offer. People typically imitate the activities of others. People tend to feel safer investing in something that has been invested in before. As a B2B marketing idea, this method may not be applicable to the product or service we are actually selling, but it will certainly work for webinars and downloadables which are a vital part of the sales funnel. This method is commonly used in Kickstarter campaigns.

2: Leverage Newsjacking

This is where you can take advantage of a trending topic online to create a package of your own that aligns with the trending topic. This can garner more interest in your brand in the short-term. Be careful not to align too much with trends in general, particularly in B2B, as maintaining your reputation as a sage is important. If you change your area of expertise to suit a trend, you stop becoming an expert in your area. So only do it, when it suits your area of expertise.

3: Write compelling titles

Don’t underestimate the importance of a compelling title for your offer.

A great piece of content isn’t useful to you if it’s not compelling. So test different titles for great downloadables to improve CTRs.

4: Create offers for different buying stages

To do this well, you’ll need to build a comprehensive buyer’s journey for your primary buyer persona. You can then look at structuring your website so that that people at different stages of the buyer’s journey who are more likely to visit specific pages on your site, will come across CTA’s that are more compelling to their thought process.

You’ll then need to look at your marketing funnel. This is the journey a client goes on with you in the longer term, assuming that you have more than one product or service to sell in your business.

A prospect may be more likely to become a client with specific, top of the sales funnel products that are less expensive, less critical and less of a commitment. As your client relationship develops with trust in your expertise, that client may, later down the sales funnel, purchase a more comprehensive product.

A great way to start is by building a campaign that is customer-centric. You can read more about this methodology in our blog post about the customer strategy lead approach.

Check out this HubSpot partner’s homepage. They have used a clear and compelling title and they have rounded it off with a top-of-the-funnel Call-to-Action. Nice!

5: Use high-value offer formats

Some formats work better than others, and it really does depend on your industry and audience. The commonly held belief is that ebooks and templates are the two highest performers. But don’t take our word for it, try some of these formats yourself and see which ones speak best to your audience.

• Ebooks or Guides
• Templates
• Presentations
• Research & Reports
• Whitepapers
• Kits (multiple offers packaged together
• Live Webinars
  • On-demand videos
  • Demos, Sales contact (sales ready offers)

6: Write compelling CTA’s

As with choosing great titles for your downloadables, you need to also write great CTA’s that lead to them. Your CRM should allow you to change the wording of your CTAs in one central source easily so you don’t have to change it on every page it exists on. Try changing your CTAs every couple of weeks and monitor the success of what works and what doesn’t.

7: Place your CTA’s where the eyes can see

Above the fold, which means the first block of the webpage, or basically the part of the page that visitors will see before scrolling down.

You’ll need to consider the fact that when people are searching for a service or a product, they’ll want to see immediate proof that you have what they want as soon as they arrive on your page. Without immediate proof, they will just leave.

8: Clarity trumps wit.

Favour making your offers clear over sounding smart. An offer could sound clever, but if no one understands what they can get out of it, the most engagement you will get is a laugh, which is kind of useless if they don’t click and give you their details.

9: Promote offers on product pages.

These need to be relevant to the product or service page that it is on to increase the CTR.

In fact, a service page is incomplete if it’s doesn’t have at least one button that allows the visitor to show more interest and move further along the sales funnel. This CTA can be anything from an invitation to book a meeting with a consultant, or a free downloadable with the detailed specifications on the service or product that may otherwise be too dry for website content. 

10: Promote an equally compelling offer on thank you pages.

The people that arrive on your thank you pages already trust you and are investing in your brand. Don’t waste this opportunity to market to them. Make the offer related to the one they just signed up to and increase the likelihood of their interest in the second offer. Check out our blog post on maximising the cross-sell to get more out of this tip. 

11: Remove distractions from landing pages

Remove the navigation menu bar from landing pages and thank you pages to improve conversion rates. Menu bars can often be a distraction on pages dedicated to lead conversion, so get rid of it.

12: Match the headline of your landing page to the CTA.

If you use the same wording in both, the consistency is obvious and the action required becomes a lot easier for a distracted mind to understand.

Doing all of this on your own can definitely take a bit of time, so if you’d like to save a bit, then feel free to book a free consult and I’d be happy to do it for you.

13: Create more landing pages

According to a marketing benchmarks report, companies see a 55% increase in lead generation when they increase the number of landing pages from 10 to 15. The more offers you have the more likely you are to convert. Simple.

14: Reduce anxiety with proof.

Logos from security and safety companies, links to your privacy policy, testimonials and reviews are all indicators from external sources which improve your chances of gaining trust through proof.

15: Make the form appear shorter.

Even if you have the same number of fields, if it looks shorter, your visitors are more likely to convert.

16: Use links and CTAs within offers.

People who are reading your ebooks and templates have already invested more time than the average site visitor on your content and brand, so keep them engaged with clickable CTAs and links within your downloadables.

17: A/B test when you can.

If your CRM has this feature, which most good CRM’s will, use every opportunity you can to A/B test different layouts, wordings and offers. This way, with each publication, you will keep learning more about your ideal audience.

18: Use subtitled videos to capture your audience

Yes. Videos are expensive. But you only need one good one to sell your goods. Videos that have concise and valuable information with a high production value will keep your audience captivated and drastically improve your capture rate. Especially on important pages like your homepage.

Subtitles are critical to the success of any marketing video as most mediums play on mute when being browsed.