There are many different types of B2B companies: there are some that offer products, others that offer service, there are ones with short sales cycle, and there are others with long sales cycle etc .; however they all have something in common: it is basically some of the challenges they have to face every day when it comes to marketing. The similarity of some of these challenges has made addressing these issue straight forward.
However within the B2B marketing many of the techniques used in a market-type model of B2C are replicable and necessary. It is first necessary to define the challenges faced by companies operating in the Business to Business model.
Every B2B company has to deal with 4 major challenges that will affect its results and developments in the market: The four most important challenges for a B2B company are
Be found. It may seem obvious, but every B2B business needs clients who do not know about the company yet, a B2B business has to reach out to clients.
This is a big challenge, especially in business services, which often have far lesser budgets for B2B marketing and advertising to promote and publicize the company.
Generate a constant volume of new leads. This results in a continuous flow of new business opportunities, and would be represented graphically as a funnel full, which at the top have people showing a slight interest in the offers, and the bottom, people showing a high interest to the offer.
Once we get our funnel this at full capacity, we find a second challenge: we should continue to get inputs into the funnel, so you never were to run out. How to manage the pipeline? It can be done by buying quality B2B databases.
Rate the quality of the leads. Assess the quality of business opportunities obtained (lead scoring) through the Marketing Department, and then choose whether to discard them or follow up.
The quality of the leads obtained or the ability to identify which of them is qualified or is crucial is very important, since it has a huge impact on the ability to achieve long term objectives. In other words, the more qualified leads are, the easier it will be for the sales team.
To present our brand to the market. This last challenge relates directly to branding, also known as the brand image. It is essential to do this because this factor has a direct impact on building trust of potential customers. Building trust needs to start from scratch.
By analyzing different types of enterprises one can easily discover that in many cases somehow, most companies have found a way to confront the challenges posed in above lines.
But yet a high percentage of them are still trying to deal with these challenges to find solutions that are systematized. In order to systematize the actions, B2B companies must first realize that everything is subject to a logic, and must work systematically by following the below points:
Capturing traffic
Capturing leads
Qualify Leads
Close sales
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