B2B Marketing Strategy Archives - Page 11 of 15

Boost Your B2B Virtual Event Engagement

Estimated Read Time: 5 minutes

Intended Audience: Microsoft Partners, SaaS Owners, B2B Marketers

Virtual Events have been evergrowing since work from home (WFH) became a reality for the majority of working adults since the outbreak of COVID-19. Trying to stay connected and informed has now been transformed to screens, rather than days long conferences and all-day in-person meetings.

Given this facilitating virtual events is a skill set most organizations had to add to their toolkit to keep the doors open and the lights on. Thanks to the rapid evolvement of technologies, such as Microsoft Teams and dedicated webinar platforms (e.g. GoToWebinar, Zoom Webinar, Microsoft Teams LIVE Events), one can easily host and attend virtual conferences and seminars, globally, with just a click of a button, from the comfort and safety of their home.

To successfully organize a virtual event and make it an experience to remember for all the participants, it’s necessary to curate visually appealing and informative content to grab attendees’ attention and hold on to it for the duration of the event. Create an engaging environment that encourages people to utilize all their senses to help combat participation fatigue. When such elements are planned well, virtual events can be extremely cost-efficient, easier to manage than live sessions, and help you generate leads and drive results.

Let’s look at what you can do at different stages of a virtual event to offer your audience an enriching experience.

Tips to Drive That Virtual Event Engagement

Pre-Session Activities

Finding the right platform to host your event. How do you know if the platform you selected is right for your business? It all boils down to your target audience. Consider the comfort level of your audience with the platform you select: how many people can you accommodate in your virtual event, and/or if the platform offers interactive features or analytics to track the success of your event.
Once you have selected the right platform, you must set a theme or objective for the event around which you can plan your content. If you plan to have multiple speakers, make sure to provide them plenty of time so that they can curate their content and practice to captivate the target audience virtually.
Building your social media strategy is equally important as organizing or planning the nitty-gritty of the virtual conference. With the right social media strategy, you can boost the presence of your virtual event or conference on various platforms and share valuable information (e.g. speaker line-up, contest alerts, and registration/ticketing info). To create hype and reach the right audience, you need to strategically plan your posts, use relevant hashtags, geo-target the posts, and optimize the content. Most importantly, make sure to find the right balance to build that rapport with your audience to form genuine connection and engagement.

In-Session Engagement Ideas

Staring at a screen continuously for an hour or more can be draining. Here is how you can make the experience worth their while:

Add interactive elements like ice breaker sessions, in-session polls, quizzes, live Q&A sessions, and more. This will encourage people to interact with the speakers and fellow audience members during the virtual conference/event. It will also provide an opportunity for people to share their experiences and learn from each other, which will help build a strong mental association with your business’s product and services.
Help the moderator and speakers interact with your audience during the conference by sharing or posting sneak peeks and by live-tweeting. In addition to that always be prepared to tackle any technical glitches that may arise and do not forget to plan for backups.

If you feel that your audience is split between two or more social media platforms, you could also choose to stream the conference on those platforms.

Post-Session Follow-Ups

After an event, it’s also important to gauge its success. Here are some ways you can keep their interest alive:

Depending upon the nature of the event and its exclusivity, timely archive or share the recording of your event. If you were hosting an exclusive event and felt that you got a positive response, you could also choose to hold one-on-one sessions or create a series of such events to dive deep into all the important topics that resonate with your audience.
Gaining valuable feedback from the audience is an effective way to get a pulse of the situation. This feedback will not just help you improve the quality of your future sessions but also enlighten you about potential opportunities that you can explore to expand your business.
You should review the analytics information generated through your posts and content to measure performance and identify the type of content that’s appreciated by your audience.
Creating a blog or downloadable resource post the virtual event is an effective way to recap all that was covered. It’s a powerful tool to attrat the attendees and even new prospective audiences to your website for more details.

Need Help Driving Virtual Event Engagement?

If you are planning to host your first virtual conference or looking for ways to improve and grow your virtual event’s reach, Maven Collective Marketing has the expertise to run value-driven events for your organization. Right from planning to execution, Maven Collective Marketing has got you covered. Our experts will walk you through all the performance metrics and help generate exciting ideas to set up your B2B virtual event or conference and drive engagement.

To learn more about how the Mavens can help you with your B2B virtual event, simply reach out to us today!

Compelling Digital Marketing Drills For B2B Organizations

Estimated Read Time: 8 minutes

Intended Audience: B2B Business Owners, Chief Marketing Officers, Business Strategists

Revised September 2023

Some B2B digital marketing trends never go out of style. Here are some tactics that you should utilize to see a greater impact and return on investment from your digital marketing efforts.

B2B Digital Marketing Trend #1: Don’t Undervalue Webinars, Videos & Virtual Events

The use of video calling skyrocketed as organizations around the world adapted to remote work and it doesn’t look like this digital marketing trend will be slowing down anytime soon.

The pandemic had a huge impact on the popularity growth of video conferencing, webinars and virtual events, but they were all on the rise long before ‘social distancing’ became part of our daily vocabulary.

The good news is that including webinars, videos and virtual events in your B2B digital marketing strategy can open up a number of opportunities for lead generation, improving the buyer journey, and expanding your brand reach.

Use Webinars and Virtual Events for Lead Generation

Producing high-quality webinars and virtual events that truly add value to attendees can take a lot of work, but we promise that it will pay off and the rewards will be worth the effort!

Not only do webinars position you as an authority and a thought leader, but they are also a great vehicle for generating high-quality leads. People that are willing to take the time out of their day to join your webinar are likely to be highly engaged and searching to add value to their organization within your area of expertise. With that being said, it’s definitely worth adding webinars and virtual events to your B2B digital marketing strategy.

Expand Your Reach with Co-Marketing

Now that you’ve added virtual events and webinars to your marketing must-haves, it’s time to consider how to elevate your reach. Collaborating with compatible organizations to your own can be a great way to elevate your webinars or virtual events by tapping into new, but relevant, audiences.

Plus, hosting a webinar in partnership with a complementary organization means you can add even more value to your audience by going above and beyond your specific area of expertise.

Improve The Buyer Journey With Videos

Videos are an amazing tool for getting all sorts of messages across to your audience in an engaging, easy-to-understand way. When used effectively, they can drastically improve the buyer journey by providing a much more detailed look at the product or service you are offering. In fact, according to Google 55% of people search for a product on Google, and then learn more by going to YouTube before they buy it.

Not only can videos help your audience better understand your products or services, but they can also have a huge impact on your SEO. Search engines love video and value it as high-quality pieces of content. In 2021, it’s estimated that over 80% of all web traffic will consist of video.

B2B Digital Marketing Trend #2: Be Authentic, Educational & Informative

Customers are inundated with messages every day, so being authentic and adding real educational value will help you cut through the noise and create a strong connection with your audience. Use your content to capture interest and establish your organization as a source of reliable information, and stay consistent with the value you provide to your audience.

The following content types are a great way to provide educational content and generate leads at the same time:

Whitepapers – creating technical, in-depth whitepapers on a specific topic can enforce your organization as a thought leader in your area, establish trust among your audience, and solidify you as a go-to source of information.
Guides – help your audience get up to speed with easy to follow ‘how-to’ guides.
eBooks – easy to read and more general than whitepapers, eBooks are a great way to increase credibility and add value through educational content.
Infographics – a great way to format content and information so it’s easy to read, educational and highly shareable.
Blogging – consistent blogging can showcase thought leadership as well as drive traffic to your website.

B2B Digital Marketing Trend #3: Nurture Leads with Email Marketing Nurtures & Automation

If you haven’t already moved your email marketing to an automated platform, we should probably be catching you up on marketing in 2011 rather than now!

Transitioning to an email automation platform (our favourites are MailChimp and HubSpot) can be one of the most highly impactful marketing investments you can make, with substantial ROI for years to come. It will make staying in touch with your contacts easier than ever and allow you to keep them engaged with relevant and personalized content.

Email Nurture Flows

Use your email automation platform to take your contacts on a journey depending on their interest group. For example, if you gained a contact because they registered to join a webinar, you will know the subject area that they are interested in. Moving forward, you can nurture this contact with relevant information that adds value to them within this area and tie in your product or service offering in a way that’s relevant to their individual needs.

Automated Email Follow Up

Reach out to new contacts instantly with automated email follow-ups. Setting up auto-responders to download, sign up or other forms allow you to automatically reach out to new contacts with the information they need without delay. This will allow you to get a higher response from your audience, as when they complete a significant action like filling in a form they will likely expect a response or confirmation.

Consistent Email Communications

To get the most from your email list, it’s important to keep your contacts engaged and remain consistent over time. A great way to do this is by sending a monthly newsletter to your contacts to keep them updated on what is new & noteworthy with your organization, and to share any new resources that may be helpful to them. A monthly newsletter provides the opportunity for you to touch base with leads, showcase your business and keep your database up to date.

B2B Digital Marketing Trend #4: Reinvest in Search Engine Marketing for the Long-Term

When it comes to SEO, it is a common misconception that if you optimize your website once then it will last forever. The reality is interest changes, and so do keywords. For example, in the Microsoft space, “Office 365” rebranded to “Microsoft 365” or “Microsoft Dynamics NAV” is now “Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central”.

It’s important to keep checking back in on your keywords and your keyword strategy, as it’s not guaranteed that they will get more popular with time. This coming year, check back in on your SEO with the following crucial stages:

Revisit Your Website Keyword Strategy

Keywords are at the heart of website SEO, so it’s important to clearly define the keywords that have the most relevance and potential for your organization.

To build an effective keyword strategy, start by conducting thorough keyword research using tools such as Google Keyword Planner, Moz or Ahrefs. Use the keyword data gathered in this research stage to guide how you will use individual keywords and how you will track their impact going forward.

Conduct a Thorough SEO Audit

How is your current site performing in terms of SEO? The best way to check what is working and what isn’t is to complete a thorough SEO audit of your site. It’s important to look out for both big issues that may be holding your site back, as well as smaller, easy-to-fix problems that may present opportunities for quick wins.

An SEO audit should cover an analysis of current organic search traffic using Google Search Console and Google Analytics, a content audit and content gap analysis, as well as examining what content (whether that’s written copy, images, or videos) is optimized and what still needs to be.

Book an SEO Audit Today!

Not sure where to start with your website SEO? Don’t panic, Maven Collective Marketing’s expert team is here to help you!

Request My Audit Now

Implement SEO Elements Across Your Site

Last but definitely not least, it’s time to fill in the gaps highlighted in your SEO audit. We recommend building a checklist for each page, article, or blog post, so you have a comprehensive list of all the elements that need optimizing. It can be time consuming, but ensuring that all your headings, images and copy are optimized for search will drastically improve how easy it is for potential customers to find you online.

B2B Digital Marketing Trend #5: Explore New SERP Opportunities

Search engine algorithm updates happen all the time which means there are constantly new opportunities to improve your ranking. Take advantage of rich snippets and structured data markup to take that coveted ‘position zero’ on search engine listings – the most sought after spot on the internet.

Schema Markup

Schema markup is a section of code that you put on your site in order to help search engines serve users with an informative response to best answer their questions. Essentially, schema markup provides search engine algorithms with context to inform what your data means rather than simply what it says.

Rich Snippet Categories

The majority of Google search results show a website’s title tag, meta description and URL. Rich snippets include these, but also adds more to it making your site more compelling and increasing CTR. Search engines like Google will pull this rich snippet data from Structured Markup (like Schema) in your website’s code.

Leveraging Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free service that provides insights to help you measure your site’s performance, flag potential issues and control how Google views your website. It’s a great tool to monitor and improve your SEO as it can show you invaluable data insights such as how often your site appears in Google search queries and which keywords drive the most traffic to your site. If you haven’t already, setting up Google Search Console should be high up on your to-do list!

B2B Digital Marketing Trend #6: Promote in the Right Channels Consistently

There are countless platforms you could use to market your organization, but it’s important to pinpoint the most important ones for you so you can stay focused on connecting with your audience in the right place at the right time. If you don’t you may find yourself spending an endless amount of time without any measurable results.

Here are the key channels we recommend focusing on:

Email Marketing

As mentioned earlier in this post, email can be a very personal way to reach your target audience. When planning your email strategy, think about how you can create a personalized experience for your contact list so that every communication is relevant to their individual interests and goals.

B2B Social Media

In our experience working with B2B companies, a lot of organizations struggle to get into a routine with social media marketing, or even ignore it completely. When used effectively, social media marketing can present a number of opportunities for your organization so make sure it is a key part of your B2B digital marketing strategy!

The key is to understand where your audience is showing up online, and focus your social media efforts on a couple of key channels rather than stretching yourself across all platforms without much in the way of engagement or return. For B2B digital marketing, our favourite platforms are LinkedIn and X (formerly Twitter), but don’t overlook the value of Google My Business!

Paid Advertising (Google/Bing, LinkedIn, Podcasts)

Paid advertising is an excellent way to expand your reach, grow brand awareness, and drive new leads to your site or landing page. Depending on your goals, you can run paid advertising campaigns on search engines such as Google or Bing, social media platforms like LinkedIn and X (formerly Twitter), or you could even run an audio advertisement on a podcast that’s relevant to your offering. When set up and optimized correctly, paid ads can be a very budget-friendly option to drive traffic and convert leads. However, as with all areas of digital marketing, it’s important to take a strategic approach and clearly understand who you are trying to reach to get the best return on ad spend.

Co-Marketing

Simply put, co-marketing is when two or more companies come together to promote an event or co-branded offer. By leveraging the relationship between your own organization and an aligned organization, you can experience the mutual benefits of expanding your brand awareness across a much larger, combined audience. This can deliver new leads and grow awareness of your product or service offering, with the added benefit of sharing the workload with another team!

Guest Blogging/Appearances

Guest blogging can present a number of benefits for your organization. You can establish yourself as a thought leader within your industry and expand your reach to a completely new audience. Plus, it can be a great way to build backlinks to your own site from high-authority, high-traffic sites in your field. When getting started, make sure you do your due diligence to ensure that the sites you are guest blogging to align with your brand, have a high domain authority, and are reputable within your field.

B2B Marketing Trends & Beyond

B2B digital marketing trends are ever-changing, but if you keep on top of them then you will be able to uncover countless opportunities to expand your reach and grow your business.

We hope these B2B digital marketing trends will help you keep your digital marketing strategy current through this next year, and beyond. But, if you need some extra help, our expert team is here to help.

Find out more about how Maven Collective Marketing can revolutionize your B2B digital marketing by getting in touch at maven@mavencollectivemarketing.com.