How to Create a Growth Marketing Foundation For Your B2B Business

Apr 12

Business-to-business (B2B) organizations, simply put, sell products or services to other organizations. This encompasses everything from marketing cutting-edge software to tangible items like SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) products, IT (Information Technology) support, office supplies, etc.

B2B businesses have unique challenges, including cash flow management, and must continually innovate and pivot to maintain customer loyalty and retain their business.

In this article, we will explore how B2B businesses can go about building a growth marketing strategy to maximize their profits and market share. Central to this is understanding what a growth marketing framework entails, and how it applies to B2B organizations. Once we have examined this, we will establish the steps needed to follow to create a growth marketing strategy and look into several tactics that B2B businesses would greatly benefit from.

In the interim, here are some interesting statistics related to B2B organizations that bear consideration.

64% of all B2B buyers are millennials and Gen Z. (Digital Commerce 360)

75% of B2B customers prefer a rep-free sales experience. (Gartner)
3% of companies are taking a “customer-obsessed” approach to marketing. (Forbes)
95% of American Adults say they use the Internet. (Pew Research)
37% of digital buyers engaged with a supplier’s website before purchasing. (Gartner)
Eighty-four days is the average length of the B2B sales cycle, attributed to a well-developed funnel. (Zipdo)
49% of all B2B spending is online. (VML)
67% of B2B buyers begin their purchase journey online. (Kurve)

What these statistics seem to collectively demonstrate is that a larger proportion of the B2B customer journey happens online than one might initially expect. This fact provides a tremendous opportunity for growth marketers to create a strategy geared towards maximizing this journey for B2B businesses. This, as was mentioned earlier, is what we will focus on in this article.

Where exactly do B2B businesses fit in within the business ecosystem?

Before we get into the details of what is involved in crafting a growth marketing strategy for B2B businesses, it is imperative to understand a little more about where to situate B2B businesses in the broader business landscape.

If you want to understand where B2B companies factor into the supply chain, it’s essential to look at the three economic sectors: primary, secondary and tertiary.

Primary market: The primary market is exclusively B2B. Primary-sector companies are responsible for extracting or producing raw materials. Examples of this would be farmers or oil and gas companies.
Secondary market: The secondary market is almost exclusively B2B. Secondary-market companies manufacture and assemble products. They add value to the raw materials they buy from the primary market by turning them into something else. Think about assembling companies include car manufacturers and construction companies.
Tertiary market: The tertiary market is a mixture of B2B and B2C models. Some tertiary-market companies deliver the goods or services businesses or consumers want. These businesses include plumbers, internet retailers, floor installers, supermarkets, commercial finance brokers, home improvement specialists, tutors, and the hospitality sector.

Some tertiary companies are B2B only. They provide goods and services other customer-facing tertiary companies need to do their jobs. Some examples include

Plumbing supply companies sell plumbers the equipment they need.
Point-of-sale (POS) providers sell POS systems to retailers.
Commercial finance brokers need lenders to fund small business loans, equipment leasing packages, and asset-based loans.
Management and business consultants help companies survive and grow.
Retailers need credit card processors to process payments from customers.
Companies need advertising firms to help them achieve higher sales.
Businesses need payroll providers and financial services companies to run payroll and streamline taxes.
Businesses need lead-generation services to create revenue opportunities.
Organizations need insurance providers to protect employees, customers, and their interests.

What Are the Key Characteristics of a Growth Marketing Framework?

Before we go ahead and examine how to build a B2B-focused growth marketing strategy, we need to establish a structure from which growth can be established. This is where a growth marketing framework comes in.

To put it in simple terms, a growth marketing framework is a way of examining the customer purchasing process. The idea here in analyzing the whole experience is to help a business grow as quickly as possible and most strategically. It is not just another generic marketing tactic, but rather a precise, targeted, ongoing approach required to stimulate growth, involving critical steps that take the position of the business and where it needs to get to into account.

Growth marketing considers the entire business cycle as a potential lever for growth. Now depending on the nature of the business itself, the specific framework can differ. Just as a reminder, the growth marketing framework consists of :

A: Acquisition

A: Activation

R. Retention

R. Revenue

R. Referral

This framework was created as a way of giving small companies a method by which to focus on the right metrics, and more importantly, the events/occurrences that truly impact their business’s success. By shifting a business’s focus to the channels and tactics that move the needle most at every stage, smaller companies can find a way to thrive and, in many cases, even outperform bigger competitors. They evaluate the best channels to focus on by metrics such as the number of interested visitors, conversion rates, ROI, CPA, etc. This framework has allowed many businesses to maximize growth on a comparably small budget.

The Benefits of Growth Marketing for B2B Businesses

Growth marketing offers several key benefits for B2B businesses that are looking to drive growth, acquire new customers, and retain existing ones. Here are some of the key benefits of growth marketing for B2B businesses:

More effective targeting: Growth marketing allows businesses to target their ideal customers more effectively. By using data and analytics to understand their target audience, B2B businesses can create more targeted campaigns that are tailored to their specific needs and pain points.
Improved customer engagement: Growth marketing strategies are designed to engage customers throughout the entire buyer journey. By creating personalized and relevant content, businesses can build stronger relationships with their customers, improve their experience, and increase customer loyalty.
Faster experimentation: Growth marketing is all about testing and experimentation. By constantly testing different strategies and tactics, B2B businesses can quickly identify what works and what doesn't. This allows them to iterate and optimize their marketing campaigns more quickly, leading to faster growth and improved ROI.
Better data analysis: Growth marketing relies heavily on data analysis to inform marketing decisions. By tracking and analyzing customer behavior, B2B businesses can gain valuable insights into their customers' needs and preferences. This information can then be used to optimize marketing campaigns and improve customer engagement.
More efficient use of resources: Growth marketing is focused on generating the greatest ROI for marketing spend. By identifying the most effective marketing channels and tactics, B2B businesses can optimize their marketing spend and achieve better results with less investment.

How Do You Apply Strategic Growth Marketing Fundamentals for B2B Businesses

Before we delve into how to apply a growth marketing strategy for businesses, it is important to understand some key differences between B2B and B2C businesses especially as it applies to those factors that are involved in creating continuous sustained scalable growth.

B2B Growth Marketing differs from B2C marketing primarily in the target audience and the sales process. B2B marketing targets businesses as customers, focusing on building relationships, addressing business needs, and providing solutions for long-term partnerships. In contrast, B2C marketing targets individual consumers, often emphasizing emotions, desires, and immediate purchase decisions. B2B Growth Marketing typically involves longer sales cycles, more complex decision-making processes, and a greater emphasis on personalized relationship-building strategies.

The timeline for seeing results from B2B Growth Marketing can vary depending on several factors, such as the industry, target audience, marketing strategies employed, and the competitive landscape. In general, it takes time to build brand awareness, nurture leads, and convert them into customers. Typically, it can take several months to start seeing significant results, and continuous effort and optimization are required for long-term growth.

B2B Growth Marketing is not solely focused on acquiring new customers; it also emphasizes the importance of customer retention. By delivering exceptional customer experiences, personalized communication, and ongoing value, B2B Growth Marketing aims to cultivate strong relationships with existing customers. This includes strategies such as post-purchase follow-ups, customer loyalty programs, personalized upselling or cross-selling, and ongoing support and engagement. By prioritizing customer retention, B2B Growth Marketing helps businesses achieve higher customer satisfaction, repeat business, and advocacy, ultimately driving long-term growth and profitability.

Examining the B2B Growth Marketing Funnel

Now that we have gone about putting B2B in its proper context, let’s keep the growth marketing framework to properly plan a growth marketing strategy that is B2B-centric.

Awareness:

The stage where you encourage people to browse your website and social platforms to increase brand awareness for your product or service. This can be done through paid advertising, organic search, social media, or other means. Tailoring awareness campaigns and ads on relevant channels, segmented and personalized around your Ideal Customer Persona (ICPs) that show an understanding. of what their needs and questions might be at different points of the customer purchasing process.

Acquisition

Once a user lands on your site or product, you need to get them to use it. This usually involves getting them to create an account, sign up for a free trial, make their first purchase, or take any other action. For a user to take this step, they need to understand what your offering does and how it can help them. You should also ensure your lead generation forms are fully optimized to drive conversion rates. Moreover, remarketing ought to be instituted, preferably with gated content like white papers, with the idea of working towards free trials (for SaaS), webinars, and requesting a consultation or demonstration. This leads to the next step

Activation

At this stage, the user may or may not be product-aware (depending on the content they previously consumed). This is where you ensure that the user is aware of the solution your company provides and allow them to show interest. Marketing and sales meet to nurture, qualify, and get potential customers over the finish line. Multiple internal and external stakeholders may be involved, from marketing, sales, manufacturing, and operations. The more information you know about your lead at this point (including realizing the reasons behind why they are considering your product or service), the more you’ll be able to tailor marketing efforts to close the deal.

Revenue:

The revenue stage is all about generating income from your users, once you have gotten them activated. Depending on the product or service, there may be upfront charges, or there may be a pay-as-you-go model or subscription model, or licensing or maintenance fees.

Retention:

Next comes the retention stage, which is all about keeping people using your product or service. This is usually done by providing a great user experience, offering customer support, and continuing to add new features or content. For example, a retention strategy for a software product might be to send weekly emails with tips on how to get the most out of the product. Additionally, identifying buyer regret proactively is key to boosting brand loyalty and reducing churn. This is where product surveys and email marketing

Referral:

The referral stage is when users start recommending your product to their friends and colleagues. This can be done by word-of-mouth, building trust through social media, or a referral program (a program where users are given an incentive, such as a discount, for referring other users). For example, Dropbox offers 500MB of extra storage space to every person who refers a new user that signs up for an account.

How to Go About Creating an Effective Growth Marketing Strategy:

1. Segment your customers

Like any good marketing strategy, you need to know your audience and tailor your message accordingly. Perhaps you market to a few different personas, or want to tailor messages based on where prospects are in the funnel.

Here are a few categories for segmenting your customers:

Firmographics – The B2B equivalent of customer demographics, firmographics encompasses data such as a company’s location, annual revenue, and the number of employees. This approach can be used to create mutually exclusive segments, such as SMB vs. enterprise.
Technographics – This approach segments customers based on the software and hardware they use. Choose this model if you offer a range of products that target different companies based on the technology they have.
Tiering – Use this model to identify the most suitable customers for your business based on specific criteria, such as a minimum annual spend for products, the startup growth stage, or technological maturity.
Needs-based – Group customers based on their most important purchase considerations, be it affordability, quality, service level, or partnership.

2. Identify the relevant stakeholders

In B2B marketing, you interact with several stakeholders. They include the end user, influencer, economic buyers, and decision makers. Larger businesses involve more gatekeepers, especially if their product requires a large upfront investment and introduces a significant change to their processes.

3. Use your data to create buyer personas

A buyer persona is a representation of your ideal customer that depicts their problems, goals, habits, roles within the company, and so forth. To flesh out each persona, you can conduct interviews or send surveys to potential and existing customers. Along with that, you can supplement this information with first-party data to gain insight into what channels a customer prefers, what ads or content they engage with, or what parts of your app/product they’re most interested in.

4. Establish success metrics and KPIs

With any campaign, you want to establish metrics and benchmarks that will serve as your indicators of success.

One relevant KPI would be the growth of social referrals each quarter. To track that, you could monitor the engagement of each social post to see if your audience is interested in the content and sharing it with their network. Equally important, would be establishing benchmarks for the cost accrued for leads at different stages of the funnel, such as leads, MQLs, SQLs, as well as broader considerations such as ROAS and ROI.

5. Find out how customers are discovering your brand

The B2B buying journey is non-linear. Different stakeholders discover your brand at different times, and through different channels. By finding out how this discovery process takes place, you can design marketing campaigns that correlate to each stage of the buyer’s journey.

Use analytics and attribution tools like Google Analytics, and Attribution to find out which traffic sources led people to your website or app, and what pages they visited first. By linking your attribution tool to your customer database, like a customer data platform (CDP) – to identify common discovery journeys within different segments (information that can be added to your buyer personas).

Over time, you can refine your B2B marketing strategy by replicating the campaigns that successfully led to brand discovery. These can be different for each stakeholder. For instance, end users discover your brand through blogs, influencers through podcasts and webinars, and decision makers through case studies shared by their network.

6. Determine the most suitable channels for marketing your product

Evaluate marketing channels based on the most important factors for your business. These can include:

The customer journey: Invest in the marketing channels where your target persona is the most engaged.
Current business goals: Different channels are better suited to achieve specific goals, like lead generation and brand awareness. Social media helps you grow your subscriber base quickly through viral marketing, blogs let you educate customers, and community outreach lets you reach niche communities and encourage users to do and share projects using your product.
Budget : Consider not only how much you can spend per quarter but also your target ROI period. Allocate your budget based on projected customer acquisition cost per channel.
Targeting ability : Determine the level of targeting sophistication you require to run effective personalized campaigns. Channels like digital advertising platforms and email let you send different messages to custom audience segments.
Input and output time: Choose a channel with an input and output period you find acceptable, given your marketing manpower, budget, and goals. SEO and communities take time to nurture. In contrast, paid advertising and viral marketing give you more results in less time. Once your advertising period has expired or the virality has faded away, these channels stop yielding results. Still, the leads and customers you gained might continue spreading the word about your products or brand.

7. Use an omnichannel approach to target customers across different channels

Omnichannel marketing means giving customers a seamless experience engaging with your business, no matter what channel they use (or how often they switch between them). It means not showing a prospect an ad on Instagram that they’ve marked as irrelevant on Facebook.

The omnichannel approach to marketing requires unifying customer data from multiple sources to gain a single customer view. With all data in one place, it’s easier to create marketing workflows using criteria based on actions customers have taken on one channel or ads they’ve viewed on another.

Flowing from this, content should be customized for each channel. Whether it be Twitter, Spotify, or SMS, has its own characteristics, content format, and audience. That’s why it’s crucial to create content that’s designed to resonate within a single channel, not across many.

Growth Marketing Tactics for B2B Companies

1) Create a Content Marketing Strategy That Mirrors The B2B Marketing Funnel:

B2B content marketing is one of the top tools businesses use to capture audience attention, boost thought leadership, and increase engagement. According to Demand Metric, approximately 91% of B2B businesses already use content marketing regularly to connect with their audience.

The great thing about content marketing for B2B brands, is that it allows you to showcase your knowledge of an industry and strengthen your position on the search engines. However, to get the best results, you must ensure you’re using the right keywords.

Rather than focusing just on the keywords your customers search for when they’re at the end or beginning of their buying journey, the best solution is to target clients at all different states of intent. This means you can effectively guide your customers through the purchasing funnel with your content.

Top of the funnel: Tactical and informational keywords, like “How to use a social media marketing platform”. They help customers to research and gain knowledge.
Middle of the funnel: Terms intended to help customers make the right decision on which products to use, such as “The top 10 social marketing tools”.
Bottom of the funnel keywords: These keywords focus on converting an engaged customer. For instance, an example might be: “Social media Software free trial”.

2) Use Research and Your Own Customer Experiences to Sell Your Product and Services:

Over 92% of B2B buyers say they’re more likely to make a purchasing decision after they’ve read a trustworthy review. Ultimately, every business buyer wants to see proof that the product or service they’re investing in will deliver results.

One of the most effective ways that B2B brands can do this is via the case study. Countless B2B brands use case studies to highlight the exact problems they’ve solved for organizations in the past, helping them to connect with their target audience.

Alternatively, they might post customer video testimonials and interviews on YouTube or publish stories about their successes on their website.

3) B2B Influencers :

Working with influencers is often a strategy most people connect with B2C advertising. However, B2B influencer marketing can be extremely valuable too. On average, lead-generation campaigns endorsed by micro-influencers on LinkedIn generate a conversion rate up to 20%.

Influencer marketing campaigns are an excellent way for B2B brands to demonstrate their credibility to companies who may not know them yet. Working with a well-known expert from your industry shows you as being more trustworthy and reliable.

4). Use a Referral System

One of the best ways to increase the number of leads you collect with your B2B marketing strategies is to have your existing customers do some of the work for you. Around 83% of customers say they’re open to referring a business to another contact after a successful purchase. What’s more, 78% of B2B referrals create viable leads for a business.

Building referral strategies into your marketing efforts is a fantastic way to capitalize on the happy customers you already have. However, sadly, only around 3 in 10 companies in the B2B landscape have their own formalized referral strategy.

5) Communicate Your Expertise:

Countless B2B marketing strategies involve some form of content marketing. After all, around 80% of online customers appreciate the custom content created by a business which helps them learn about products, or fix certain problems.

While a blog with plenty of thought leadership content can be an excellent foundation for your marketing campaign, it’s important to think about more than just written text. In today’s evolving landscape, a B2B content marketing strategy should aim to connect with consumers on multiple different levels. For instance, you can consider:

Video marketing: You can attract up to 3 times more inbound links to your website, and increase the time visitors spend on your website by 2.6 times just by adding small videos to your blog posts and articles
Podcasts: Around 90% of people who listen to a podcast listen to most of an episode, while most people only watch around 12% of videos. Podcasts are an excellent way to reach out to your B2B customers, because they’re easy to consume at any time, even when your clients are driving to work or doing simple tasks like answering emails.
Interactive content: Engaging your customers with quizzes and interactive campaigns isn’t just a good strategy for B2C marketing, it’s great for B2B audiences too. You can create interactive flipbooks, quizzes and surveys which help your clients choose the right solution for their needs from a range of products you offer.

6) Marketing Automation, CRM, and Lead Nurturing

Marketing Automation: Marketing automation replaces high-touch, repetitive manual processes with automated ones – supported by technology solutions. It brings together all of your online marketing channels into one centralized system for creating, managing, and measuring programs and campaigns.

As with any technological tool, it’s essential to select the right marketing automation software for your firm. Make sure the size, complexity, and scalability of a prospective solution is a good match for your needs.

Connecting your CRM is key to automation and lead nurturing efforts. Your CRM serves as the database for all the information you collect about opportunities and clients, including specific interactions with them. The information can be entered, stored, and accessed by employees in different firm departments, synchronizing efforts across your firm.

CRM isn’t the end of the story. Drip email campaigns enable you to send more targeted offers to segments of your audience over a set period, depending on where they are in the growth marketing funnel. Doing this builds closer engagement (and educates further) through successive, relevant content and offers.

7) Implement full-funnel PPC

While relying solely on paid advertising may not be sustainable or cost-effective in the long run, it’s certainly important to have PPC as one of your B2B growth marketing strategies.

Spending money on paid ads without a predefined strategy is one of the fastest ways to burn through a marketing budget. That’s why you should first set a fixed budget and try to figure out which form of paid advertising is the best fit for your product.

You might end up going with pay-per-click Google ads or try sponsoring YouTuber influencers or content creators in your niche. Regardless of which approach you take, make sure you’re targeting specific audience segments to ensure that your messaging is personalized and relevant to the user journey.

8) Go for account-based marketing

Inbound marketing may be the most commonly covered approach but it won’t be a fit for every SaaS company. Those with a higher subscription price or enterprise-level target customers will likely need to invest in account-based marketing (ABM).

Account-based marketing makes it possible to create a more personalized buying experience for high-value clients. Instead of advertising to a demographic, it focuses on specific target accounts within the industry.

To increase the efficacy of your enterprise marketing, make sure you create user personas.

These personas will make it easier to land your target accounts and craft your messages in such a way that a conversion is almost guaranteed (given enough time). These personas will also help you engage and retain enterprise customers.

9) Exploring Freemium Access:

When done correctly, freemium access can be a game changer.

The modern B2B experience dictates that the buyer has all the power. Before even speaking to a sales representative, buyers do a lot of research and even come to a conclusion on whether they want to work with you.

Most B2B buyers are 57 percent of the way through the buying process before meeting a sales representative.
When B2B buyers consider buying, most of their time is spent researching independently online.

With these statistics in mind, offering freemium access to your customers is a way to remove friction and show them the value they’d get from your product. HubSpot, Zoom, and Dropbox all offer freemium versions of their product, just to name a few.

People are more willing to try a new product or service when it’s free. You can then nurture them into paying customers. Also, your product’s unique value will drive acquisition, meaning you can lower customer acquisition costs.

Creating a Growth Marketing Strategy for Your B2B Business: We Are Here to Help

Standing out as a B2B business in today’s fierce business market is challenging.

Whether it’s a focus on delivering exceptional customer service, running a multi-channel influencer marketing campaign, building an enviable loyalty program, or getting to the top of the search results for every high-priority keyword on your list, knowing which tools to use and in what way helps to establish your B2B strategy framework. This provides the structure that can help unlock the long-term success of your B2B business.

If you feel you need help in this regard, please reach out for a growth marketing consultation.

Our expert growth marketing consultants recognize that while there are many similarities in terms of the challenges that B2B organizations might face, no B2B business is the same. If your B2B business is struggling to set itself apart from its contemporaries on the market, we would welcome the opportunity to examine your current marketing efforts for not just areas of improvement, but for insights that we can help your business leverage for prospective growth.

John Kurien