Industrial Marketing Trends
to Use For More Conversions
Industrial marketing requires a different approach. Unlike end consumers, industrial or B2B customers require a longer time to make a decision and the other stakeholders in their team for input and approval for said decision. Because of this, industrial marketing has an emphasis on establishing and nurturing relationships with the decision-makers or owners of potential clients.
However, this does not mean that B2B marketing remains traditional and unintegrated with today’s digital marketing strategies. Technology has played a significant role in past industrial marketing trends implemented in the profession. The same is happening now and will continue to happen in the future.
So, what are these industrial marketing trends influenced by new technology today? And, are they applicable to your business? Read on to find out more about these trends in industrial marketing.
New Marketing Trends to Apply in Your B2B Business
Website Chat
Despite all the digital marketing trends, your website is still one of the best marketing tools for businesses regardless of their industry. Aside from providing content to your audience, it also provides information on the different ways they can contact you. However, the introduction of website chat widgets made it easier and faster for visitors to ask a question and receive a response. This faster exchange also makes it possible for sales or customer service representatives to answer and talk to the customers. As a result, the customer is more likely to decide on a future call, a personal meeting, or a trial in the same conversation.
So, what are the best practices for a web chat feature on your website? Here are a few of them:
Social Media Marketing
If you are thinking that social media is only viable for B2C businesses, you are wrong. B2B business using social media marketing has acquired more than 40 percent of clients through it. This is not surprising since everyone is spending a significant amount of time on social media – including the business owners and decision-makers you are targeting.
You can use social media not only for your web content but also those native to the platform such as videos and photos demonstrating your expertise or talking about important topics in your industry. Social media also enables you to engage directly with your audience and these interactions can easily lead to a formal meeting about your offer.
Use the right social media platforms
You have some options on which social media platform you will use for marketing your business online. However, you cannot use all of them due to your limited time and resources for social media marketing. It is best to use the social sites that your ideal buyers are spending their time on. It is also best to use the platforms that have been effective for business marketing to other businesses.
Create a personality through branding
One of the benefits of social media marketing is it makes your business relatable to your audience. However, your attempts to make your brand more relatable will fall short if you don’t plan for it. This is where you can use a brand style guide. It will help you create a more persona for your business while ensuring consistency in your interactions with your audience.
Know your audience
You can create content that is more effective in engaging your audience if they can relate to it. Audience research can help you with this. This includes researching the decision makers and business owners in your industry, researching these individuals, and creating your content around their interests and needs.
Create informative content for your audience
B2B buyers perform significant amounts of research than other buyers. Creating educational content for them about the solutions you offer and your industry can be the best way for your brand to provide value to them and engage them on social media.
Create connections with members of your audience
Successful B2B marketing requires closer relationships between the business and its customers. This is the same for social media marketing. You need to respond to each comment or message, engage the decision-makers and business owners of potential clients directly on their profile, and maintain positive interactions with them on the platform.
Video Marketing
Adults in the U.S. watch up to five hours of video per day. Using video marketing can help you gain a share of your audience’s time and bring awareness to your brand. Moreover, you can communicate information that may be difficult to understand in an article or blog post more effectively. You can show them what makes your brand unique in the industry and demonstrate them for all to see on the video.
Here are some video marketing best practices for B2B marketing:
Align your video marketing with your content strategy
Your video marketing efforts should still be in line with the other areas of your industrial marketing process. Or else, your videos will look out of brand. Your videos must stay consistent in how it engages different segments of your audience and what these offer as their call to action for each segment. Moreover, content types should remain consistent for every part of the buyer’s funnel.
Engage your audience members directly
Industrial marketing has a more relationship-based approach than business-to-consumer marketing. You can apply the same approach in video marketing by addressing their comments on social media in video format. This will not only engage that particular audience member directly but also benefit other members of your audience with your answer.
Use video customer reviews
Customer video reviews and testimonials serve as a great proof of your credibility and expertise in the industry. Your audience will find it more engaging and authentic than written reviews and testimonials. It also communicates more effectively the expressions that your customers may convey in their reviews.
Use video tutorials for marketing your product or service
Video tutorials can help your audience understand how your product or service works. Not only will this serve as a good introduction for new customers but also it can show potential customers that the product or service is real and that it works.
Take advantage of short-form video format
Short-form videos have a huge audience, so it is not surprising it is one of the new marketing trends in video. The entry to it is lower than longer video marketing formats. Moreover, it is a great way to create awareness for your brand as long as you have an engaging content format and topic for your videos.
Virtual event marketing
Live social media video and hosting platforms gave businesses and their customers a channel to interact in real-time. This top digital marketing trend can give you, as an industrial business, a way to engage with your target audience, leads, and customers that is difficult to replicate via social media posts, online videos, or web articles. You can even create a series of sessions for more comprehensive coverage of a particular topic.
Here are some tips to maximize virtual events for marketing your business:
1. Take a content-first approach
Your content is what will draw people in to attend your event. You need to provide content that will add value to how they run their business. Doing so will help establish your brand as a helpful and authoritative figure in your industry, which will increase your chances of gaining their business.
2. Give attendees to a recording of the virtual event
Buying decisions in B2B businesses involve more than one person in the company. Giving attendees access to virtual event recording can help your attendees show their team what convinced them about your offer.
3. Keep Your Audience Engaged
Any virtual event faces the challenge of keeping an audience engaged due to the presence of distractions wherever they may be. Make sure to use engagement strategies to keep their eyes and ears on their screens with your event on. Some examples of engagement strategies include live event voting, asking for feedback in the chat, virtual event bags, and live quizzes.
Don't Neglect Tried and Tested Marketing Strategies!
The industrial marketing trends mentioned in this article are great additions to your digital marketing strategy. However, without any of the essential digital marketing strategies, your efforts in implementing these new marketing trends will fall short. This is why you need to have the basic digital marketing strategies properly set up first before attempting to experiment with new and emerging tactics. Here are the different types of industrial marketing strategies that every B2B business must have:
- SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
- PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Advertising
- Content Marketing
- Email Marketing
If you need a personalized solution for your digital marketing needs or, simply, to ensure that you have all your bases covered before implementing any of these industrial marketing trends, contact us for a free digital marketing consultation with one of our experts. Contact us today and schedule your free marketing consultation with Big Market Solutions.