Selling to another business entails a whole different strategy from selling to consumers directly. The base of customers to which you are looking to sell your products or services maybe very specific and narrow. You may only have minimal chances to get the customer interested in what you are offering. Or you may have exhausted all the customers that you could contact and are looking at how to activate them again. Digital marketing offers many ways to drive your business by overcoming these challenges.

Find your customers

Digital marketing channels allow you to find the right audience that are decision makers in purchasing your products or services. It may be difficult to achieve this with expensive offline sales teams or networks, but possible to do with a lower cost using digital channels. Literally every prospect that you are looking to reach are likely to have an online presence. Using the right combination of tools and processes, digital marketing channels can hone in on the people who matter.

Target customers individually

When you are selling a service or product to a small audience, and if the ticket size of the purchase is relatively large, or the customization options for the product/service is large, then every individual target prospect deserves a customized message. Using digital marketing features, you can show specific prospects customized messages based on what you think will appeal to them in terms of cost, feature set and key benefits.

Measure interest levels

When selling to other businesses, it is important to measure interest levels, even if the customer has said no to your message. The potential customers interest levels can be measured in digital channels in terms of their action and behavior. For instance, you can measure how many times they visited your website, or whether they opened the email that you send them, or if they are a fan of your social media pages. These kind of signals can be monitored using marketing automation tools. Digital marketing channels can help build your funnel without investing in expensive face to face meetings for each potential customer. Invest in meeting them, when you have gauged their interest.

Competitor research to stay ahead

In the world of B2B marketing, with dense competition and small pool of potential customers, it is important to measure and monitor what your competitors are saying. This can be done by looking at the online chatter about your competitor, including how many times they are mentioned, the reviews about competing products or services, and updates to the competitor websites and social media pages. All this can help keep your sales pitch updated to protect against new forms of marketing messages by your competitors. Digital marketing channels allow for this kind of research without a field sales team.

Build your brand and keep it in the limelight

In B2B businesses, the gestation period maybe quite high. This means that the potential customer may take a long time to decide to do something that results in your product being purchased. Even if a potential customer is interested in what you are offering, they may not be able to make a decision at that point due to cost, regulatory concerns and other factors. Over the period of time between getting the customers interest and converting it into a purchase, you can use digital marketing channels to keep your brand and its advantages in visibility of the potential customer. So when they finally decide to start, your brand is right there in front of them.

Create content that drives engagement and database building

In B2B selling, other businesses may not even be looking out for your solution. They will need to be educated in the benefits of your product or service so that a demand is created. To develop this demand, your brand has to be trusted, so that the educational material is considered in a credible way. This brand building can be done through digital marketing channels, by utilizing the various forms of content available on the digital medium. For instance, educational videos, infographics with factual content, PR releases,white papers and so on. By positioning your brand as a thought leader in your domain or expertise, you can build the trust to drive a conversion when the customer realizes the need for a product or service that you are offering.