It's common practice in today's society for people to solve problems or questions with a quick internet search.
We have all in a moment of uncertainty dashed to a search engine. We have come to trust Google, Bing, or Yahoo, to quickly answer our burning questions, find directions, or look for that news article we keep hearing of throughout our day.
The internet provides solutions to a host of problems big and small, work-related, and personal. With so many businesspeople relying on a search engine to find the right product or service for their business, it has become essential for B2B companies to build a strategic digital marketing strategy.
An effective strategy includes: an audit of your current digital presence, your digital competitors' online presence, identifying unknown digital competitors, and gleaning best practices in your market segment.
Completing an effective marketing strategy, will provide you with actionable plans to improve your company's performance and revenue growth, in your specific industry and market segment.
A Digital Audit will show how strong or weak a company's digital presence is relative to its competitors.
Typically companies who don't have an updated strategic digital marketing strategy have stagnant websites that are not optimized to attract visitors, don’t effectively capture new leads and may not position the company to take advantage of recent product developments or strategies.
Outdated websites also typically can’t support strong revenue growth for a company due to the lack of recently introduced marketing and sales automation tools designed to minimize sales staff effort and boost sales.
An effective digital strategy will also highlight the marketing strategies you should avoid. Traditionally these marketing strategies have worked well, but with changes in buyer behavior and with the advancement of technology, these traditional methods are becoming detrimental to the revenue growth of your company. The following are types of marketing strategies to avoid.
Times are changing, and many marketing strategies that use to be effective are no longer providing the same results as they have in the past.
Established legacy accounts in many cases were forged by a relationship with a company's founders, at a trade show, by a manufacturer rep, or by referrals. These tactics rely on a long-standing relationship or on being in the same region as your clientele where periodic personal visits are common.
Relationship selling in the past has secured a client's loyalty. While these strategies are not extinct, they do not provide the greatest reach into new markets, they don’t attract many potential leads, and leave a whole digital space unoccupied for your competitors.
As a generation of executives are retiring, those established relationships are being lost. The new generation is shifting to make business purchases and partnerships based on "solve my problem".
When faced with a vendor decision, this new generation typically will research products and solutions online before ever making contact with any companies' sales team. Modern buyer behavior has positioned websites as a company's first impression for their potential customers instead of their sales teams.
As well, living in a technologically advanced and shrinking world, being a regional product or service does not weigh as heavily in a business decision as it did in the past. Competitors with effective digital marketing strategy and a strong website presence can be a threat to even your legacy customers from great distances or even other countries.
Another mistake companies make is to solely focus on marketing to those potential customers that already know the brand name.
Data shows that 90% of searches don’t start with a brand, but rather are focused on finding a product or service that solves the searcher’s problem. Focusing on marketing the brand, as a sole strategy, will effectively attract customers who are already familiar with the brand.
Using brand-focused marketing makes it challenging to reach new markets. If potential customers don't know a company exists, they won't find their product in a search. Optimizing your website to reach new leads based on a solution provided instead of just a brand name alone will increase your reach past the demographic to new potential leads.
Overall, our research has found that companies with an effective digital marketing strategy are the growth leaders in their markets.
What are these companies doing? At a high level, these businesses have optimization their websites to be search engine friendly and focused their website messages on solving their ideal customers' problems.
After implementing an effective strategic digital marketing strategy, a common goal will be that 60% or more of the resulting website visitors were initially unaware of the company or brand before they arrive at their website. It is easy to see that adding 60% website traffic growth to the existing branded traffic volume can easily double a company’s reach into the market and significantly boost revenue growth.
At Open Path Digital Solutions, we create strategic digital marketing growth strategies for businesses.
We understand that in a world saturated with traditional and ineffective marketing strategies; it can be difficult to showcase your product and have your voice heard unless you move to more modern B2B marketing techniques. After studying hundreds of manufacturing, distribution, and SaaS companies' strategies, we understand what an effective B2B growth strategy will look like for your company.
Open Path specializes in creating and implementing strategic digital marketing strategies. We can help optimize your website and study your market to create a plan that best fits your company, which, in turn, will serve your clients.
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