Researching and purchasing B2B products and services online is now the norm. With that in mind, your company might be considering upgrading your website to facilitate a smooth browsing and buying experience. But with life online growing at such a rapid rate, an e-commerce website alone isn’t enough. You need a B2B digital marketing strategy.

B2B digital marketing is more than just an online presence. It’s an integrated strategy that supports your prospects’ buying journey, which begins with online research. It gives you the opportunity to empower your customers. You give them the information they’re searching for so that they can make an educated purchase decision.

A successful B2B digital marketing strategy drives visitors to your website, provides problem-solving information, gathers contact information, nurtures leads, closes sales and keeps the relationship going. In addition, managing the program, developing a steady stream of relevant content, monitoring results and tweaking the plan accordingly takes daily maintenance. Whew, that’s a lot!

Strategize

To get off to a good start, begin your digital marketing program with a clear strategy and consistent messaging platform. Before you jump right into marketing tactics, take a step back and look at the big picture. Evaluate your goals and lay out a comprehensive roadmap to reach them. It’s important to identify your key buyer personas right from the start. Then, develop a marketing strategy to reach them. After you have all of the groundwork in place, use this insight to create and execute a tactical plan.

Analyze

The best way to determine if your program is working is to analyze every piece of content you create, campaigns you launch and tactics you execute. In order to understand what to keep, kill or expand upon, you need to capture important information like:

• How often a landing page is viewed
• Who is downloading a particular piece of content
• What messaging is driving an increase in leads

Automate

It’s possible to engage in B2B digital marketing without using a marketing automation platform. However, we recommend using this technology to provide detailed analytics and reporting. That way, you create a clear picture of your program and demonstrate ROI. Marketing automation also makes lead nurturing easier. It pulls in and tracks prospects along their buyers’ journeys as they go from marketing-ready leads to sales-ready leads.

Your customers have 24/7 access to information about the products and services they need to do their jobs better. By developing and following a B2B digital marketing program, your company can be positioned front and center of their online research. You offer educational materials that lead them to your website and all the way through to a sale.

All marketing tactics should be thought of as part of a larger whole, rather than separate pieces. By strategically integrating all marketing tactics, the marketing program becomes more effective and cost efficient. As a B2B agency, we developed B2B 360 Integrated Digital Marketing to meet this improved performance need. To learn more about B2B 360 and how it will benefit your business, download our free eBook: The Better Path to Top-Tier Tech Marketing.

Lisa Goetz is a public relations executive at Schubert b2b, where she primarily writes content and manages media relations. She brings 20 years of editorial and communications experience to Schubert b2b and holds a PhD in English literature from Duquesne University. When not in the office, Lisa likes to take excursions with her husband and hang out with her cat and a good book.