Best B2B Marketing Channels to Increase Your ROI in 2021

With most industry experts convinced about the world not going back to what it was before the pandemic hit, the “new normal” for B2B companies is shifting from product or service promotion and marketing to engaging customers, selling, and so on. Not all digital channels are effective in creating leads; instead, businesses need to find the ones that attract leads and give higher returns; so let’s explore where your focus should be in 2021:

Due COVID-19 pandemic triggered a shift where digital mediums played a critical role in all aspects of our lives and changed the whole perspective about digital marketing. Unlike 2020, the new year 2021 asks for technology-driven strategies to identify trends, outstrip the competition and sell better than the last year. The B2B marketing channels help you create an effective marketing strategy; nevertheless, you need to focus on the most efficient ones to attain your global objective of brand awareness.

Top 5 B2B Marketing Channels to Focus on in 2021

If you want to boost organic traffic and increase customer engagement in the days to come, you need to focus on the following digital marketing channels.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

On your consideration list for the B2B marketing campaigns, SEO should be the prime one. Most executives overlook this important marketing channel for they assume that their brand ranks high in organic search. However, they do not realize that a website is not completely optimized for the competitive keywords that the target audience uses to search for the products and services if there is no ongoing SEO program.

It is presumed that over 53 percent of customer visits to B2B websites results from organic search. According to Google, a prospective customer performs an average of twelve searches before engaging with a particular brand’s website. Therefore, the number of potential customers who find your content and brand largely depends on your search engines' ranking. B2B companies should concentrate on the SEO trends like resourceful content, voice search, mobile-friendly websites, better user experience, etc., to improve search engine rankings in 2021.

Content Marketing

Among the top B2B marketing campaigns, content marketing has figured to be the most effective and leading one. Content, when done correctly, drives brand awareness, as well as demand and revenue. B2B companies should thenceforth develop value-driven content that is more relevant, engaging and interactive. Moreover, it should also give a distinctive user experience. About 96 per cent of prospective B2B buyers search for this kind of content to help them move forward to make decisions.

For instance, the content marketing channel helps you publish valuable content related to the industry you are connected with and use relevant keywords to help the audience reach it and get familiarized with it. Thus, blogs, eBooks, podcasts, whitepapers, etc., work if they are engaging by giving information and value, which induces a potential customer to invest their time and money in your brand. Understand the customer’s needs and provide suggestions to meet them or solve their problems.

Social Media Marketing

You must consider social media marketing (SMM) for your B2B marketing to connect socially with a major customer segment, presumed to be the most persuasive group. Social media helps nurture sales prospects, from locating their intent to buy to social selling. LinkedIn, for instance, is used by 95 per cent of B2B marketers for content marketing. Using social media as a marketing channel will help you find your niche, promote your brand and build relationships with prospects who are interested in your products and services.

LinkedIn has over 660 million members to make it the best B2B marketing tool. Using it, you can have your ad in the news feed, which has everything like industry news, insights of experts, peer advice, career training, and so on. It is likely to receive well by the audience. It also helps you access relevant information like the industry, organization, job, interests and hobbies. Thus, social media turns out to be one of the best marketing channels for B2B in 2021 to build relationships and determine the value of your social platform.

Podcasts

Podcasts have grown to become one of the powerhouse marketing tools today, with active podcasts of about 850,000 according to the statistics taken in January 2020. Most people listen to podcasts using mobile apps, and they listen to them for entertainment, learning new things, etc. The B2B marketing podcasts help provide insights on a particular topic or product to a targeted audience. The thought leadership content from industry leaders or marketing experts helps capture the audience’s attention to a considerable amount of time.

The recent initiative by Google launching a new Podcast Manager can help know more about the listeners and reach them effectively. Launching your podcast and promoting it will help increase brand awareness and organic traffic. You can either host it on a website, with a feed for outside podcast applications or on mobile apps that can play it while driving, working or exercising.

The year 2021 will see B2B marketers using podcasts to build loyal audiences who return to listen to the professionals' insights. This allows them to showcase the knowledge, skills and talents of experts in your business to the listeners, who get to know them. The familiarity later leads to introductions and initial conversations; thus, taking less time to build trust.

Paid-per-Click Advertising

Organic efforts alone cannot show your website on the leading pages of search engine results. To rank high on the specific products and services page, you need to bid to trigger your ads for placement in the organic search results. The Pay-per-click (PPC) helps you bid on the keywords and appear on a search engine's sponsored links. For instance, Google AdWords allows you to explore by creating ads that the audience see while looking for particular products, services or queries. This helps you reach on top of the search results when the prospective customers are looking for them.

The above-mentioned B2B marketing channels are those that drive brand awareness. It would help if you saw which will work effectively for you, changing buying behaviours and using them to grow your B2B business.