Competitive Marketing - What are the Existing Pros and Cons?

It has been said many times that competitive analysis is an integral part of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Even though we use all sorts of competing reviews when starting or testing out new programs, competitive analysis is quite useful for existing programs and work as well.

This type of analysis assists the organizations in evaluating the potential audience, market and expose different kinds of online marketing strategies and SEO being implemented. Through these researchers, we understand a lot about our competitor’s weaknesses and strengths in content marketing, keyword strategy, social media, link building and site architecture.

As marketing outsource provider for B2B organizations, my clients most of the times inquire about the suitability of running a successful marketing campaign. This decision is well equipped with challenges and growth but also distraught with uncertainty.

Even though many times the situation might be different than your expectations, here are some of the instances suggesting that competitive marketing programs might perish with successful results.

Know about your competitor:

There’s a saying in the political scenarios that if you are an underdog or merely just a challenger, you attack upfront since you have less to lose and more to gain. In business, however, when your competitor is massive in counterattacks, they create a situation where you have no other option but to play with the psyche of your potential audience.

As a matter of fact, with their counterattacks, it might be beneficial for you and give you more publicity than you could have attained through yourself.

Make it convenient to switch:

I mentioned this previously concerning about the systems like ERP; it might prove to be a disconcerting proposition for someone to move challenging and significant services or products. This might even be a proving factor for the least complex or expensive products. The more smooth transition you make, the better it is for everyone.

Similar Reads:

• https://exporthubblog.wordpress.com/2018/02/28/b2b-marketing-basics-make-sure-you-dont-forget-it/
• https://www.facebook.com/notes/beatrice-mcgraw/unified-approach-on-audience-b2b-digital-advertising-enhanced/196053401151533/
• https://fortalent.com/blog/view/s/2018-02-27-things-you-require-essentially-in-writing-blogs-in-b2b-market/

Five Powerful B2B Marketing Tactics You May Be Missing

The B2B market is flooded with techniques and with such an overflow; it is evident that we miss out some important one. However, we have it all sorted for you and had those all rounded-up, and we encourage them to try them out, in case you haven't already.

1.    IP address identification
This is an extremely valuable B2B marketing technique, not readily available to consumer marketers and its costs are sliding down as more marketing automation systems implement its functionality into their systems. Helps to give a good insight into all visitor activities and based on that, the decision can be made regarding what strategy should be created.

2.    Arrange your content for buyer role and buying journey

Developing a solid content strategy is still a challenge for many B2B marketers, as stated by The Content Marketing Institute. One very effective approach is to audit existing content, based on the buyer role (like specifier, decision-maker, end user) and evaluate the stage of the buying process (like need recognition, researching solutions, vendor comparison). Then you can fill the gaps with what you have on hand vs. what the customer needs.

3.    Upgrade your lead qualification

There is no integrity in the actions of today's B2B marketers. They just tend to pass the buck to the sales department, which then, complains that it was incomplete at the marketer's end and it leads to a loss or no productive generation of leads.

So it's good to get your qualification criteria developed, in alignment with sales because, in B2B, it's more about focusing towards quality, not quantity.

4.    Embrace your data

B2B marketplace work with limited prospects, where the value of each account is vast, and there needs to be huge datas about them - to know just ‘almost' everything – to avoid mistakes. The marketers need to do understand the fact that doing all the research and collecting it also their job and should be a top concern.

5.    Adopt account-based marketing
B2B companies should focus on re-directing their resources and focusing on key accounts, where the bulk of your profits lie. This will be of more benefit and the more efforts you are putting in maximizing an account, the more returns you will get. So, new innovative strategies should be thought of, ABM is a great example of a big account – being managed well.

Similar Reads:

• http://exporthub.page.tl/Technological-Proliferation-In-The-Construction-Sector-_-2018-Trends.htm
• https://www.facebook.com/notes/beatrice-mcgraw/why-most-of-the-b2b-social-media-programs-fail-in-generating-leads/195531614537045/
• https://fortalent.com/blog/view/s/2018-02-25-useful-copy-editing-techniques-for-content-marketers-in-b2b/ 

Google and B2B Marketing Plans

To all the business organizations, small or significant out there; have you included Google Plus in your strategic plans? If your answer is no, then you are missing a once in a lifetime chance to expand your audience. After all, it’s not it’s an everyday thing that social media platforms go to great lengths in increasing your business and making it more public for the masses, however with Google’s services you might get that.

By providing every Google Plus page rank, Google eases the pain for the organization and helps in showing up in the search engine pages. And, with each mention and comment, your content gets a high rank and eventually grabs the attention of the users in the starting pages in one of the biggest search engines of the world.

Ever since its inception in 2011, Google Plus has gathered mixed reviews regarding its benefits for the marketers in the B2B world. Undoubtedly, many would say that this is another strategy for grabbing the attention digitally and forcing on the bandwidth for marketing.

For marketers who have not accepted Google Plus as part of their tactics should question themselves: How correctly would the Google Plus fit in their B2B digital marketing strategy? Is it worthy of their time and effort?

Some ways through which B2B marketers can benefit from Google Plus are:

1) Market Research:

The first and the essential thing which marketers need to do are find out if other people in the organization are writing or not. If you are out of ideas for a blog post, just type a specific question or a keyword in the search engine and Google Plus assists through pages, posts, and people and provide conclusive information.

2) YouTube:

Acquiring the ownership of YouTube only defines the ability of Google Plus. User-friendly interface, sleek design, smooth video integration and image oriented capabilities make it look amazing for visual fanatics. Google Plus gives the marketers an opportunity to link up their social media accounts by making an exuberant social media platform for marketers and users all over the world.

Previous Articles:

• Best B2B Website Optimization Opportunities You Missed
• Tips for Small Business Leaders to Enhance Their Businesses
• Tips Improving Customer Experience B2B Business

Quick B2B Marketing Fixes to Consider for 2018

In this article, I will identify key digital marketing trends that can design the landscape for 2018. It is hard to claim what exactly is going to happen in 2018. But first we can discuss few observations before we leap upon quick B2B fixes

-There are various social platforms that are increasing time by time. On one side online traffic is increasing on these social media platforms day by day and on other side suppliers and buyers are using these tools for trade on mass scale.

-As you may know young generation are grown with these online tools. Therefore buyers and traders will heavily depend on online tools for their trade. In this way, digital pace will more increase as compare to previous years

Keeping the theme in the mind, here are few steps that B2B marketer can take and walk through the door of 2018 marketplace.

Research and Development

Whether its offline or online, one thing is obvious you don’t have knowledge as much as you perceive about your clients. You can’t be able to determine their real intentions unless you conduct research.

Companies that conduct regular research about their target market and target audience are more likely to increase growth and returns on their investments. Because when firms design plans and execute action on empirical and research evidences rather than assumptions and intuitions they
are one step ahead of what will be going to happen in marketplace. Therefore the relationship between research and growth sounds very rational.

The B2B marketer can plan to sample few prospects and clients. He can interview them ask about their needs, what are their expectations, how they think about your B2B brand, anticipate the perception of your leads and prospects about your company, what online marketing tools they know and would like to know and use for their trade. In the light of research you can devise your marketing opportunities, SWOT analysis, further new product and services development and alter marketing action plan

Content Marketing: Personalized Content

It has been observed that most of the B2B buyers and clients depend on content to make their business buying decisions. Research proves that 47 percent of B2B clients would like to read 3 to 5 content pieces before they meet salesperson. The more the content is personalized with the needs and wants of the client, the more will be the chances of breaking the ice when client is going to make a purchase decision.

Statistics:

• Monetate reveals that around 94% of digital marketers think personalized content is vital to success.

• HubSpot says that personalized content results are 42% superior than the non personalized content.

• Forbes’ Publish or Perish analysis believes that digital marketers who bring personalized online experiences get return in double figure.

Actions can be taken:

1. You can offer clients valuable keywords for their selling product in return you can get their basic information like names, emails and business details.
   
2.  Further you can launch a campaign which offers content which are more relevant to their business needs and ask more data in exchange.
3. In addition, you can add value by asking “does it solve your problem or do you understand this solution to your problem. 

SEO Aligned with Content: It takes two to make a Tango

According to one research survey, 97% of digital marketers think content and SEO are emerging into a single function as both are like two wheels of a vehicle. The combination of content and SEO brings:

• Conversions
• Engagement
• Traffic

Statistics:

• According to one research study, fluent SEO plays key role in the content marketing success.
• Natural search draws 51% of content consumption.

Actions can be taken:

• Capitalizing the dataset of SEO to identify how prospects caught by your content. Make an inventory of what creates interest in prospect and influence him to take action

• Keep track of customer interest and preferences by research and analysis as human interest and behavior vary time to time.

• Monitor how prospect attract to various contents among different mediums and devices at different times. You can also jot down cross cultural impacts among prospects.

• Set realistic, attainable and measurable goals for your content at every level of prospect from beginning (awareness) to end (conversion).

SMM:

As you may know we all spend most of the time on social media. For this reason, B2B marketers spend more on social media says, TEKsystems 2017 study. As consistent branding and delivery of ad messages strengthens brand and influence buying behavior.

Statistics:

• Top Rank Blog reveals that FaceBook will continue to rule over other social media platforms.

• Oregon Web Solutions claims that SMM is moving toward emotional appealing content.

• to Buffer App say that in 2018, various social media platforms enable people to form and share video stuff about what is happening around them (at their location).

Actions can be taken:

• Ask out your current clients what they feel about when they interact with our brand and products at social media.

• There is lot of clutter on social media platforms so analyze which social media forums are significant for your business. Subsequently develop and nurture your digital presence there.

• By pass and leave those social media platform which neither produce leads for you nor any brand awareness.

Video Marketing:

Video add motions in emotions. We tend to remember pictures and videos as compared to words. The same way, video marketing trend is increasing in digital marketing trends. James McQuivey online marketing Guru said “a single minute of video content is the equivalent of 1.8 million words.”

Therefore video marketing will be set as corner stone in the digital marketing future. According to the report of Cisco System recent Visual Networking Index video marketing will dominate digital traffic volumes in the years 2015-2019. By the end of 2018, 80% of internet traffic will be dominated by video content.

Statistics:

• Wyzow says that 63% businesses choose video content as their marketing tool.

• Comscore reveals that 65% business decision makers view video content on marketer’s website.

• Vidyard claims video content comprised of 37% average retention rate of viewers from beginning till end of session.

• According to one research 92% of mobile video users share their videos with their social circle and other people.

Actions can be taken:

• Evaluate your current consumption of video content and ROI. Deploy videos where needed and remove if deployed on unnecessary platforms.

• Make sure your videos are catchy and memorable plus also appealing to your brand, carrying USP and complete value proposition and influence buying behavior.

• Fuel up your SEO by adding videos in your SEO content at content offers, landing pages and other crucial web pages.

• Test videos with different line (content) and length (occasions) and check which video content best appeal your prospect.

Mobile Marketing:

Mobile Marketing is one of the crucial and latest tools in digital marketing. Google will announce mobile algorithm in 2018. This will fuel up digital competition among online industries. B2B marketers can use this tool for their digital marketing campaign.

Statistics:

• comScore’s 2017 U.S. Cross-Platform Future in Focus report claims that 69% of online time is spent on mobile phones.

• BIA/Kelsey says that Location based mobile ads will worth 32.4 billion dollars in 2021.

Actions can be taken:

Hire experienced digital marketers who can run mobile online marketing campaign according to your prospect needs and they have capability to align your business requirement with mobile ads and not violating Google 2018 Mobile Algorithm.

Conclusion:

The digital technology has flooded up with the rapid pace. B2B marketers can’t depend on what was working in past. Recently we need to work out upcoming trends in 2018 to execute them effectively.