I would like to share with you some tips on B2B online marketing. Since most of my clients are B2B'ers, everyday I am learning new methods and ideas for marketing B2B websites.

1) Unlike what most people think: In B2B online marketing your first intentions should be to generate leads - not sales. So many people come with the generating sales approach. There is nothing wrong with this approach, however your fustration will kick in the moment you dont see any results.

In the generating leads approach the whole aspect of your marketing message and copy is different. Here you are not not trying to push the "buy from us now" but you are focusing on a pre-selling strategy. The pre-selling strategy allows you to create a warm spot for leads to step in.

2) The price for a product or service in B2B marketing is usually much higher then in B2C. This is why in B2B people will think 10 times about taking out a credit card in order to make a payment. Here is where theeasy access strategy must come in. The easy access strategy simply means that if a prospect has any questions - he can easily contact you. In B2B inquries come in much more then in B2C. The more ways you allow people to contact you - the better.

3) SEO: This is a critical aspect in B2B online marketing. Here are a few things that I find challening:

1- When I am dealing with a new company that has a brand new product - right now no search exist for their specific product or service or related keywords. Now you need to figure out how to optimize the website and how to drive targeted traffic. In a case like this what I'll usually do is create a blog for the company to personalize and pre-sell its information. I'll also dig into the company's product and ask questions: What problems can this product solve? Why would the market need it? Who would us it? Once I narrow down these questions - I can then generate keywords based on the solutions this product can bring and the need and demand that its bringing to the marketplace.

2- With some companies I ask myself the following question: Would someone really purchase this product online? Why would they buy it online and not local? I'll try to research the reasons why people are searching for the companies specific keywords and if they are really purchasing it online. Once I have the "why" nailed down - the content creation and optimizion part is much easier.

(Here is a great story that happend to me just a few months ago: A company I am working with launched a new product they felt could really sell online. The keywords that were chosen were important ingredients found in the product itself, together with the company we felt this could be a good thing to optimize the website on - It seemed that there was a nice search for those keywords and we could rank for them as well. After we ranked for those keywords - we could'nt understand why the traffic was not staying on the website. This was really upsetting. So we started doing keyword research again and lo and behold we discovered that the keywords we were using were also the same name as some chinese cartoon action figure, people were searching for this figure and not an actual product with these ingredients....)

3) A company with a really "boring" product: Not all companies have amazing products. There are some that have really boring products. So trying to make the content interesting and engaging is hard.

4) LinkedIn: Is truly the gold mine for B2B online marketing. By targeting specific groups and posting good information can generate amazing results.

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