Let’s face it – every business stands to benefit from a digital marketing strategy. However, there are some types of businesses that will genuinely struggle to grow and experience real success without an effective digital marketing strategy in place.

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At the top of this list are B2B service-based businesses.

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The reality is, if you own a B2B service-based business, you need a digital marketing strategy that actively reaches your audience, creates real interest in your service offerings and ultimately converts prospects into paying customers.

In this day and age, it’s simply not enough to build a website, run some ads and wait for the customers to start rolling in – especially when your customers are other businesses. There is a great deal more work that goes into building a promising list of B2B client leads and nurturing these prospects through your funnel towards conversion and sales.

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Why do B2B customers need special treatment?

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Well, it’s because the service brands that B2B clients choose to work with directly affect their own success as a business – meaning they need to truly trust you before making the decision to work with you going forward.

For instance, it’s pretty improbable for a company to select a Lawyer or Accountant on a whim. An organisation would rarely select a Corporate Travel agency or a Commercial Mortgage Broker from a glance at a website or one ad click. These companies and organisations need several exposure opportunities to your digital marketing to learn, explore, decide and assess your service validity in relation to their business requirements.

Now you see the importance of an active digital marketing strategy.

In this article, I’m going to explain the 3 reasons why implementing a digital marketing strategy in your B2B service-based business can help to improve the results of your sales funnel.

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1. Marketing a B2B business is different to other types of businesses

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As I just mentioned, B2B clients look to establish a lot more trust in the brands they work with before deciding to put go ahead. This, in turn, makes their overall decision-making process a lot longer than other types of customers, like those of eCommerce brands who tend to purchase more on the spot.

However, there is a way to help move this decision-making process along and establish the trust you need a lot quicker.

Statistics show that, on average, it takes ten customer touchpoints to close a sale, so by adding additional customer touchpoints to your digital marketing, you can more efficiently move your prospects through the sales funnel and convert them into paying customers.

For more, read our 9-Step Digital Marketing Strategy guide here.

Examples of customer touchpoints include:

• building a great website
• creating well-written articles and blogs
• connecting with your prospects on LinkedIn and
• sending personalised video proposals.

Another way that you can help speed up the decision-making process is to work on creating the initial demand for your products and services, before educating your audience on why they need what you can offer them in their business.

In digital marketing, this is known as Demand Generation, and it involves taking an omnichannel approach that builds interest, excitement and curiosity around your B2B business.

A great example of Demand Generation marketing is producing thought leadership content in the form of articles and newsletters that educate your audience about the benefits of the services that you offer. This builds awareness and plants the seed in your prospects’ minds, effectively placing them at the top of your sales funnel.

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2. Your Marketing and Sales are intricately intertwined

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Whether you realise it or not, the marketing and sales functions of your service-based business are heavily connected. They play off each other throughout your entire funnel – from the moment a prospect enters until the moment they sign on the dotted line and beyond.

Think about it: the success of your business relies solely on your ability to secure clients and make the sale. However, in order to secure clients, you first need to gather leads.

How do you gather leads? With sales. And how do you create the demand that attracts leads? With marketing, of course!

So, given that your marketing and sales functions work so closely together throughout the entire process, it stands to reason that, without marketing, your sales function will struggle to help you achieve your business goals.

Not only that, but a Digital Marketing Strategy can increase leads, empower conversions and minimise sales costs. This is exactly how to do that and what tools to use.

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3. Your business’ marketing performance is not measured like others are

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Due to the close connection between your marketing and sales functions, your marketing performance as a B2B service-based business is measured quite differently from other businesses.

The beauty of this, however, is that the metrics that you use to track the performance of your customer journey can be simplified to focus solely on the value of your full pipeline and your overall conversion rate – making it easy to determine what areas of your digital marketing are working and what needs to be adjusted.

So, when you consider the fact that B2B service-based businesses like yours hold far more variables than others that need to be understood before a prospect’s decision can be made, it makes sense that utilising an effective digital marketing strategy will go a long way to helping potential clients along their journey towards a conversion.

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Do you need help developing your B2B digital marketing strategy?

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All you have to do is Ask!

At Ask Digital Marketing, we combine decisive digital strategy and managed marketing execution to help B2B service-based businesses build demand, establish thought leadership and own their industry through digital business marketing.

Stop waiting. Start building. Experience success.

Just get in touch with us and we can discuss your business to help you navigate the digital marketing landscape towards success.

Let’s harness the power of digital marketing today!

For more great marketing content, connect with our company leaders, Alexandra King and Stephanie King, or follow our Ask Marketing LinkedIn page.