linkedin website in browser

Since its beginnings in 2003, LinkedIn has become a popular business growth tool with over 830 million users worldwide, and it is an excellent communication tool for businesses to reach their customers. Whatever your industry, LinkedIn can become a vital part of your long-term digital marketing strategy, whether your marketing objective is brand awareness, driving traffic or recruitment.

Is LinkedIn Right for Your Business?

In a nutshell, yes. LinkedIn can be used for any business with clear goals in mind.

Business to Business (B2B) marketing campaigns can benefit significantly from using LinkedIn. It can be a place to discuss industry updates and share news that others may be interested in. In addition, you can connect with professionals who may be interested in your products and services or with other businesses in the same industry. With clever targeting, messaging and making the right connections, it’s also a valuable sales platform for B2B companies when used organically and via paid advertising.

Business to Consumer (B2C) users should approach LinkedIn differently. You can use LinkedIn to target potential customers based on their interests, especially business owners or professionals who would more likely be on LinkedIn. Also, B2C companies may benefit more from a LinkedIn brand awareness campaign. You can showcase and highlight the people behind the brand name and network with businesses like yours to create collaborations that your customers will enjoy. You can also engage influencers who can help get your products in front of the right audience.

As part of a well-thought-out social media marketing campaign, LinkedIn can help inform customers throughout their journey and enable other aspects of your marketing campaign to perform well.

How to Set Up LinkedIn for Your Business

Step 1

You can set up a LinkedIn business page in a few simple steps.

If you have a personal profile, navigate to “work” at the top and choose the “Create a Company Page” button. If you don’t have a personal profile, you will need to create one first.

linkedin product options

Next, choose the right page for your business based on its size or type. You can choose from

  • small, medium and large business
  • showcase page
  • educational establishment.

A showcase page is a page to present a separate division of a company, and an educational establishment would cover a school or university, for example.

create a linkedin business page

Step 2

Next, fill out your details, add your logo and tagline and create the page. Once it's created, you can optimise it by completing your company description, website URL, industry, cover photo and a custom button. Remember to add hashtags related to your page and keywords into your description, as LinkedIn pages are indexed by Google, which can also help your company's SEO efforts.

You should also make sure you add your company branding to your page. For example, use your profile picture to display your logo and cover image for further branding, so your page is easily recognised.

linkedin business page set up

Step 3

Finally, share your company page using your personal profile; encourage your connections to follow the page and share it. You should also ask your employees to update their profiles to add the company page as part of their work history.

It’s also important to share a link to your new profile directly from your website; you should do this for all social pages, including Facebook and Instagram.

Building Your LinkedIn Strategy

Once you have a functioning LinkedIn company page, you can use it to help hit your business's goals.

Your overall marketing strategy should include a LinkedIn campaign. To put this in place, you should answer questions such as:

  • What do I want to achieve?
  • What am I going to use the page for?
  • How often will I post?
  • Who do you want to engage?
  • What actions do I want people to take?

The answers to these questions will help you develop your strategy. Pick one or two goals to get started. We suggest creating a calendar to build your posting schedule; this could be an Outlook Calendar or a simple spreadsheet template. There are plenty of free templates available to download online.

There are four common goals that we’ve found companies want to work towards on LinkedIn, and LinkedIn provides more benefits due to its background as a place for professionals to hang out. These include recruitment, networking, becoming a thought leader and advertising.

Recruiting Through LinkedIn

If you want to attract new talent to your business, LinkedIn is a fantastic resource. When you post jobs through your business account, individuals using the LinkedIn jobs section can easily click through to your profile.

If you’re posting regular updates showcasing what it's like to work for your company, people interested in working for you can get a feel for your company culture, and you’re more likely to attract the right people to your business.

While the jobs platform has an additional cost attached to it, you can use your company page and even your personal page to list vacancies, and by using hashtags and your connections, you can get the advert in front of the right people.

The more engaged your company is on LinkedIn, the more likely it will be followed by people interested in your industry and those who want to work for your business. Also, if your employees are happy to share your business' content, ask them to! A Management Today study found that candidates are 29% more likely to consider a job if they have a LinkedIn connection who works for, or works with, the company.

Using LinkedIn to Network

LinkedIn makes it easy to network with people in your industry; there are countless industry groups where you can find people with similar interests. You can use the hashtag features to find posts about specific topics, and if you know of other businesses in your industry that you’d like to collaborate with, LinkedIn makes it easy to connect with them.

Networking tends to be linked to personal profiles rather than the business profiles on the platform, but there’s no reason you can’t use your business profile to find networking opportunities. First, check out who likes your page and then look at their profile; chances are, if they are interested in your company, they’re likely to be linked to your industry, so connect with them.

Then finally, once you have a network of people linked to your industry, start interacting. The more you comment on posts, engage with polls and share the content of the people and companies you connect to, the more you put yourself out there as someone to talk to within the industry.

Becoming a Thought Leader on LinkedIn

Suppose you have a website where you share a lot of information about your industry and products. In that case, this content is perfect for repurposing as LinkedIn articles to establish your business as a go-to source of knowledge. According to LinkedIn, 45% of the readers of articles on the platform are CEOs, VPs or have positions in the higher levels of businesses, so you can get your content seen by some key decision-makers.

You can also use the platform’s “skills and endorsements” section to cement your expertise in specific areas and ask your colleagues and connections to endorse you where possible. Again, while this is connected to your personal profile, if you want to be seen as a thought leader for your brand and industry, you’ll want your profile to look its best.

Stay ahead of the game in your industry, keep on top of relevant updates and movements in your sector and be sure to offer comments about these. Use the articles space to write long-form opinion pieces about any changes, whether good or bad and offer tips on how others can navigate these updates.

Advertising Through LinkedIn

Most social networks come with the ability to target people through advertising, and LinkedIn is no different.

There are a variety of options for advertising on LinkedIn, from sponsored text ads that appear on people’s feeds to sponsored messages that go straight to individuals' inboxes, photo carousel ads, dynamic ads and more.

The advertising platform within LinkedIn offers heavily targeted marketing and an excellent engagement rate with the right ad and audience. As mentioned, many of the users on LinkedIn are in senior positions within their company and have buying power. So, using specifically targeted advertisements can quickly get your business seen by the right people.

Posting on LinkedIn

Once you’ve created your LinkedIn marketing strategy and are ready to start posting to the platform, you can create a content calendar for the posts you’d like to publish. The types of posts you publish could include:

  • Behind-the-scenes videos and imagery
  • Company updates, client wins, product updates and new vacancies
  • New staff introductions or exciting posts about your existing staff members
  • Client case studies
  • Stats and other insights into the industry, including snippets from blogs on your website
  • Thought leadership articles and research
  • Sale promotion posts
  • Product/service information

Your calendar should reflect everything you want to communicate through LinkedIn and how often you would like to do so. When you’re ready to post to the platform, head to the home page and create a post using the “start a post” box.

start a post box

You can add a related photo or video to make your post more engaging and shareable. You should also add related hashtags, making your post more discoverable by the relevant people. You can create a job post or a thought leadership article from here, depending on your goals and communications highlighted in your plan.

Analysing your Performance

The work on LinkedIn doesn’t stop after you have posted. It’s essential to analyse your performance against your initial goals to help improve your posts and strategy moving forward. You can look at engagement, including post likes and comments, follower improvements, brand tags, job applications and website traffic.

LinkedIn provides an internal analytics tool to show you some data, including visitors, updates, followers, competitors, leads and employee advocacy.

You should look back at your initial goals to see if you have met these, creating benchmarks based on your performance for the future to ensure continual improvement. If you haven’t hit your goals, it’s important to find out why. For example, is your messaging reaching the right people, or are you posting at the right time of day to suit your audience? You can test different types of content to ensure you’re posting the best content to engage with your target audience.

Getting Help with LinkedIn for Business

If all this sounds a bit too much, and you feel like you need a little help with getting your business profile out there, we can help. As a LinkedIn marketing agency, we’ve helped many businesses with their LinkedIn advertising.

Our social media marketing team are on hand to post regularly to your business profile or offer insightful articles to your connections.

Get in touch with our team on 01524 580777 or send us an enquiry today.

Businesses are presenting information to online audiences in various ways. Google continuously promotes user-friendly mediums by allowing content to appear in search results in multiple formats. Video content is increasingly popular on websites and across all marketing channels. More and more companies are taking advantage of video, and it is fast becoming a fundamental ingredient for a successful digital marketing strategy.

Videos can be used to share information about brands, products, services, reviews, how-to guides, and so much more. The use of visual media is increasing, and when considering the future of digital marketing, there is no doubt it will be front and centre. It is estimated that 92.6% of internet users worldwide consume video content each week.popular video consumption types

(Oberlo, 2022)

Why Should You Use Videos on Your Website?

When it comes to developing website content to be more engaging and informative, videos should be at the top of the list for several reasons:

1. Videos Increase the Time Visitors Stay on a Page

Videos increase the time visitors spend on your website. If a person lands on a webpage but leaves quickly, it can be seen as a quick exit, suggesting poor content to search engines. The more time a visitor spends on a webpage signals to search engines that the page contains engaging and helpful content. This helps with your website’s SEO optimisation and the chance of converting that visitor into a customer or client.

2. Videos are Easily Shareable

Embedding the video on your page keeps the content highly shareable. Users can access and share the original video when content is uploaded to a video-sharing website such as YouTube or Vimeo. Using a third-party platform means the video isn’t hosted on the website and prevents the page from being resource-heavy and slowing it down. Slow loading pages will be frustrating to a visitor and reduce engagement.

Also, as well as videos being able to be shared across social media platforms, Google can also index the video in search results from the third-party hosting platform as well as the webpage it is hosted on within your website. Hence, the video can be indexed twice.

3. Videos Improve Conversion Rates

Research has shown that users are two times as likely to purchase a product after viewing content such as a video review or demonstration compared to text or images alone.

4. Video Content is Perfect for B2B

Many B2B companies use videos to generate website traffic as part of a B2B marketing strategy. Selling a service can be harder than selling a product online. Video format provides you with the opportunity to share more information about a service and who you are, all in a succinct and digestible way compared to text. When it comes to building trust, a video can be a powerful tool.

5. Online Video Go Hand-in-Hand with Increased Mobile Use

Mobile devices offer convenience and information at your fingertips. It's no surprise that mobile use has been on the up for years with no signs of slowing down. A mobile phone screen simply can’t show the same amount of text or images that a desktop can. This is why responsive web design has developed in the way that it has, providing different but equivalent user experiences across device types. Videos bridge this gap by offering the same high-quality experience regardless of device.

How to Get Started with Videos on Your Website

1. Create Video Content

The starting point of any video is content creation. Develop an understanding of what you want the video to convey. Think about the tone, length and film quality. Consider using a professional videographer to make this first step easier with professional results that match your brand. Videos are a great ranking factor for SEO, consider creating relevant videos to enhance key product pages or services pages for a boost to your organic reach. Or, to help boost conversion rates and trust, consider using video for testimonials, case studies or on your key business information pages. Whatever you decide, make sure you have a clear aim and stick with it.

2. Host the Video

You have many options for video hosting. Vimeo and YouTube are two very popular free platforms. Facebook is also a free video hosting platform however it does compress files. Be prepared to see the video quality reduce if you choose to upload your video to your Facebook Business page. The second option is to upload the file to your website but be warned videos can increase the loading speed of your website.

3. Embed the Video Link

Both YouTube, Vimeo and Facebook provide embed codes that can be directly added to website pages to ‘pull’ the video into the page.

4. Mark Up the Video for Search Engines

Use Schema markup to clearly mark the video properties to Google and other search engines. VideoObject Schema includes details such as the content or embed URL and can be used with HowTo Schema. Marking up the videos increases the chance of them being indexed by search engines.

Google Values Video: The New Video Indexing Report

There is a reason that digital marketing agencies like ourselves will encourage the use of videos. Not only do marketers see the value in video, but Google also recognises this valuable media format, allowing it to be found in Google search results, Google Images, video search results, and Discover. They've even launched a Video Indexing feature in Google Search Console, allowing website owners to track the coverage website videos receive in search (whether it appears in Google search or not).

video indexing report

Google, 2022

This new feature also provides information about why a video might not be indexable. There are several reasons why Google cannot index a video; the file could be too large or too small, a thumbnail may be missing, or the URL could be invalid. All information can be found within the report, allowing you to identify and amend the issue easily.

In addition, if a video file is too large, not only will this cause indexing issues, but it could negatively impact core web vitals, an important SEO ranking factor. For more information about video indexing, please see the video below from Google.

For additional information or help with your video marketing strategy, the team here at SQ Digital can help you out. Please request your FREE SEO audit today to discover what we could do for your website's SEO. Or, get in touch, and we will be more than happy to discuss our services with you.

The manufacturing industry tends to lean towards traditional marketing methods such as word of mouth, trade shows, or relying on well-established reputations developed and built up over many years. However, over the past decade, online marketing has evolved significantly. The methods of digital marketing like Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC), email marketing, social media and content marketing can be highly effective for manufacturing companies. It provides manufacturers with an excellent opportunity to broaden their client base.

Companies in the manufacturing industries can gain many benefits from investing in digital marketing. But for an industry that has been supported by old-school marketing methods for so long, you may ask, why do manufacturing businesses need digital marketing services? Buyer behaviour is constantly changing, and potential new customers are much more tech-savvy. While traditional marketing methods remain valuable, they are no longer the best way to reach new customers.

Why Do Manufacturers Need Digital Marketing?

There are two types of marketing, outbound and inbound. Traditional marketing is typically outbound and consists of one-way communication methods like print adverts, broadcasting adverts, unsolicited mail and email, billboards and cold-calling. Outbound marketing style is about casting your net as wide as possible and telling as many people as possible about your company, regardless of whether they’re interested in you.

Before the internet, clients relied on traditional advertising, sales representatives, and trade shows to get product information before deciding which company to purchase from. These days, traditional marketing methods have fallen out of favour, and all the information customers want to see can be found online. As a result, customers are no longer dependent on your sales team. They can get the answers they need almost instantaneously, using search engines like Google or Bing, without interacting with your business face-to-face.

inbound and outbound marketing

Make sure you are visible online and provide potential customers with answers to questions about your products and services. The chances are one of your competitors will be, and you risk losing out on customers choosing to interact with manufacturers in this way.

At SQ Digital, we’ve partnered with manufacturers for over two decades and understand that jumping into digital marketing can be daunting. We’ve put this guide together to explain how you can use digital marketing to your advantage to attract the right people.

Establish Your Online Presence with a Good Website

Before developing a digital marketing strategy for your manufacturing business, you will need a website that stands out from the crowd and gives visitors to the site the information they’re searching for. For manufacturers, the website provides information to potential customers on what your company does, how it does it, the benefits of using you, and how to get in touch.

Business to Business (“B2B”) and Business to Consumer (“B2C”) companies usually have different goals and priorities for their websites. A B2B website often contains more technical information, which is presented in a straightforward, easy to digest manner and offers expert advice to the user. Ideally, it would be best to use a web design agency that understands B2B website design.

Your website should work hard to give visitors the best possible user experience when they visit. If the products you manufacture are particularly technical, you might consider including a form that allows users to input custom specifications and request a callback or a quote. You could also include videos demonstrating how you manufacture your products and pages detailing lead time expectancy and your manufacturing capabilities.

Make Your Website Easier to Find with SEO

Once you’ve got a well-functioning website, it’s time to make sure people searching for your products and services can find you online. Search engine optimisation, or SEO, is key to generating relevant, organic traffic to your website by targeting the words and phrases people use to search for your products.

When potential customers use Google, for example, and input search questions, words and terms, the search engine will look in various places on your website for those terms. The more relevant information related to the user’s search it can find on your website, the higher your pages will appear in the search results.

SEO Graphic

Unfortunately, it’s not quite as simplistic as that! There are many different approaches to SEO. For instance, technical SEO looks at the elements of your website that the user doesn’t necessarily see that help make the site accessible to search engines. On the other hand, SEO content writing focuses on tailoring your written content on each of your website’s pages to include the unique keywords related to your products that people are searching for. Optimising your website like this allows search engines to recognise what your pages are about, which helps them rank higher in search results. Our SEO quick wins guide explains some of the simplest ways to get started with optimising your website once you know what kind of terms you should be optimising it for.

But how do you determine which keywords your target audience is searching for? Driving lots of traffic to your site is all well and good. Still, you want to make sure that traffic is relevant to your business by targeting the right audiences with SEO, especially if you work in a highly competitive manufacturing sector with many companies vying for the same audience. If you don’t feel comfortable doing this yourself, it may be a good idea to get an SEO agency involved. An agency can help you perform thorough competitor analysis, and keyword research and develop an ongoing strategy to help your website climb up the rankings and stay there.

Support Your SEO with Content Marketing

Content marketing goes hand in hand with SEO, as search engines reward websites that publish fresh, regular, relevant content, usually blog posts. Blog articles can focus on longtail keywords or questions that people are searching for that are relevant to what your company does.

Writing articles that answer the questions or discuss topics your target audience is searching for can help position you as an expert in your field. The articles will also be able to direct people to your main website by internally linking to your other web pages, which is also beneficial for SEO.

Alongside these data-driven blogs, you can also publish pieces that explain how you manufacture products, share exciting developments within the company, and provide insights into the challenges the wider manufacturing industry faces. Content like this can help build trust in your brand. That said, content marketing is about more than just your blog. It also includes other digital marketing aspects, such as email campaigns, infographics, case studies and even videos. There’s a lot to think about, so if you need help, employ a content marketing agency to steer you in the right direction.

manufacturing workers talking

Get Your Products in Front of The Right People with PPC

Pay-per-click advertising, also known as PPC, is the paid alternative to organic SEO. Suppose your website appears in the organic search results, and a user clicks on your site. In that case, a user clicking on your website doesn’t cost you anything. Optimising your site did all the legwork to help your page climb the rankings.

On the other hand, PPC allows you to bid on keywords to place your website at the top of the search results page above the organic results. If a user clicks on your site from one of these promoted links, it will cost you the amount you bid. If you’re interested in learning more about how PPC works, have a read of our guide on Google Ads bidding strategies for businesses.

Bidding on competitive terms relating to your industry will increase the number of visitors to your site. Make sure they land on a page on your website that provides them with the information they are looking for. Overall, you’ll increase your website's visibility and make it easy for people to convert into paying customers. As with all aspects of digital marketing, it’s essential to ensure you’re targeting the right people, as in these scenarios, every click costs you money. A PPC agency can help you create, monitor and adjust your pay-per-click campaigns and make sure you’re getting the most value out of every click.

Embrace Social Media

Social media marketing might not be the first thing that springs to mind for manufacturers. Still, with platforms like LinkedIn geared explicitly towards business use, the industry and B2B companies can thrive. LinkedIn is great for sharing opinion pieces on the manufacturing industry and its challenges. You can build connections with people and companies surrounding your sector and shout out about company news.

You can also use paid social media advertising to get your products and services to appear in the newsfeeds and timelines of your target audience. You can target people based on demographics such as geographical location, age, career and personal interests. We have a whole article on the benefits of social media for small businesses if you’d like to learn more.

Summary

A solid digital marketing strategy for any manufacturing business will include a combination of approaches. The digital marketing services you apply should all work towards the same goal – driving relevant traffic to your website. Website visitors should be able to learn more about what your company does and how you can help them - eventually converting them into new customers.

It can seem daunting and a lot to take in, so many manufacturers choose to bring a digital marketing agency on board to help guide the strategy. In the long run, this will save you time and money and provide a better return on your investment.

For over 20 years, SQ Digital has been helping manufacturing companies like Dean Group grow their online presence. Contact us today to learn more about how our team of experts can help your manufacturing business.

Over the last two decades, especially in the previous few years, online marketing is becoming crucial to help your business succeed.

However, knowing how to start your digital marketing campaign can seem daunting, let alone keep up with the latest trends and best practices. Nowadays, it can even depend on your industry to know what you should do and what you should avoid; it can get complicated!

Here, we'll help you understand how to start your digital marketing campaign as a B2B (business-to-business) operator.

If you want to learn about what you can do ahead of launching your campaign to improve the chance of success, we recommend you read this guide from the beginning. However, if you want to skip straight to the “How to” guide, use the links below.

  1. Set Up an Email Marketing Campaign
  2. Post on LinkedIn
  3. Track All Leads
  4. Implement a Long-Term SEO Strategy
  5. Write Informative and Technical Content Marketing
  6. Build a Responsive & Fast Website
  7. Optimise for Local Search
  8. Use a Dynamic PPC Campaign
  9. Audit and Improve the User Journey on Your Website
  10. Use Cost-Effective Retargeting Tools

team working on business marketing strategy

What Is the Difference Between B2B and B2C?

The ecommerce (commercial transactions conducted electronically) market is something we can all relate to since most of us have bought something online at some point. The buyer journey usually begins with research, often on a search engine such as Google or Bing.

With the B2C buying journey, the purchase decision is often driven by emotion, and the sales process can be quick and impulsive. The consumer will search for product information, which tends to be followed by market research looking for the best deal. This stage of the buyers’ journey can be influenced by adverts such as social media retargeting or Google retargeting banners on other websites.

For B2B, sales tend to be influenced by budgets, ROI (return on investment), and a logical mindset - the sales process can take months, and we will see how this impacts your strategy later.

On different platforms such as social media, you can advertise products to a given demographic and potentially prompt sales from people who initially had no intent to buy online. This tactic usually only works for B2C and is not viable for B2B.

You can begin to understand what may and may not work for a B2B marketing campaign by understanding more about your target market.  Before you can do that, you should also understand your company’s purpose. Sharing your purpose with your target audience will lay the foundations for true success in marketing.

What is Your Vision or Brand – Basically, Who Are You and What Do You Stand For?

Building a brand is just as important as selling a product or service. Customers will return time and time again to a brand they can trust.

Before launching your marketing campaign, it’s essential to establish your brand values and proposition. Determine what products and services you provide and what the benefits are. Invest time to understand your customers' expectations, values, and what they deem important.

domino pillars of a business, focusing around brand

What Are Your Business’s Goals?

Trying to market everything you do to a relevant target audience can be time-consuming, costly and lead to thinning resources. The best marketing strategies will line up with a company's goals. For example, suppose the company wants to increase revenue for a new product. In that case, the marketing should primarily focus on the product launch and make it visible across all marketing channels and platforms. The focus of resources and effort will see more success than a broad but thin campaign across all products and services.

KPIs (key performance indicators) break down and clarify company goals into bite-size and digestible objectives to help teams understand their targets and how they fit into the broader company objectives.

For instance, if the aim is to increase revenue by attracting new customers, the KPI target for the Sales team could be to increase the number of calls with new customers. On the other hand, a Marketing team may have a KPI of growing customer sales leads through the website. The KPI could be website metrics such as new vs returning visitors, number of contact form submissions, email subscriptions, and so on.

KPI’s should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-Bound) and be able to identify real improvements. The same is true for a marketing strategy – define the KPI’s, so success is measurable.

Who is Your Target Market and Better Still, Client Persona?

You know your target market is a business that needs the products or services you offer, but knowing who you are trying to attract specifically is even more insightful. A few factors you should consider are;

  • Locality - local, national, or international
  • Company Size – small, medium, large, or corporate businesses
  • Average turnover
  • Decision-maker – owner, director or manager.

Knowing who to approach will undoubtedly change your marketing messaging. Remember that you will often be looking to identify two to three different client personas’ depending on your industry.

What Are Your USP’s (Unique Selling Points)?

An established B2B business will have established USP’s. These are the factors that will set you apart from the competition. For instance, perhaps you offer an initial free consultation or a volume discount that increases when order number increases? Whatever it is, use it in your marketing strategy, shout it to the hills to get your target market to come to you and not the competition.

Your B2B Marketing Strategy - Here’s What to Do:

All businesses are unique and specific methods will work better than others. However, we’ve listed tried-and-tested methods that are best suited for B2B marketing. Use these tools in your B2B campaign to achieve your set KPI’s

1.     Email Marketing: A Well-Established Successful Tool for B2B Marketing

As a B2B business, email marketing is something you really should be doing. It can offer the best ROI of all marketing channels when done correctly. When planning your emails, you should segment your email list into different persona’s to target your audience more effectively. You should automate the process to plan for scaling your email marketing.

Also, think about your audiences’ needs and not yours. It’s great that you have a new service or product, but that won’t necessarily catch their eye. Focus on how it will help your customers and what benefits they can expect. Create a catchy subject line to get their attention. Don’t forget to measure the success of your campaigns and tweak them accordingly.

2.     Use LinkedIn as Your Social Media Channel

B2B businesses tend to have less success with social media marketing channels such as Facebook and Instagram. LinkedIn offers an alternative platform to engage and connect with other businesses. There are almost 50 million business decision-makers active on LinkedIn.

Create engaging content using a social strategy that forms connections and interacts with your target audience. Aim to build beneficial relationships to help generate leads and referrals.

From our own experience and that of our clients, often personal profiles do better than company profiles, but both should be used synergistically as part of your LinkedIn marketing strategy.

3.     A Long-Term SEO Strategy

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is the practice of optimising a website to appear higher in a search engine, such as Google. Unlike paid ad listings using PPC (pay-per-click), these are organic results. A successful SEO campaign will help you bring in new customers and is an excellent tool for expanding your online reach.

Most user’s regard organic listings with greater trust as they are selected to rank higher based on merit. The keywords you target with your SEO campaign must be relevant and match the correct intent of a potential searcher. This will mean fewer irrelevant leads down the line.

The main thing to remember with a B2B SEO campaign is to be patient! Improvements in rankings can take months, depending on how much time you invest in your website. Coupling this with longer lead times for B2B, seeing a ROI can take time.
seo infographic

4.     Set Up Lead Tracking

Launching a marketing strategy for your company is exciting, but regular check-ins with KPI metrics for each marketing channel must be a pillar of the strategy itself. Make sure that you are recording what is important for each channel.

As an SEO service provider, we monitor Google analytics and click data in Google Search Console and Google Business Profile metrics (formerly known as Google My Business). Calls and directions, for example, can be monitored, but the actual value of the SEO work is measured by the value of a lead, not just lead number.

For B2C businesses, it is easier to track a transaction value and is usually instant. As a B2B business, take the time to match up your marketing channels to lead value. This will improve your strategy and save you money in the future.

5.     Produce Informative and Technical Content

Often overlooked by B2B businesses, content marketing can offer numerous benefits. Webpage content explaining your products and services and what sets you apart from your competition is key.

A website is a modern-day substitute for the initial face-to-face contact with a company. Instead of being able to tell someone directly why they should buy from you, you will need to use content marketing to do this for you. Guiding the reader through the website and explaining what you can offer is essential. You should highlight your technical capabilities and expertise.

B2B webpages often lack content and don’t provide the user with much information to make a decision. This can be frustrating and results in a poor user experience and a potential client will go elsewhere.

Blogging regularly can improve your SEO and target clients who are still in the research phase of their enquiring journey. It is a simple technique that can expand your online reach. This could be your secret weapon!
content is king written on old typewriter

6.     Responsive & Fast Website Design

One metric we track, is the device type used to look for our clients’ products or services. We regularly see that more B2B target audiences use desktop devices more than mobile, however this gap is narrowing and both platforms need to display a good user experience. A website must load quickly and efficiently across all devices. On average, if a webpage takes 3 seconds to load, 40% of people abandon the page and use a webpage from a competitor website. Effective B2B website design is one of the most overlooked parts of most B2B marketing campaigns and such a simple concept as page experience can impact lead generation significantly. A fast and responsive website works hand-in-hand with SEO, it can encourage PPC conversions and yet, without it, your marketing strategy can go down the pan. We would recommend you consult a website design agency, if you are not sure whether your website meets these criteria.

7.     Create and/or Optimise Your Google Business Profile

This is aimed at B2B companies who have a local presence or a physical address. Optimising your Google Business Profile with the correct information, photos, opening hours, service category and regularly posting content, can help you appear higher in local map pack results (please see an example image of these results below). For localised searches, these results capture most of the traffic available and so you need to appear here. In addition, good review ratings and review count, impacts advocacy and your profile’s rank. Ensuring that you have the infrastructure in place to encourage reviews from clients will help you out and increase the conversion potential of prospective clients. [insert image below]

8.     Use a Creative, Dynamic and Strategic PPC Campaign

The benefits of a PPC campaign are plentiful. Before investing in a long-term SEO campaign, PPC can ensure that even very niche B2B businesses can succeed and bring in relevant online traffic. PPC is an immediate form of marketing that can bring in leads fast. It can also verify the need for an integrated SEO and PPC campaign to maximise your leads. This marketing platform is a conversion driving tactic and involves using a budget to bid for advert placement at the top of Google search (we focus on Google in both our SEO and PPC campaigns due to the search engines 92% global market share). PPC for B2B companies can be expensive but focusing on long-tail (generally less competitive but more specific) terms can be rewarding. It can also help with brand awareness.

9.     Conversion Rate Optimisation AKA UX (User Experience) Optimisation

Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is another branch of your B2B marketing strategy, which without, can make it all pointless. Every single channel used links in one way or another to your business’s website as a central resource, but if the structure, layout, or any element of the website is confusing, unhelpful, or messy, then people just won’t enquire. Think of this as having a high-street shop but with bins and boxes cluttering the sales counter, very few people will make the effort to break through. A bad website user experience can unfortunately make your strategy destined to fail. You need to have a slick and easy to navigate website with an easy contact option. This involves minimal effort on the user’s part, but maximum information and slick design on the website’s part. It is not easy to know how everyone interacts with your website, but tools such as Microsoft Clarity are a great place to start.

10.  Google Remarketing

This channel was traditionally considered as a B2C technique, however, increasingly B2B businesses are finding value in remarketing. Also referred to as retargeting, Google’s remarketing platform, allows adverts for your business to follow a website visitor across the internet after they have left your website. They can be set up so that they follow people who did not enquire on your website. This can be help you stay present in the minds of potential customers as they evaluate multiple different companies. Retargeting on Google’s Display Network has a lower cost per lead than other non-branded campaigns such as PPC.

team working together to promote business goals

Use These B2B Marketing Channels Together for The Best Results

Now we have looked at the top 10 B2B marketing strategies for 2022, it is important not so consider these different techniques as isolated campaigns. Every single branch works with the other channels and so you must approach your strategy in the same way. Remember, think SMART, regularly review progress and adapt based on your results. SQ Digital are an award-winning digital marketing agency who work with several B2B businesses. If you need any assistance in launching your B2B marketing campaign, then please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

 

80 Church Street, Lancaster, Lancashire, LA1 1ET
© 2025 SearchQuest Europe Limited | All rights reserved
chevron-down