How to do B2B Marketing and the Best LinkedIn Marketing tools to use

LinkedIn Marketing Tools

Learn how to generate more qualified leads for your business using these LinkedIn Marketing tools.

B2B marketing is a broad domain, and there are several tools businesses can use to up their game. Have you considered the LinkedIn Marketing tools? LinkedIn marketing could be a tipping point in your favor if you own or run a business for B2B deals. Tie into this opportunity ahead of the pack. You’ll be glad you did.

LinkedIn Marketing tools are fantastic for customer outreach and building contact profiles for your sales and marketing teams. You will obtain invaluable information on potential clients and existing customers with these tools.

What is B2B marketing?

B2B (business-to-business) marketing provides sales, awareness, and lead generation. When an organization markets its products and services to another business, it’s known as B2B marketing. It’s a marketing approach between businesses (or companies) and not necessarily the direct consumer or an individual.

Here are a few examples of B2B companies:

• Databox helps businesses monitor and analyze their performance all in one place.
• HubSpot helps other businesses grow through their CRM, Lead gen software, and more.
• Salesforce is a cloud computing software that enables businesses to automate tasks, generate more revenue and get better business insights.

Just so that you’re aware, some businesses offer B2B and B2C services. Canva, Slack, and Amazon are a few examples that operate as both B2B and B2C businesses. 

Marketing to a business, or B2B, is different from marketing to consumers or B2C. Let’s take a look at the differences.

Difference: B2B vs. B2C

In business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing, a company directly markets its products or services to consumers. The term “consumer” refers to individuals who purchase a company’s products and use them for personal reasons rather than resell them to others in the community. 

For example, when Apple advertises its latest iPhone on television or around town, it engages in B2C marketing. But when Atlassian markets their products (Jira and Trello) or service, it is targeted towards organizations or businesses that need to monitor and complete their tasks. 

The basics of B2C marketing are “one-to-many,” whereas B2B marketing is “one-to-one.” 

B2C marketing is used for products sold to the public, while B2B sells products to other businesses.  

B2C marketing can be very broad and educational, where B2B is more specific and detailed.

Audience:

The audiences for both B2B and B2C are quite different. The primary audience for B2B companies are other businesses, which can make decisions about purchasing things like supplies or services without needing an end-user’s input. This means that most of the marketing efforts of a B2B company should be targeted towards other businesses. 

In contrast, a primary audience for B2C companies is usually end-users who will use the services or products that they buy from a business. This means that most marketing efforts from a B2C company should target end-users directly.

Content:

B2C companies tend to have much less content in their marketing materials than B2B companies. Because most B2C companies are selling goods rather than services, the products themselves will often form the bulk of the content included in a company’s advertising material. However, this does not mean that there is no opportunity for creative approaches to B2C marketing. 

Source: Hubspot

Buying Decision: 

B2B buyers are often motivated by logic and ROI-centric, while emotions and desires drive B2C.

How to do B2B Marketing

 In the age of digital everything, it’s easy to get caught up and forget about your target audience. It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to sell water purification systems or accountancy software; never veer too far from the needs and values of your customer.

 

1. Define your target audience:<span style=”font-weight: 400;”> What is audience targeting? The simple definition defines the specific type of people who will buy your product. This may seem like it’s easy because you know who would want to buy your product (maybe everyone?), but narrowing down the target market really does help.

 Narrowing down your customer base can help grow your business. By focusing on one particular type of customer, you can identify their needs and offer irresistible solutions. Our message will be more targeted, so people will want to listen because they can already relate to what you’re saying.  

 

2. Identify your unique selling proposition (USP): A USP in B2B marketing is one of the most important tools in your arsenal. Every B2B business needs a USP, but not all know how to identify theirs correctly. You can use several techniques to define your unique selling proposition for your customers properly.

The first step in identifying your USP is understanding that it’s not about you. It’s about what you can do to make a difference in their lives. To uncover ways to do this, start by understanding what problems they’re facing and how much money they’re losing due to those problems. 

 Find out what makes it hard for your audience to solve the problems they’re facing. Think about how much money each problem costs; this will enable you to determine why they need your help and what matters to them in that regard. Then, think about how much better their lives could be if they didn’t have that problem.

 Once you’ve done this, you’ll be able to make the case that your product or service exists for one main reason: they need it to solve their problems and enjoy a better life.

 Next, ask yourself if there are any features or benefits that set you apart from all of your competitors. If you can’t think of anything that makes you different, you’re either not doing enough to set yourself apart or not defining your USP correctly.

 

3. Research your competition: B2B marketing research is used for different purposes: product testing, concept development, competitor analysis, and more. The requirements for a successful business are constantly changing, making it difficult to succeed without getting caught up in the minutiae. 

 However, with thorough market research and analysis, you can stay ahead of your competition by knowing how, why and what they do.

 

4. Create a marketing strategy:<span style=”font-weight: 400;”> Geographical boundaries or time restraints do not confine today’s consumers, so companies need to figure out more ways to reach their target audience. Traditionally, businesses targeted their potential customers by advertising to them at specific times and in certain places to catch their attention and make a sale. But times have changed.

Generating leads is the first step of building a strong relationship with your client. Potential customers need to be nurtured through every stage of the sales cycle, from adding value (content marketing, thought leadership), to nurturing (email, webinars & blogging), and finally selling to them (social media, sales follow up).

 Email marketing is still one of the most effective and commonly used tools for B2B marketers.

 

5. Analyze results and optimize performance: The real money in business is not made at the initial sale but through retention. What does this mean for the approach of B2B marketers? It means they have to look beyond just gaining access to leads and focus even more on measuring their success after turning those prospects into customers.

One goal of any B2B marketer should be to increase the lifetime value of their customers. There are many different ways to measure this, including “Net Promoter Score,” among others. The most important thing is that marketers consistently measure this for all customers and prospects they interact with.

Once these measurements have been taken, it becomes easier to optimize the results through an approach known as data-driven attribution. Data-driven attribution is a method of allocating credit for a sale or other action across multiple marketing channels. With data-driven attribution, marketers can understand what channels provide value and which ones aren’t. 

 

6. Repeat steps 1-5 as necessary.

List of LinkedIn Marketing tools to use for effective B2B Marketing

There are various resources on LinkedIn marketing tools that you will find helpful in using LinkedIn for B2B marketing. 

Dripify

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Are you looking to take your LinkedIn prospecting game up a notch? Dripify is your answer! LinkedIn can be a powerful tool for sales teams, but it can also be time-consuming and tedious to use effectively. Dripify automates much of the process, making it easier for your team to find and connect with potential leads. With Dripify, you’ll get more out of LinkedIn than ever before.

Do you want to know which prospect would be worth chasing down your funnel? Dripify powerful reporting tools give you insights into your leads’ activity on LinkedIn so that you can focus your efforts on the most promising prospects. Ready to launch a sophisticated marketing campaign that’s tailored for your company, create sequences of messages and responses based on time intervals? Try Dripify.

Key features:

• Easy integration with Zapier
• You can build a sales funnel based on leads action
• Ability to track and monitor campaigns and leads conversion
• Integrate swiftly with LinkedIn Free, Premium, Sales, and recruiter version

 

Pricing

• It has a free trial and a basic $39/ month package.

LeadConnect

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do you spend hours hunting down information on potential leads? Well, say goodbye to the days of data entry! With LeadConnect, syncing prospect details and activity to HubSpot is a breeze. Simply click to connect, and all the juicy details will be pushed automatically. 

 

By easily pushing prospect’s details, including all conversations, to HubSpot, you’ll be able to save valuable time while getting a complete overview of all interactions with your leads. What’s more, it allows you to send personalized messages to your leads. Speaking of which, 90% of US consumers find personalized content “very” or “somewhat” appealing. Another 36% consider personalization to be an essential marketing feature.

Key features:

• Supports CSV file importation
• Ability to send personalized follow-up messages and follow-up automation
• Sync easily with your favorite email finder tools like Hunter, Anymail FindThatLead, BriteVerify, etc.
• You can easily and quickly synchronize your Prospects’ details and activity with HubSpot.

 

Pricing

• You can sign up for LeadConnect’s free package that allows five invites per day or choose other packages for as low as $29/month. 

Zopto 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Are you a startup, and attracting investors has been a herculean task for your business? Or, are you HR looking to bring in more potential candidates to recruit? Zopto is your ideal LinkedIn marketing tool. 

 You only need to connect Zopto to your LinkedIn, have your ideal customer’s filters, and Zopto will do the magic. And you can weed out your ideal audience based on your criteria with the help of a filtering feature that allows users to input up to 100 details.

Key features:

 

• Reply detection feature that alerts you when a lead replies to you
• Label your leads according to their stage and importance
• Zopto integrates with your marketing and CRM tool through Zapier for ease of use

 

Pricing

• The base plan for this tool is $215/ month, but it comes with lots of features that make it worth it.

FindThatLead

 

 

 

 

 

 

FindThatLead lets you quickly and easily find the email addresses of key decision-makers at companies you want to do business with. You can glean contact information from various sources and compile it into one handy list with powerful search capabilities. And because FindThatLead integrates with several popular marketing and sales tools, you can use that data to generate more leads and drive conversions.

 

Generating tons of leads for your business is not the most important; what’s important is how accurate and qualified those leads are. FindThatLeads, unlike most lead generation tools, has a cool feature that shows you how accurate your results are. Also, if a lead has just been verified, it shows a green indicator close to the lead’s name.

 

Whether you are a B2B company, a growth hacker, an HR, or you work with the sales team, FindThatLead is designed with you in mind.

 

Features:

• It has chrome extension features you can use to verify emails
• You can generate tons of leads through the Local business feature.
• It’s easy to connect to your favorite software like Zapier, SaleForce, Pipedrive, and HubSpot.

 

Pricing

• You can start for free or with their lowest plan of $49/month per user. 

Cloud Lead

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sales reps have more important things to do than spend their time verifying leads. With Cloud Lead, you can collect information and verify leads at scale. The software enables businesses to identify new customer leads as well as update & improve existing lead databases for a more effective campaign strategy. Plus, it integrates prospects and accounts directly into your CRM so you can measure the performance of your business with reports.

 

You know who you are and what your business does. Now find out how to reach the right people with a custom-built contact database that will fit any industry or market sector like yours perfectly. Its Lead scoring feature helps you score and nurture leads in real-time for sales optimization.

Features:

• Easy to integrate with your favorite CRM
• Spend less time building lists from scratch
• Get leads that are already interested in what you have to offer 
• Automatically receive reports on your progress so you can track your success

 

Pricing

• No specific information regarding the price for this software at the moment

 

Course #1: Learn to use LinkedIn to build your business

Are you on LinkedIn? If not, you’re missing out on one of the most powerful business development tools online. The platform has over 800 million users across 200 countries, according to the official website. Sixty-one million are senior-level influencers and 40 million organization decision-makers. 

 

This is a huge advantage for B2B marketers on Linkedin because it allows them to reach the people who make buying decisions. It has been described as the social platform for Fortune 500 companies’ decision-makers and top professionals.

 

But all these won’t do you any good if you don’t understand the platform. Or, do you not have an optimized profile that would make potential people want to connect with you? This is where this free Learn to use Linkedin to build your business course comes in handy.

 

This course will teach you:

• How to use LinkedIn to find and connect with potential customers, partners, and suppliers 
• How to create valuable content that will help you stand out from the competition 
• And how to convert leads to raving customers

Course #2 LinkedIn Basics: Understanding the Fundamentals

When you don’t understand how something works, you’re unlikely to reap your wished-for result. This is why HubSpot created this free course so that you can understand the rudiments of how to use LinkedIn. There are a lot of cool features and functionality on LinkedIn. If you know how to use it, you are halfway to becoming a successful marketer. 

 

Many people are on LinkedIn but do not understand how to use its features or how its algorithm works, let alone understand how to use it to generate leads to their business. The course will teach you the basics of LinkedIn and show you how to create viral posts that bring tons of engagement.

 

This course will teach you:

• How to create an effective content strategy for your business
• How to optimize your business profile page and interpret LinkedIn data

 

We listed only these two courses to help you get started. Other LinkedIn marketing tools courses explain everything there is to know about scaling your business with LinkedIn.

Answers to some frequently asked questions on B2B marketing

Below are some questions surrounding B2B marketing asked by people like you. We’ve decided to answer them briefly as possible for our readers below.

What is an example of B2B marketing?

Examples of B2B marketing abound simply because there is B2B marketing in every sector. HubSpot provides free digital marketing courses with certification for its target audience. Drift swayed its audience with its conversational marketing, and Dropbox (although B2B & B2C) uses referral marketing to grow by $3900%. 

How do I start a B2B business?

To start a B2B business, one must set a goal, identify their target market, and develop the product or service they need. A critical aspect of this process is understanding how to communicate your value proposition to position yourself as an expert in what it takes for customers/clients to make buying decisions. You can read more on how to start a B2B business on AspireApp.com.

What is the best B2B platform?

There are actually no best platforms for B2B, as B2B consists of many businesses in various niches. However, there are lists of best B2B platforms for eCommerce business, for SaaS, and others. HubSpot, Salesforce, Ahrefs, SemRush, and Zoom are the top B2B platforms for Digital marketers. Here is a complete list of the 17 best B2B platforms.

What business can I start with B2B?

There are many problems out there in the B2B industry seeking solutions. You need to find a niche you are interested in in the B2B industry, do deep research in understanding it, then look for problems to solve or make the lives of those in the B2B industry easier. It could be in the B2B eCommerce niche or SaaS. The great thing about starting a business with B2B is that so many options are available. 

What is a B2B business model?

Any form of business that transacts and deals with other businesses in terms of product and service represents a B2B business model. 

What are the four types of B2B markets?

B2B marketing producer, reseller, government buyer, and institutional buyer are the four types of B2B markets. BizVibe blogs do a good job on the four types of B2B markets for more information.

What is the difference between B2B sales and B2C sales?

The sales cycle of B2B is longer than B2C due to B2B’s structure and hierarchy. In B2B, you are trying to convince a bunch of c-suite executives that you also need to convince another c-suite executive and professional before making a buying decision. Read this Forbes article on the difference between B2B sales and B2C sales. B2B, unlike B2C, is more technical with higher CPAs.

Is B2B harder than B2C?

B2B requires a more detailed, compelling, structured, longer, and enterprise-level strategy and information at every stage. Not only are the B2B buyers more sophisticated and well-informed, but they are also more logically and problem-solving based. You can read more on why B2B is harder than B2C on CBSNews. 

Is eBay a B2B or B2C?

eBay is an online marketing platform for both B2B and B2C in a way similar to how Canva serves both B2B and B2C Markets.

Final thoughts

So there you have it – a comprehensive guide on how to do B2B marketing. We’ve covered all the basics, from understanding what B2B marketing is, B2B Marketing tools,  the difference between it and B2C, and using LinkedIn as an effective tool for your campaigns.