A contributor from the Association for Consulting Expertise advises a reader who wonders if digital marketing makes sense for a business-to-business business.
Get Instant Access to This Article
Subscribe to Mainebiz and get immediate access to all of our subscriber-only content and much more.
- Critical Maine business news updated daily.
- Immediate access to all subscriber-only content on our website.
- Bi-weekly print or digital editions of our award-winning publication.
- Special bonus issues like the Mainebiz Book of Lists.
- Exclusive ticket prize draws for our in-person events.
[bypass-paywall-buynow-link link_text="Click here to purchase a paywall bypass link for this article"].
Q: How can digital marketing work for my B2B company?
ACE advises: Digital marketing strategies work for ALL businesses. The trick in B2B marketing is defining your business objectives. From there, you can design data-based campaigns that will influence the important decision makers: the user, technical expert, and buyer.
As data analyst Joy-El Talbot of Iris Data Solutions points out, data is everywhere — if you know what you are looking for. As with traditional marketing, data is the background to all campaigns. It influences how we target the messaging, the metrics of the campaign, and the campaign’s impact on the business.
Effective digital marketing is a team effort. The product expert and marketing strategist will figure out marketing objectives and design campaigns with consistent messaging across platforms. The data analyst collects and interprets data to develop visualizations to clarify complex business problems and present recommendations to executive management.
Using an iterative process, the team will adjust the marketing campaign to generate new data for analysis. The new data informs the next adjustments until your objectives are met digital content can be adjusted rapidly, allowing teams to fine tune messaging that influences decision makers.
Iteration, speed and flexibility are the hallmarks of digital marketing, and are extremely cost-effective. If you understand where you are, have a general idea of where you are going, and have the discipline to check in with every iteration, you will succeed. Negative insights and ideas that flop are as useful as ones that connect instantly.
Digital marketing is so much more cost-effective than traditional marketing. A team can afford to take chances, analyze results and then adjust swiftly as needed.
For more on this topic, see “How to Implement a Successful Digital Marketing Campaign” at consultexpertise.com/blog/11107346.
To see how a marketing strategist and data analyst work together through the life-cycle of a campaign, check out her new series with co-presenter Joy-El Talbot hosted by the Manufacturer’s Association of Maine. fb.me/e/1irWF2okV.
Karla Doremus-Tranfield, of KDT Business Strategies, is a marketing, sales, management and project management consultant based in Camden. Karla can be reached at karla@kdtstrategies.com. Joy-El can be reached at joy-el@irisdatasolutions.com.