image credit: garagestock/shutterstock.com
For b2b companies, finding new business, in particular, has become more challenging these days. During this time of quarantine, b2b marketers are encouraged to take a new approach to old strategies—focusing less on generating new leads and, instead, nurturing existing customers. In this post, we’re exploring how b2b marketing companies can rethink their strategy amid COVID-19.
Resilience and a willingness to adapt will be key for b2b marketers during COVID-19. In a recent article from Forbes, they share a few important factors to keep in mind while marketers continue to support their customers. Ultimately, marketers will want to adopt the following mindset:
- Helpful and holistic messaging that reassures your audience.
- Patience with regards to new or existing leads that haven’t reached the decision stage of the buyer’s journey.
- Awareness toward marketing and sales metrics, active and postponed campaigns, and budget restrictions.
Your marketing strategy should center around current customers
With fewer resources put into demand generation campaigns, now is the time to harness existing assets—such as digital content pieces, blog posts, and email marketing—to nurture your existing customers. Your focus should be on providing helpful information and messaging that shows empathy and appreciation. When approaching this strategy, your b2b marketing company will want to identify key accounts first. Since b2b marketers often have several clients and customers they interact with on a daily basis, you may find it helpful to adopt an account-based marketing (ABM) methodology.
ABM involves shifting your company’s sales and marketing resources to target more specific accounts. It’s highly personalized and ensures you are meeting the needs and preferences of each of your company’s individual accounts. During COVID-19, it’s important to continue nurturing and supporting existing customers—in the coming months, the customers you fail to reach out to may no longer feel connected with your company.
Your b2b marketing and sales teams must be properly aligned
Your company’s marketing and sales teams are your primary revenue drivers. Traditionally, b2b companies have struggled to properly align these teams, which has led to complications in the customer lifecycle. Without the right communication between these teams, your company runs several business risks:
- Misunderstanding what makes a lead qualified and which leads are a good fit
- Confusion around the stages of the customer lifecycle and buyer’s journey
- Disagreement on core company goals
- Misalignment around marketing and sales strategies
Amid the complexities of marketing during COVID-19, aligning your teams keeps everyone on the same page, even when they cannot be together in-person to strategize. Amid COVID-19, some b2b companies may even find that certain roles have shifted between team members—what was once a task for a single teammate may now involve additional members offering assistance. To help drive communication between your company’s teams, here are a few suggestions you can try while working remotely:
- Keep an active chat system going during remote working. At thinkdm2, we’ve been loving Teamwork’s chat functionality, but Slack and Asana are examples of other chat options you may consider.
- Establish a system for how and when emails should be sent to clients or, for companies involved in design, when new rounds of design edits must be reviewed before sharing with a client. This may apply more to smaller agencies like us, but if you have separate teams working on different parts of a project, make sure you have a system in place for proofing, editing, and sending documents and files.
- If your company has a dedicated social media team, monitor the type of content they share to your business pages. Although some content may seem harmless, a certain tone or subject matter could be considered insensitive during COVID-19.
Today’s approach to marketing has changed amid COVID-19, but this shouldn’t discourage your team from its marketing efforts. If your b2b marketing company is feeling unsure of its strategy at this time, please feel free to reach out to thinkdm2. We are here to help in any way we can! Thinkdm2 is a New Jersey digital marketing and branding agency that’s dedicated to growing and driving effective marketing strategies. For more marketing insights, view our latest infographic, featuring statistics from industry experts.
