B2B Monday Myth: Customer Service Isn’t Important for Brand Identity
by MGB2B
The Myth: Customer Service Has Nothing to Do with My B2B Brand Identity
The Truth: Building Brand Loyalty Requires Robust Support and Engagement
A brand is more than just a logo or a message on a company website. A brand is a combination of several different things, including the way a business interacts with its clients and how the clients feel about the product or service. If it’s been taking a back seat in your marketing strategy, it’s time to consider how customer service for B2B brand identity can help.
Customer service is not a just a department.
Many companies make the mistake of thinking that once a transaction is made, their job is done. But brand building doesn’t stop when the sale is complete. Following up with customers and maintaining a relationship with them is just as important. It ensures that your customers feel positively about your business, encourages them to come back, and even creates raving fans that will market your product for you. Positive brand perception requires authentic interactions that engage. Your marketing strategy should rely on customer service for B2B brand identity to accomplish it.
There are several different strategies for continuing to interact with your client base to earn their trust and build brand loyalty:
- Define yourself through action.Ultimately, the quality of your business is determined by your actions. Clearly identify your company’s purpose and customer support standards. This culture code should be carried out through every level of your company, from top to bottom. In today’s world, it’s not just about what your brand says — it’s about what you do.
Be transparent and available. This is your opportunity to show customers they can rely on you. Be reachable by phone, email, or social media when other companies aren’t. Contact information should be easily available, especially a call center number. This lets customers know there are real people behind your brand — an online FAQ page just isn’t sufficient. Further more, these interactions display what your company is about, and determines what customers say about your business. Own up to any mistakes, and make sure that every support call ends successfully. - Engage on social media. Most business are active online, so use this to your advantage. Engage in genuine conversation with your customers on social media. Personal messages and replies are most likely to increase brand loyalty and awareness. Online communities aren’t just for consumers — businesses also turn to the internet to ask questions, provide answers, and share knowledge about a product or service.
- Encourage feedback. Finally, every brand needs a system to track customer feedback. The most successful companies are often marked by their willingness to let customers speak out about their experiences — positive or negative. Making a customer feel acknowledged will build their trust and help you understand where you might not have met a their expectations.
Customer service is often looked at as something specific only to consumer brands. It’s also the task that many B2B companies dread handling. However, it’s just as important for B2B. Use it to your advantage and elevate the perception of your brand. Start to amp up your customer service for B2B brand identity, and companies will continue to bring their business to you time after time.
Continue ReadingB2B Monday Myth: Social Media Advertising for B2B Brands Isn’t Important
by MGB2B
The Myth: There’s No Need For My B2B Brand To Advertise On Social Media
The Truth: B2b Advertising On Social Media Has A Number Of Benefits Which Encourage Prospects To Move Through The Sales Funnel.
B2B brands have finally come on board to social media, and many boast a large posting presence. But when it comes to social media for B2B brands, this is often where the buck stops. It’s a misconception that social media advertising is a playing field for B2C brands only. Unfortunately, that type of thinking keeps new leads from getting into your prospect stream. Now more than ever, there’s compelling reasons why platforms like Facebook offer serious lead generation simply from social advertising. The number of benefits of social media advertising for B2B brands is undeniable – and we’ll break them down for you.
B2B Buyers Are On Social Media
It takes a number of touch points before a buyer is ready to make purchase decision. The more visibility your brand has, the better. These B2B buyers are absolutely present on social media. If you want to place your brand in front of your target audience, this is where you need to be.
If you ignore social media advertising, you’re missing out on a crucial chance to interact with your audience. Remember that behind every social media account is an actual human, and emotion goes much further into the B2B buying decision than you may think. While promoting business value may seem like the logical angle to take, you may find that other strategies that create a personal connection could reign supreme when reaching people on their own networks.
Targeting Options
There are robust capabilities across every social media platform that allow your brand to reach relevant audiences. The nature of social media allows us to analyze different behaviors and actions of users. Then, we can target our ads to those who do what we want. While there are different tools on each social platform, most allow you to segment your audience by age, location, gender, and occupation.With Facebook, you can even target by events, which is helpful if your brand is participating in a trade show or conference. And Twitter allows you to advertise based on intent, using interest and keyword targeting, to create meaningful campaign insights.
It’s Cheap
Social media advertising for B2B allows you to set your own budget, so you can spend exactly what and where you’d like. Whether you choose a long-game strategy or short-term bursts, you can customize your social media advertising campaign to fit exactly your budget.
Flexibility Of Message
When you release a print ad, you’re stuck with what is published. Not so with a social media advertising. Change your message as frequently as you’d like. This is especially helpful if your campaign is evolving, long-term, or if you’re unhappy with the insights produced from your original ad. Plus, with the many audiences active on social media, you are able to change your message for different targeted segments.
Social media advertising for B2B brands is just as necessary as it is for B2C. Utilizing platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn allows businesses to reach and segment their target audience, maintain message flexibility, and stay within budget. Not only does this build brand awareness, but also generates new prospects.
Continue ReadingB2B Monday Myth: When Sales Are Down, a Quick Fix Is the Answer
by MGB2B
The Myth: A Quick-Fix Marketing Campaign Is Necessary When Sales Numbers Are Down.
The Truth: A Slow-Burn B2B Marketing Strategy Will Foster ROI in the Long-Term.
Imagine: it’s Q2, and you look at the numbers. And the numbers aren’t looking good. If you end the year like this, it is bad news. Panicked, you call your marketing department, and give them this message: Do whatever you can, right now, to get my sales numbers up.
And Marketing executes a last-ditch, quick approach to try to get your company back on track. It may even yield good results. In the short term.
But the truth is, if you implemented long-term marketing strategy in Q1, you should expect a slow burn instead of an immediate increase in ROI. Especially with marketing plans that rely heavily on content marketing. If you put your time into a quick execution to boost immediate numbers, you’re wasting it. Instead, you should spend that time working toward larger, long-term successes.
There are several elements that take time to develop – many that require testing – in order to be done well. So you have to ask: what are the steps for implementing a successful long-term B2B marketing strategy?
Step 1: Know Your Goals and Objectives
The purpose of your campaign is to increase ROI over the long haul, not just in the immediate future. Converting leads right now will increase your sales in the short term, but long-term thinking will set the wheels in motion for greater successes year after year. Outside of sales, what are you looking for? Know exactly what you want to achieve from your campaign. You cannot expect to implement this strategy in a day and have leads knocking the door down. Brainstorm how you can sustain this campaign in the over one year, two years, three. And remember, a lot of your strategy will hinge on building relationships over time. Continuous engagement with your brand puts you on a steadier path to conversion.
If you are a bigger company, it might benefit you to take a step back and look at the bigger picture for your marketing strategy. Reworking your brand may be the key to sustaining leads for longer.
Step 2: Do Your Research
Your strategy will be useless if you haven’t taken the time to do proper research on your target audience and how your message will be best conveyed. Utilize market research initiatives to find out more abut who you plan to target, what they want, where they are in terms of the sales funnel, what messages resonate with them, and their preferred media and marketing channels. By doing the research, you will be putting the right message in front of the right people at the right time.
Step 3: Implement, Evaluate, and Fine-Tune
Your slow-burn campaign will be a long-term commitment, meaning the creation of a pipeline with organized divisions of labor and clear deadlines is vital to staying on track. When implementing a long-term strategy, you want to make sure it is as effective as possible. That’s why it’s important not to underestimate the value of keyword evaluation, website analytics, and A/B testing. Note that sales are far from the only KPI (key performance indicator). It’s important to align your KPIs with the goals you set in Step 1. If you’re measuring the wrong thing, it may become an obstacle rather than a boon. You may also need to accept that not all measures of success can be supported by hard data.
Taking the time to create a strategy, research your target audience, and detailed evaluation may seem like a lot of work. But it’s worth it in the long run. While you may not see an immediate increase in sales, these steps will ultimately foster long-term success that all company stakeholders will benefit from in the end.
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