Implementing a Cross-Channel Marketing Strategy for B2B

With the marketing umbrella quickly evolving to digital platforms, the traditional approach is losing its effectiveness. For B2B companies, this could make communicating with a potential customer even more difficult.

Luckily, there’s a seamless tactic to connect with customers through different channels.

Cross-channel marketing mixes and matches different channels to deliver a smoother customer experience, where the customers can find your company by adapting to their channel of choice.

Building a cross-channel marketing strategy for a B2B company is an investment and requires consistent and relevant messaging in each channel.

Before adapting to a cross-channel marketing strategy, it’s important to evaluate where the company is today.

Auditing your current marketing strategy will determine what is working and what needs to be improved.

This will also identify your company’s customer demographics and what the trends are in their path to purchase.

For example, you may discover that a 55-year-old male prospect receives a direct mail letter from your company one a month and calls you to speak to the sales team, but a 30-year-old female prospect follows your company on social media and only interacts with the video content then drops off.

Learning your prospect’s path to purchase will be helpful when developing a cross-channel marketing strategy.

There are three different stages of the sales funnel that your prospect will fall into over the course of their path to purchase: attract, engage, convert.

• The attract stage is the first step; this is where your prospect learns about your company’s product or service. Marketing strategies that fall into this stage include a prospect visiting your website, attending a trade show your exhibiting at or looking at your print advertisement. According to Marketo, 68% of B2B businesses use strategic landing pages to acquire leads.
• The second stage is engage; this is when your prospect expresses interest in your product or service. This includes subscribing to your newsletter, downloading your whitepaper or commenting on your social media post. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 79% of B2B marketers credit email as the most effective distribution channel.
• The last stage is convert; here your prospect is becoming a customer by signing a contract or making a purchase. The prospect got to this stage through a variety of tactics, which could include lead nurturing campaigns, current customer testimonials or direct phone call from a salesperson.

Your company’s cross-channel marketing strategy shouldn’t stop there.

Now, retention becomes a focus.

Keeping your company’s current customers satisfied requires active outreach, which could include direct email campaigns, personalized mailers or live demonstrations.

Finally, measuring and tracking your company’s cross-channel marketing strategy is a top priority.

Calculating your company’s ROI for the different channels will provide the necessary data to move forward and grow your marketing initiatives.