The Top 15 Most Effective B2B Marketing Strategies for 2021

The Top 15 Most Effective B2B Marketing Strategies for 2021

08/10/2021 • Marketing • 29 MINUTES READ

In some ways, marketing is a simple business. Three in five digital marketers say their biggest challenge is generating traffic and leads. And if you were to ask them the same question a decade from now, they’d probably give you the same answer.

But in other ways, marketing is incredibly tough. Although the objectives may be similar, the means at marketers’ disposal for achieving them are constantly changing. What was innovative last year is standard practice this year; what works today may not work in six months’ time. 

That’s why it’s vital for marketers to keep a finger on the pulse of current and future trends. With that in mind, here’s my rundown of the 12 most important B2B marketing tactics for 2021, and all the reasons you can’t afford to ignore them.

Strategy #1: Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

As a marketer, your natural instinct is to focus on bringing in as many leads as possible by using different lead generation strategies. The bigger the number, the better you’re doing, right?

Not necessarily.

With account-based marketing (ABM), you’ll concentrate instead on targeting a specific set of accounts – say, a group of senior buyers at a company whose business you want.

ABM makes salespeople’s lives much easier, because you’re creating content and campaigns that are specifically targeted to the prospects you’re chasing. No wonder, then, that one in ten marketers who’ve adopted ABM say their primary motivation was to drive closer alignment between sales and marketing. 

But why should you be so concerned about the relationship between sales and marketing? 

I can categorically tell you that it’s not just about building a happier office. Companies with aligned sales and marketing teams:

Strategy #2 Customer Pain Point Research

74% of the B2B business buyers spend over half of their research time online, which doesn’t come as a surprise.

Market research is a high growth zone for B2B businesses, and as a seller, you need to actively engage on those platforms and adapt to the buyer’s needs. 

When it comes to researching the pain points, you should aim to answer questions like:

  • What pain points were shared by the prospect?
  • What did the prospect like/dislike about the product?
  • Why did the prospect turn down the product?
  • What can be done to prevent the prospect from turning down the product?
  • Which competitor did the prospect compare our product with?

Sounds overwhelming? Nothing to worry about; it’s quite simple.

One of the best ways to answer all your customer pain points questions is through an online survey. 

Using an online survey tool like Qualaroo, you can easily embed surveys into your website or social media platforms and start collecting valuable data from the B2B buyers about their pain points. You even get the ability to conduct exit-intent surveys where you can survey the leaving visitors through smart pop-ups and probe the reason behind them not completing the purchase. 

Once you identify these pain points, you can easily make necessary changes to your products and services and also tailor your marketing messages for much higher effectiveness.

Even the data from American Express suggests that the business consumers in the US are 17% more likely to do business with a company that delivers excellent services. 

Strategy #3: Word of Mouth

There’s an obvious reason for the longevity of word-of-mouth marketing – it works.

According to McKinsey, it’s the primary factor behind 20 to 50% of all purchasing decisions. That’s huge. What’s more, it has a key role to play at all stages of the user journey – from initial consideration to the moment of purchase – and in both mature and developing markets.

But word-of-mouth marketing isn’t just about doing your job and hoping happy customers will refer you. You need a plan, whether it’s rewarding referring customers or providing a email template that makes it easy for them to do so.

Aside from generating more sales, there are two other compelling reasons to introduce a referral program:

  • It shows you’re confident enough in your product or service to invest in the program in the first place.
  • It’s just good, common sense. After all, some customers will need a nudge to refer you, even if the service you delivered was world-class.

Strategy #4: High-Value Long-Form Content

We all know how effective content marketing can be. According to some estimates, it delivers three times more leads than outbound marketing, and costs 62% less.

But not all content is created equal. Specifically, long-form content delivers much better results than short-form content. In fact, longer posts are nine times more effective at generating leads.

However, that doesn’t mean you should start writing 3,000-word articles and immediately expect to see results. Too often, marketers take a “write it and they will come” mentality to content creation. But up to 70% of B2B content goes unused. That’s a waste of time, effort and money. 

In short, content marketing should be about creating high-value pieces that make a direct contribution to your sales efforts. Think case studies, webinars, product demos, B2B marketing videos and anything else that targets the pain points of specific prospects.

It’s also worth using resource lists and pain-point content (such as service/tool review content related to problems) as a key source of traffic for B2B lead gen.

This approach really works, with the average buyer viewing five or more pieces from the winning vendor before deciding to make a purchase.

If you want your content to keep driving leads over time, make sure to consider SEO. Optimize your long-form content for keywords that have some level of commercial intent. You can use Ahrefs or Semrush to check search volumes and keyword difficulty, or check which search queries your competitors are getting traffic from. Your content efforts can compound over time, and continue generating leads long after you stop working on it.

Strategy #5: Email Marketing

Just a few short years ago, the web was full of articles proclaiming the death of email marketing. But it’s back with a bang. Indeed, it’s been shown to be the most effective digital marketing tactic, with a median ROI of 122%.

But good email marketing is about much more than sending a few messages and waiting for the leads and sales to come pouring in. 

To do it properly, you need to be segmenting your email lists. Segmentation is nothing new, but its adoption is still staggeringly low. In fact, 42% of marketers admit they don’t send targeted email messages, while just 4% use layered targeting.

If you’re one of the many marketers who hasn’t started segmenting their email lists yet, consider the following. Compared to non-segmented campaigns, segmented email campaigns enjoy:

  • 14.3% higher open rates
  • 10.6% higher unique opens
  • 101% more clicks
  • 4.7% lower bounce rate
  • 3.9% lower occurrence of abuse reports
  • 9.4% lower unsubscribe rates

If you want to excel at email marketing, then you should utilize a professional tool like Mailchimp and email marketing automation tools. While it is the most popular tool, remember that there are many Mailchimp alternatives that you can try, depending on your requirements.

In addition, if you are doing B2B email marketing, you might want to consider a more B2B focused tool like Hubspot or alternatives. In any case, using a good email marketing tool like NotifyVisitors can boost your email marketing results multifold.

Strategy #6: Building Authority Through Thought Leadership

Again, thought leadership – in other words, offering expert opinion on issues relevant to your field – is nothing new. But as a marketing technique, it’s more effective than ever. 

Thought leadership is a viable approach for any number of business types and marketing strategies, but it’s particularly powerful for reaching the power brokers within target businesses. 

According to LinkedIn and Edelman, 58% of decision-makers consume between one and four hours of thought leadership content every week. Further, 47% of C-suite executives say they’ve offered up their contact information after reading thought leadership content.

Surprisingly, while buyers clearly engage with and enjoy thought leadership, vendors are yet to be convinced. Indeed, just 39% of sellers say they believe thought leadership can assist with their lead generation efforts.

From a marketing perspective, the sooner brands wake up to the benefits of thought leadership, the better.

Strategy #7: Guest Posting, Speaking and Influencer Marketing

It might seem that these three disciplines are quite different. But they share a common theme – leveraging the authority of third parties to promote your own brand or product.

Done right, all three can be especially effective when it comes to growing your business, because they take advantage of external platforms – whether a website, event, or social account – that already have a bought-in audience. 

For instance: 

Given this final stat, it’s hardly surprising that almost two-thirds of marketers planned to spend more on influencer marketing in 2019. Expect this upward trend to continue next year.

Strategy #8: Employee Activation

I’ve seen countless brands that claim to be doing employee activation, when in reality they aren’t.

Let’s be clear. Employee activation isn’t simply asking your employees to blindly share a bunch of press releases or blogs. That’s better described as employee advocacy.

Employee activation goes far beyond that. It’s about leveraging your engaged workforce to organically create and share content that’s of genuine interest to them.

As with word-of-mouth marketing, employee activation – or at least the full benefits of it – won’t be achieved by sitting back and waiting for it to happen. Instead, you’ve got to create a formal program that actively encourages employees to get involved.

So why should you bother?

Simply put, your employees have the power to seriously amplify your marketing efforts.

On average, a company’s employees have ten times more connections than the company itself. What’s more, employee re-shares have a click through rate that’s 2.1 times higher than the original company post.

You can motivate employees to help marketing and spread the word by offering them simple company merch like t-shirts, custom notebooks, or backpacks.

In other words, if you want your message to reach more people, your employees hold the key.

Strategy #9: Marketing Automation

According to McKinsey, 45% of activities that employees are currently paid to perform could be automated, while 60% of all occupations could see a third of their activities automated.
But let’s be clear: marketing automation isn’t about saving money. By automating repetitive tasks like email marketing and social posting, you can reap real benefits in terms of sales and leads. Check out Finteza for automated funnels. It is also a good idea to remove clutter to make your marketing automation effective and cost efficient.

Perhaps most significantly, automation holds the key to creating personalized customer experiences. Almost half of marketers are using automation to bolster their personalization efforts, second only to customer journey mapping and A/B testing.

So why should you care? Because people love personalization. One in three customers say they wish the buying experience could be more personalized, while just a fifth say they’re satisfied with the level of personalization they currently receive.

Importantly, there are no shortcuts here. Customers are savvy; they can easily differentiate the token gesture from the genuine attempt to improve their buying experience. Just 8% would be encouraged to engage with a brand that addressed them by their first name, and only 7% would be likely to engage with a birthday email.

Strategy #10: Paid Media

Unless you’ve been buried beneath a fallen overhead projector for the past decade, you should be well aware of the benefits of paid media, whether via search or social. But if you still need convincing, consider the following:

Just as importantly, organic – or non-paid – activity is becoming increasingly ineffective. Organic search click-through rates are continuing to decline, while organic impressions on Facebook and LinkedIn have dropped by as much as 90% in recent years.

The message here is clear: you just can’t afford not to be running paid activity in 2021.

And there’s another key component to paid media strategies – retargeting. Brands are already using it for a range of reasons, from customer acquisition to raising brand awareness.

The benefits of retargeting are clear. Retargeted customers are three times more likely to click on an ad, while 26% of customers will return to a website after being retargeted.

Strategy #11: Event Marketing

It might seem like an old-school tactic, but event marketing will be just as relevant in 2021 as it ever has been before.

In an ever-more-digital world, the advantages of building personal, face-to-face connections have never been greater. So it’s hardly surprising that a majority of marketers believe event marketing is the single-most effective channel, according to one source:

Why should event marketing be such an integral part of your promotional efforts? Simply put, it helps businesses to close deals. Indeed, 52% of business leaders believe event marketing delivers greater ROI than any other channel or tactic.

So what sort of events should you be running? According to Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, the most popular types of hosted event are:

  • One-day conferences
  • One-day seminars
  • Product training sessions
  • Business or channel partner events
  • Thought-leadership workshops
  • VIP meals

Start small when it comes to event marketing. Focus on forming relationships and offering value to attendees, and build on your successes as your event marketing skills grow.

Strategy #12: Growth Hacking

Growth Hacking is the process of designing and running experiments to optimize and improve results across the full marketing funnel from acquisition to retention and beyond.

So how to start with these techniques?

Utilizing a combination of marketing tactics, data, creativity, and specific tools to help execute fast is key.

Every tool implemented and every technique developed should be informed by the desire for growth. In terms of the right technology, lots of tools, like Chrome Extensions, or Gmail add-ons can help in executing these growth experiments successfully.

Strategy #13. Deal Scoring

A lot of B2B sales reps use their experience as the guide when negotiating deals. And while the salesperson instinct is an important part of the equation, you should be using deal scoring as well.

Deal scoring involves using data and analytics to better understand the true value of a deal to the business. It creates transparency around effective pricing and negotiation tactics based on previous comparable deals.


By using deal scoring, teams can get 20% better ROI on their deals. It also creates better Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). After all, there is more to a sale than the price. 

You need to take into account:

  • Long Term Business – Does this customer have the need and the budget to use your service for several years, or just a few months? The timeline makes a big difference in bottom line profit.
  • Time Required – There are some accounts that take minimal maintenance whereas others become a service headache. There’s a real price to “problem accounts” that pay the same amount as others while requiring 3x the hassle.
  • Increased Brand Awareness – It goes without saying that earning a “whale” client comes with benefits beside the pure revenue. Being able to promote your partnership with big companies creates huge social proof.

And more.

The good news about deal scoring is that you likely already have the data available somewhere in your records or CRM. It’s just a matter of compiling it and making it available to sales reps in real time situations so they can use it as a guide when negotiating with prospects.

Strategy #14. Educational Selling

Educational selling has become a must in a landscape where information is everywhere but insight is becoming harder to achieve. According to Forrester, 68% of B2B prospects today prefer to research information online by themselves.

That means companies in the B2B industry need to put themselves in an advisory role. Creating meaningful content and sharing data with your customers upfront will go a long way in educating — thus convincing them — on the value of your product.

But educational selling goes a step further. Once you’ve hopped on a sales call with your prospect, you need to keep providing information and value. It’s highly unlikely you’re speaking with the only decision maker on the deal.

Research shows that 63% of purchases involve more than four people. You must view yourself as a trusted advisor — like a doctor or lawyer. Give advice to your prospects and teach them about the benefits and advantages of your product.

This approach of educational selling will help you get buy-in from others in the company. When you finish talking with your prospect, they can take the information you provided and sell their peers on your product as well.

Strategy #15. Follow Up Scheduling

If there’s one thing B2B sales reps hate more than anything, it’s following up. After all, it’s not as exciting as prospecting or sales presentations. But the reality is that most deals are not going to get closed on the first call.

60% of prospects will say no four timesbefore finally saying yes. Yet for some reason most salespeople never follow up with anything more than an email saying “have you thought it over yet?”

The reason is that they don’t have a plan in place. What they need is a schedule. Let’s say you had your sales call on July 1st. In that case, a followup schedule that includes at least five followup attempts could look like this:

  • July 8th – Send followup email
  • July 12th – Make followup call
  • July 15th – Send another followup email with relevant industry statistics
  • July 21st – Send LinkedIn message with a video reviewing key benefits
  • July 28th – Make another followup call, and send a handwritten letter

Having a simple roadmap removes the friction to performing follow up. And it ensures you’re playing the numbers by doing the minimum amount of follow up to close a deal.

Bonus Strategy: Conversational Selling and Live Chat

Live chat is often incorrectly pigeonholed as a way of dealing with complaints. 

There’s no denying that it’s an extremely effective customer service channel. In fact, 92% of customers say they’re satisfied with their live chat experiences – a higher proportion than any other communications channel.

It’s hardly surprising that customers love live chat so much. After all, it’s the fastest and most comfortable way for them to get a response to their queries.

But live chat is so much more than a customer service function.

With a little effort, your live chat function can be one of your most potent and productive sales channels. Visitors who use web chat are 2.8 times more likely to convert than those that don’t. What’s more, they’re likely to spend 60% more on their purchases. You can quickly set up live chat on almost any website or landing page with live chat software. All you need to do is sign up and customize the chat widget and then install the code or plugin the software gives you and the widget will appear.

Conclusion

The B2B industry continues to undergo significant change. As companies move away from in-person sales strategies, leveraging technology and data is the new way forward.

But offering unique value in a sea of competitors has become more challenging than ever. The B2B sales strategies above focus on using personalization, data, and systemization to enhance your sales process at every step.

The end result is clear: creating more brand awareness, education, and value than anyone else in your space. When you can do that, and maintain discipline while executing on the sales fundamentals, you can grow your revenue faster than you think.

What are you hoping to achieve with your marketing efforts in 2021? And how do you plan to do it? Let me know in the comments below:


Entrepreneur & Digital Marketing Strategist

I build and grow SaaS companies.

“When it comes to marketing, Sujan is the best. I’ve never met someone with such creative tactics and deep domain knowledge not just in one channel, but in every flavor of marketing. From content, to scrappy guerrilla tactics, to PR, Sujan always blows my mind with what he comes up with.”

RYAN FARLEY Co-Founder of Lawn Starter

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