The business enterprise has two – and only two – basic functions: marketing and innovation.
Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs.
– Peter Drucker – Father of Modern Management
This 2-part blog provides bite-sized insights on online marketing for busy distributors. These learnings were originally presented in Industrial Distribution Summit 2019.
Contents
Quick insights on Marketing for Distributors
Integrate Online and Offline
A study done by Smart Insights last year found that only six percent of companies thought their online and offline marketing strategies were effectively integrated.
Buyer Personas and Touchpoints
- Know your buyer personas
- Know your buyer’s journey (both online and offline)
- Know the moments of truth
- Know the touchpoints
- Maintain brand consistency at all touchpoints
(Read more about Buyer Personas and TouchPoints here)
Benefits of online-offline integration
- Online Marketing makes your offline events more visible
- Together, they build stronger relationships with your customers
- Online Marketing + Offline Marketing = an Omnichannel Approach
- It’s all about engaging your target audience
Key Drivers of Online Marketing
- Website
- SEO
- Content
- Email Marketing
- Landing Pages
- Google Analytics
Website
Think like an eCommerce company
- Distributors should continue to aim to grow their online presence
- Be customer-driven
- Track your customer’s activity
- Sell items online that are driven solely by customer’s needs
- Go through your transactions and find out a way to capitalize on sales that customers want to conduct online
- Have a good website, a good ERP, a good PIM, a middleware to connect multiple systems, a flexible pricing system, a competent IT staff or a vendor
Must have content on the website
Content lacking in B2B website
Tools
SEO
The Art of SEO
Two powerful lessons for achieving top rankings in Google and staying there
- If you want to stay on top of Google, never rely on one tactic
- Always ensure your search engine strategies rely on SEO best practices
Three pillars of SEO
- Trust – High-quality content, backlinks from reputable sources
- Authority – Site’s overall strength in the market
- Relevance – Having relevant content and use the on-page SEO tactics
Strongest factors contributing to high search rankings
- Word count
- Relevant keywords on the page
- User signals (Click-through-rate, time-on-site, bounce rate)
- Domain SEO visibility (how strong the domain is in terms of links and authority)
- Site speed
- Referring domains (No. of sites linking to your site)
- Keywords in internal links
- Content readability
- Number of images
Note:Plan your SEO before the website launch
Tools
- site: https://www..com/ (the links that are indexed in Google in Search Engine)
- https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/ (the test the health of your website – Free for 500 URLs)
Content
The content cycle
Content is king
Help buyers make an informed purchase
- Blogs
- Product videos
- eBooks
- Whitepapers
- High-quality product images
- Comprehensive, professional product descriptions
- Product listings not limited to the below items
- CAD files
- User guides
- Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS)
- Spec sheets
- Comparison charts
- Safety information and more
Tools
- Grammarly – https://www.grammarly.com/
- Trello – https://trello.com
- Google Trends – https://trends.google.com/trends
- Evernote – https://evernote.com/
- Undraw – https://undraw.co/
Email Marketing, Landing Pages, and Google Analytics are integral parts of online marketing. Next week, we will have more bite-sized learnings on the same. Stay tuned.
References
Books
Ecommerce Analytics – Judah Phillips
Complete B2B Marketing – William Leake
How to win at B2B Email Marketing – Holden-Bache, Adam
SEO 2016 – Susan Merlo