A big challenge for many companies is deciding how to market to other businesses. Just following your competitors can lead you down the wrong path. What matters isn't what's popular, but what produces the best sales results.
There are five tried-and-true ways to market in a B2B world, plus a modern digital engine that ties them together. Integrate these into your plan, and you can grow your customer base and sustain revenue growth. If you sell online, these tactics also help you grow your B2B eCommerce business.
Direct Marketing
Contrary to what some executives assume, direct marketing is just as effective in B2B as in B2C, if not more so. Its big advantage is measurability: you can test versions of a campaign and see results quickly, so you always know your return. The main decision is which channel to use. Direct mail (a letter or postcard) can still work, but in today's digital world, email is usually the workhorse for B2B.
Email Marketing
Email remains one of the most cost-effective B2B channels, consistently delivering one of the highest returns of any tactic. But it only works when it's done right:
- Build a permission-based list of people who opted in. Don't rent or buy email lists; it wrecks your deliverability, produces few real customers, and runs afoul of privacy laws and email platform rules.
- Authenticate your domain with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. As of 2024, Google and Yahoo require it, and without it your emails land in spam.
- Segment and personalize. The more relevant your message is to each recipient, the better it performs.
For more, see our guide to increasing your email response rates.
Trade Journal Feature Stories
Trade publications are an ideal place to reach your target market, since executives and managers read them to keep up with their industry. A display ad builds awareness, but a better tactic is an earned feature story.
A story is far more engaging than an ad. You get to address the problems your audience faces and the solutions you provide, and you can include interviews with industry experts who effectively endorse you. Readers of these publications make or influence purchasing decisions, so a well-placed story can generate real leads and sales.
The best part is the low cost: your main expense is a good writer. You'll need persistence to get an editor to publish it, but the payoff can be significant. And when the publication is online, your story keeps working for you; prospects find it through search and links for months or years afterward, earning you a residual return long after it runs. (This is really a form of digital PR and thought-leadership content, which pairs well with the content marketing below.)
Event Marketing
Event marketing, also called face-to-face marketing, remains highly effective, and B2B marketers consistently rate in-person events among their most effective tactics. There are two main ways to use them.
The first is to exhibit. You'll want a creative booth that draws visitors and creates a memorable experience, plus strong pre-show promotion and even stronger follow-up to convert the contacts you make. Our tips to maximize trade show sales cover the booth, promotion, and follow-up in more detail.
The second is to speak at an educational session. This builds your credibility as a leader in your field, attracts new customers, and opens the door to strategic relationships with other companies who can refer business to you.
Don't overlook virtual and hybrid events, either. Webinars and online conferences extend your reach beyond who can travel and double as content you can repurpose afterward.
Online Content Marketing
Content marketing has become a core B2B method. Its main goal is to generate qualified leads you might not otherwise reach, and it strengthens your SEO at the same time. Most content (like blog posts) supports sales indirectly, but two formats tend to drive results faster: case studies and video.
Case Studies
B2B marketers consistently rank case studies among their most effective content. A case study is a story about how your company helped a customer improve their results: your product or service in action. It quickly shows a reader how you could solve a problem their organization faces, while demonstrating your expertise.
Produce them in whatever format fits: text, text with graphics, or video. Then distribute them widely, on your website, by email, in webinars, and in sales presentations.
Video
B2B marketers keep leaning into video because it carries more emotional impact than other formats. The most persuasive use is the customer testimonial: real customers expressing genuine appreciation are far more believable than scripted actors, and they often raise points you hadn't thought to make. Video can move a prospect toward a decision faster than almost any other tactic, especially short, authentic clips you can share on your site and on LinkedIn.
Newsletters
The first four tactics focus mainly on generating new leads and customers. One tactic is especially good at driving repeat sales from existing customers: the newsletter.
A regular email newsletter keeps you in front of your customers and keeps your brand top of mind. You can include all sorts of content; the key is knowing what's most relevant to your audience, and a case study in each issue can lead to more sales. Deliver it by email (permission-based and authenticated, like all your email), and consider a video newsletter to stand out from competitors. Best of all, newsletters cost little and remind customers, with every issue, who you are and what you can do for them.
The Modern B2B Engine: LinkedIn, ABM, and Intent Data
The five tactics above are proven, but today's B2B marketing has a digital engine that ties them together and makes them far more precise.
LinkedIn is where B2B happens. It's the best place to build thought leadership by sharing genuinely useful content from your company and its leaders, and the best place to advertise to businesses: LinkedIn Ads let you target by job title, seniority, industry, and company size, so you reach the actual decision-makers, and its lead-generation forms make it easy for them to raise their hand. (Running those campaigns well is a natural fit for a managed paid search and paid social program.)
Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
Instead of casting a wide net and hoping the right people respond, ABM flips the funnel: you identify a focused list of high-value target accounts and run coordinated, personalized marketing and sales aimed squarely at them. It's especially powerful for higher-value deals involving multiple decision-makers, because you can tailor your message to each account and each role.
Intent Data
Intent data tells you which companies are actively researching what you sell, before they ever contact you. It blends signals from your own site and content (first-party intent) with broader web activity tracked by providers like Bombora, 6sense, or G2 (third-party intent). With it, you can spot in-market accounts and reach them while they're actually looking, exactly when your message lands hardest.
Used together, these reinforce one another: intent data tells you who to target, ABM shapes how, and LinkedIn is often where you reach them. Layer this engine onto the five tactics above, and your B2B marketing gets far more efficient.
Next Step
Get your team together and build a marketing plan around these tactics: email, trade journal features, events, content marketing through case studies and video, newsletters, and the modern engine of LinkedIn, ABM, and intent data. Done together, they can generate new sales and grow your B2B business.
If you'd like help putting it into action, get in touch with our team.
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