Among the core difficulties experienced by B2B marketers, five are shared across all industries:
- How do I digitally promote a product or service my prospect cannot see?
- How do I evaluate the success of my campaigns?
- How long before I see RoI from SEO with such a long product life cycle?
- Our service/product is so sector-specific, how do I capture my audience’s attention?
- How can an external agency know and understand my prospects’ search intent and the keywords to target them?
SEO is now a crucial element of the B2B marketing mix, with prospects looking up companies online to outsource their products and services. It is therefore essential that the SEO agency in charge of the campaigns masters the industry and the profile of its prospect.
A first solution to these concerns is to avoid agencies that can only show a B2C portfolio. Experience in both, or a B2B specialist agency are preferable choices to meet goals on time, as you will not need to educate the account manager on the subtlety of your trade.
Having an in-house SEO team usually solves some of these concerns as campaigns are managed in close collaboration with the marketing manager. As convenient as this is, it might not be enough to have only one SEO officer, and hiring a whole team can become more expensive and time consuming than outsourcing an SEO agency.
Even with a medium sized in-house team, some campaigns might require external SEO support, and marketers usually need to find a trustworthy, knowledgeable ally in a short period of time.
An easy way to see if an agency is right for your business and will understand your goals is to ask how differently your B2B SEO campaign will be treated from a B2C campaign.
Indeed there are core differences between B2B and B2C sales and marketing strategies – Logically, their SEO campaigns will show the same differences, as the infographic indicates below:
Click here for the original infographic.
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