Organic Ways to grow your B2B Sales.

Organic Ways to grow your B2B Sales.

During uncertain times, marketing budgets are often first in line when it involves cutting B2B sales costs, and that’s certainly been true lately.

Between 2018-2020, the typical marketing budget hovered around 10.9% of a company’s revenue. In 2021, this almost halved to six .4%. Recovery is beginning to happen-current levels are around 9.5%-but this still lags behind pre-pandemic spend.

Marketers are now met with a Catch-22, as despite their department’s tightened purse strings, they’re still expected to satisfy (and even exceed) their goals. to possess even a chance of squaring the circle, they need to double down on strategies that build pipelines without increasing costs.

Enter organic marketing. during this blog, we’ll remind you of the advantages of strong organic growth for your B2B sales funnel, complete with a three-step decide to inspire you to refresh your organic marketing strategy.

What Is Organic Marketing?

Organic marketing refers to any marketing tactic that isn’t supported by paid promotion. Make no mistake, it’s not free-it involves time, resources, and cost. But you aren’t specifically parting with cash to market something, as you'd with PPC advertising or paid social media.

What Is Organic Marketing Good For?

Organic marketing is that the supporting pillar of any successful marketing strategy. Done well, it provides the right conditions for your paid efforts to thrive, by establishing your brand, amplifying your voice, and building relationships together with your potential and current customers. Of course, achieving these outcomes relies on how good your organic funnel-building strategy is. So, without further ado, here are some suggestions to urge you started.

What Are the simplest Organic Ways to Grow a B2B Sales Funnel?

Before we start , there’s a caveat to the word ‘best’ that needs addressing. There are multiple methods to grow a sales funnel organically, but what’s ‘best’ are going to be whatever aligns with your audience and their expectations.

So before you are doing anything, ensure your audience is well-defined by means of an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and/or buyer persona. Then, and only then, are you ready to move on to the next steps.

A 3-Step Strategy to spice up B2B Sales Lead Generation Organically

With your buyer persona in hand, it’s time to urge your organic growth strategy off to a strong start by focusing on these three fundamental elements of strong organic growth:

1. Search Engine Optimization.

If you would like to be reminded about the importance of SEO, last year, nearly all-yes all-online experiences began with an inquiry engine query-93% of them to be exact. If you’re thinking “yep, that’s what PPC is for!”, think again-the top ad in Google gets around 2% of clicks while the highest organic spot gets almost 20 times that traffic.

To have hopes of appearing on page one for your target keywords, including securing the coveted top spot, you want to first ensure your basic SEO strategy is watertight before going any further. the first elements to focus on are:

• On-page SEO. The weather of your website content that requires search engine optimization, including the metadata, heading structures, alt tags, etc.

• Off-page SEO. There are factors outside of your website that affect search, including the number and quality of your backlinks.

• Technical SEO. Technical elements that affect your ranking, including load speed, mobile optimization, URL structure, etc.

Next comes keyword research. When conducting keyword research, don’t simply specialize in top-of-funnel keywords. A growth strategy considers each stage of the funnel, identifying keywords that match a prospect’s needs at each step of their customer journey. this permits you to encourage progression down the funnel-hopefully towards conversion-as opposed to just filling the top of it with fresh leads.

The simple funnel below is an example of how to include this thinking in your keyword research process:

Awareness

Sitting at the highest end of the funnel, customers just starting their journey are going to be aware of the problem they currently have, but not necessarily of the answer, they’re looking for. Therefore, identifying keywords associated with their specific pain points is most appropriate at this stage. For Intent Amplify and our customers, this might be things like “how to increase B2B sales pipeline,” “get more B2B leads,” and “how to draw in more B2B prospects.”

Consideration

During the consideration phase, prospects start scoping out potential solutions to their problem. At this stage, they’re likely comparing your product and/or service to your competitors. Targeting the proper keywords at this stage is an opportunity for you to take control of a prospect’s perception of your brand versus the competition. Keywords could include “B2B lead generation partners,” “buy B2B leads,” and “demand generation companies.”

Once armed with a definitive list of keywords, you’ll be ready for our next suggestion-intent-based content.

How about some IRL keyword research? Ask your sales team for the common questions they get asked by your customers, also as their knowledge on the issues their customers are currently facing. This helps you hop on hot topics that may not be visible in your traditional research process.

2. Intent-Based Content

With your keyword list defined, it’s time to make content that addresses the questions and topics your prospects are interested in. a bit like keywords, each bit of content must align with the correct stage of the funnel to match your prospect’s intent during each phase of their journey. this will be as simple as setting goals for each asset before you begin. to try to to this, ask yourself:

• What is the desired audience?

• What are the target keywords?

• Where within the funnel does this belong?

• What action should an opportunity take after consuming this content?

By answering these questions, it makes it easier to pick content formats that align best with your growth plans. Here are some suggested formats to consider:

Blog Posts

Blog posts are useful in the least stages of the funnel, giving companies the chance to talk in-depth about relevant topics and answer common questions via their owned media. Yes, they’ve been around since the dawn of digital marketing, but with blogs, it’s definitely a case of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” as businesses with blogs report a 126% higher lead growth than those without. can we need to say any more?

Thought Leadership

According to our benchmark report, thought leadership content is among the highest three most valuable content types for prospects at the consideration stage of the funnel. Help to convince them that your brand may be a better choice than your competitors by crafting insightful thought leadership content that clearly demonstrates your authority and expertise within your niche.

Don’t just stick with blog posts either-thought leadership videos are highly engaging and help humanize your brand. Plus, they’re more shareable-native videos are 20x more likely to be shared on LinkedIn than other sorts of content.

Podcasts & Webinars

Podcasts & webinars are an extension of your thought leadership efforts, and given 54% of consumers are likely to think about the brands they hear on a podcast, they’re certainly worth an attempt. Webinars are equally impactful, with 73% of B2B marketers agreeing that webinars are the simplest way to generate high-quality leads.

Email Newsletters

Email newsletters are an excellent regular source of opt-in communication between you and your potential customers but they’re also a fantastic way to distribute all the other content you create. 87% of marketers say email is one of their top free organic distribution channels.

Case Studies

B2B case studies are a superb way to showcase how your products and/or services have helped another business to be successful. Don’t only consider the classic PDF case study-video testimonials are often extremely effective, with 47% of buyers saying they assist them to visualize how a product or service actually works. It’s this type of detail that can make or break at the bottom of the funnel.

Marketing Emails

Not to be confused with the newsletters mentioned above, these are the e-mail nurture campaigns that help shimmy prospects further down the funnel. Automated solutions work well here and may increase the number of qualified leads by 451%!

Creating your content, arguably, is the easy part. Actually getting people to look at, read, and hear it is another challenge entirely. Thankfully, this is often where social media can help.

3. Social Media

The final puzzle piece in the organic growth trifecta is social media. If you’re thinking organic social and growth don’t belong within the same sentence, you’re not alone. consistent with HubSpot, businesses often (mistakenly) underestimate its capabilities, when actually, “behind every successful advertising campaign with high paid reach is a consistent and creative social media presence that strengthens the brand, relationships, and trust.”

If you’re looking to succeed in new customers and grow your funnel, paid social is an efficient strategy. But to maximize your results, organic social must receive equal weighting within your strategy. It’s also an excellent way to organically distribute your content. 

Given that you’re unable to target users with organic social, approaching it as a tool to create brand awareness and exposure is key. Not only does this effectively disseminate your content but it also primes your audience to receive your paid advertising efforts later down the road. Here’s the way to get organic social right:

Choose Your Channels

You wouldn’t dream of turning up to a fair that has no relevance to your business, so why make the identical mistake online? Choose your social channels based on where your audience spends their time.

Opting to be everywhere out of FOMO will spread your resources thin and yield minimal results. Instead, specialize in the channels your audience is most active on. you'll find this out by checking out the average demographic breakdown of each channel.

For example, TikTok could also be the hot new thing, but not for marketers targeting baby boomers who structure just 11% of its user base. you'll also look at what successful competitors are doing—if they have a strong, engaged following on a channel that you’re currently not visible on, this is often an indicator that you should probably be hitting the “create account” button soon-ish.

Be Consistent

Your social profiles are often one of the first interactions a potential customer has with your brand. Therefore, it’s vital that you simply create an image of authority and trust from the get-go.

Being consistent is a method to do this, with small things having the facility to make a big difference. Something as simple as ensuring the logos, header images, and bios across your channels have an identical look and feel helps project a professional image. a uniform posting scheduling is also recommended, so prospects can know what to expect from you, and when.

This consistency provides dividends at the underside of the funnel, as companies according to their social selling are 40% more likely to hit revenue goals.

Nurture Conversations

It’s natural to require to let your prospects know how great you are. But if your social accounts are all “me, me, me,” it'll wear thin quickly. Instead, prefer to encourage conversations with your audience. this may not only boost your engagement but help to build trust too. This also gets you within the good books of the sales team, because it helps to warm up any leads that head their way further down the funnel.

Given the massive part, social media can play in your organic growth strategy, you'll want to check out our “Social Media in a B2B World” eBook that offers an in-depth guide into creating a high-performing B2B social media strategy.