Some businesses shouldn’t be as invisible as they are.
They have brilliant products, great people, heaps of experience and tons of happy customers. They’ve spent years, sometimes decades, building a strong reputation in their industry.
But online? You’d never know.
This is something we see particularly often with established B2B, manufacturing and engineering businesses. They’ve usually built successful businesses through reputation, repeat customers, industry relationships and referrals.
‘Proper’ marketing? They never really needed it. What a nice position to be in!
The problem comes when the way that customers buy starts to change.
Why do established B2B businesses become less visible?
For many traditional B2B businesses, sales have historically been relationship-led.
Customers knew the company, sales teams knew the market, people met at exhibitions, distributors and agents generated opportunities and existing customers came back and recommended the business to others…and the cycle repeated.
So it’s no surprise that marketing wasn’t necessarily an important part of generating enquiries because the network around the business was already doing it for them. But relying on reputation alone can create a bit of a blind spot.
While the business carries on doing what has always worked, competitors invest in their websites, LinkedIn/social presence, video, case studies, email marketing and useful online content.
And gradually, or suddenly, when you look up the gap becomes noticeable.
B2B buyers are researching suppliers before speaking to sales
This is the bit established businesses can’t afford to ignore anymore. The first interaction with a potential customer increasingly happens before your sales team even have any idea that the customer exists.
Someone might find your website, look at your LinkedIn page, search for a particular product or problem, read an article or watch a video, look for a case study (or other proof) and do some competitor comparisons.
By the time they make an enquiry, they’ve likely have formed a fairly strong opinion about your business.
That changes the role of B2B marketing.
Marketing isn’t simply about generating leads or posting on social media. It’s also about making sure that when somebody researches your business, what they find accurately reflects the company behind it.
What happens when your online presence doesn’t reflect your business?
This is where you get what I like to call ‘squeaky bum time‘. Some genuinely brilliant businesses are effectively the best-kept secret in their industry.
They may have better products, more experience or stronger technical knowledge than the competitor down the road.
But if the competitor is significantly easier to understand online, they’re starting the buying journey with an advantage. Potential customers shouldn’t have to dig through your website to work out what you do.
Your online presence should make it relatively easy to understand a few things:
- what you do
- who you help
- what problems you solve
- why customers choose you
- what expertise you have
- what someone should do next
That doesn’t mean removing the technical detail, in manufacturing and engineering sectors in particular that information can be extremely important. It just means putting that detail into a clearer customer journey.
Does being more visible mean posting constantly?
No! This is where businesses can suddenly go from one extreme to the other.
Realising you’re not visible enough doesn’t mean suddenly posting on LinkedIn five times a week, launching six new social channels, starting a podcast and sending an email every three days.
Please don’t.
Good marketing isn’t about suddenly being everywhere, it’s about making sure the right people can see what’s already great about the business.
For one company, that might mean improving its website and messaging or capturing years of technical knowledge through useful content and video. For another, the foundations are already there, but they need consistent content, campaigns, email marketing and sales support to increase visibility and generate more enquiries.
And for businesses with bigger growth plans, it may mean having an outsourced marketing team take responsibility for the whole function – strategy, delivery, reporting and everything in between.
The answer isn’t always more marketing. It’s having the right marketing support for the stage your business is at.
Reputation still matters – but now visibility supports it
None of this means referrals, relationships and reputation have become less valuable – of course they are (just harder to consistently control, which is why we look to create more enquiry streams) so the opportunity is to take the trust you’ve already built offline and make more of it visible online.
Show the expertise that normally only comes out during a sales conversation, share the customer stories your sales team tell all the time, answer those technical questions customers repeatedly ask, explain what makes your approach different and give potential buyers a reason to remember you before they’re ready to make an enquiry.
You don’t need to become the loudest business in your market, but if you’ve spent years building something brilliant, people outside your existing inner circle should know about it.
Brilliant is a pretty big competitive advantage – just don’t keep it a secret.