B2B Digital Marketing : Introduction : Where to start?

To grow your B2B business there are different methods, some are slower, some are faster, and some cost more than others. We are going to help you see things more clearly with this article and I hope by the end you will know where to direct yourself and where to start.

In this article we are going to talk about :

• Email and LinkedIn prospecting

• SEO

• Ads (Google Ads, Facebook Ads, etc.)

• Social networks

• YouTube

• Other niche methods

In this article we are going to review and introduce these different aspects of B2B digital marketing by giving you examples of what we did at Emelia, and at what point, so you can draw parallels with your own business and know "when" to "do what".

First, it is worth distinguishing slow methods from fast methods. Slow methods are not bad, it is just that they are for when you want to work on your reputation and long-term customer acquisition; these are the methods that will bring you customers passively over time, unlike fast methods which will always require work or budget.

Email and LinkedIn prospecting, and ads, are the fastest methods to go get your customers, and especially your first customers. Unlike SEO or working on your social networks, which can take time.

The next difference to take into account is the budget: email and LinkedIn prospecting are what will cost you the least, with the best ROI (return on investment), while ads require a more substantial investment.

So let's start with email and LinkedIn prospecting (which is our specialty after all 😁)

Email prospecting will allow you to quickly and directly reach your target.

First step : know where to find your prospects' email addresses

It depends on your target: if your targets are artisans, restaurant owners, etc., then they are certainly referenced on Google Maps. You can use Scrap.io which will allow you to find their email addresses.

If your target is "normal" companies (I don't know how to put it lol), all the rest, and you are aiming by jobs (CEO, marketing director, etc.), then they are mostly on LinkedIn. You just need a LinkedIn Sales Navigator account (there is a free trial period anyway) to get access to advanced search and then extract this data with Emelia to then find the emails.

Here is a video that shows how it works:

Then, you simply have to use Emelia's email campaign system, write relevant emails and send! Well, obviously it's not as simple as that: you will need to create email inboxes, you have to choose your hosting wisely, write good email sequences, etc. There are several things to know, but the goal of this article is to give an introduction to the different topics.

So if you want to head into email prospecting and go much further on the subject, I invite you to read the Complete Guide to Email Prospecting

If your target is indeed on LinkedIn (and not on Google Maps), then, once you have extracted the profiles and launched the email search, since we cannot find all emails, you will then be able to take those whose emails we did not find to put them in a LinkedIn campaign.

Ads is one of the fastest ways to acquire customers because you will be able to directly reach a large number of people, but obviously you need a base budget.

There are different platforms for advertising: Google Ads, Facebook Ads (which also allows ads on Instagram), these are the two biggest, but depending on your target you can also advertise on Twitter Ads or TikTok Ads. It is really up to you to analyze which platform is the most suitable for your product and your target.

Each of these platforms has its advantages: with Google you will be able to reach people based on their search keywords, who have an "intention", for example who are going to type "tool to scrape LinkedIn". For example, in that case, we will position ourselves. On Facebook it's different, you don't target by search intent, but by people typology: you can target by age, gender, job, area of interest...

On Twitter, targeting will be less precise, but it costs much less. At Emelia for example, we use it just to create visibility but we don't expect conversion. After that it works very well in certain domains, but often more B2C. A bit like TikTok, it's very B2C, so we won't dwell on it too much.

Overall, the most B2B is Google. You can go to SkillShop and take advantage of the courses made by Google directly to deepen the subject.

As indicated at the beginning of this article, SEO is when you have a long-term vision and want to invest time for the future of your company, to secure a position in the market and allow in the future to have customers who will come on their own, naturally, without effort, to you and your services. But it takes time and takes time to bear fruit.

SEO is mainly having a blog, like Emelia's, which you are currently on, and you potentially arrived on it by typing "B2B Digital Marketing" on Google.

Depending on your activity, it is up to you to look for the keywords that correspond to your activity. For example at Emelia, our goal is to rank on keywords like LinkedIn Sales Navigator Scraper, that's the base keyword, but we can also play on an article that would be called "How to scrape LinkedIn Sales Navigator" (which is, by the way, what we used as a YouTube video title, but we'll come back to it later), because people may type that on Google. It is often very complicated to rank on primary keywords, because big players will always win. For example, if you sell olive oil, there is no point in doing an article or a page "Olive oil", but you have to do for example: "How to choose a good olive oil" and there you make an informative article that then encourages buying from you.

And for example, this article, B2B Digital Marketing, looking at the tools that help know which keyword to play on, they say there are 100 searches per month, while Digital Marketing alone has 30,000. So yes one could say "I'm going to play the broadest keyword", but no, because too much competition and also because those who type B2B as well interest me much more than those who type just digital marketing, those can be people looking for training, who want to inform themselves, or who do B2C marketing... etc.

In short.. SEO is a long subject, which must be studied and practiced. The best blog is that of SEMrush, which is one of the most well-known SEO tools, with Ahref also.

There are several methods on social networks and social networks are different. Knowing that we are talking about B2B in this article, we are going to talk about LinkedIn, but overall social networks all work the same way. You will spend time publishing content to gradually grow your number of subscribers (one method is also to comment on others' content to get known), and the more you continue, the more your influence, your scope will multiply over time, and as soon as a certain "critical mass" is reached, each post will then be able to bring you new customers thanks to the visibility achieved.

The downside of all social networks (except TikTok, but TikTok in B2B converts very little), and that is why we don't really do it (yet) at Emelia, is that it's a long-term investment but without the passive side of SEO; that is to say, yes each post brings you new subscribers and visibility, but at the same time, each post is disposable content: the post you made 1 month ago is no longer useful and if you don't constantly make new posts, your profile is useless. So you have to constantly feed it, have something to say, etc.

Let's say for example that writing a good post that is going to "buzz" will take you one or two hours, with a carousel of images, etc., and writing a SEO article takes you 1 or 2 days. Yes it's longer, harder, more boring lol, but this SEO article in 2 years will still bring you customers, while your post, 2 weeks later, no longer has impact: it only has what it brought you at the time.

There have been very big influencers on LinkedIn; a post could bring them thousands of euros in the end, but once they stop posting... they disappear completely from the landscape, they no longer exist...

So social networks are good but you have to run the marathon at the start to climb to the point where it's really useful and then keep going so that this investment is not in vain.

YouTube is the best of both worlds: it has the advantages of social networks and SEO. That is to say, everything you are going to build on YouTube, which will take time, is a long-term investment that will largely bear fruit in the end. Because the notoriety, the number of subscribers that you will gain over time will eventually allow you (when you post a new video) to reach a large number of people, to have already gained people's trust. And when, for example, you release a new feature, a new service, you benefit from an undeniable advantage that allows you to convert much faster and many more people at once.

And at the same time, unlike social networks, and the main problem of social networks, the disposable content side, of immediate impact only, YouTube has this SEO side that means your content brings you customers in the long term: it is still there, referenced, findable, and even gains more scope the more subscribers you earn.

You have to think "Transactional", regardless of the type of marketing. For example, whether on SEO or Google Ads, position yourself first on the most important transactional keywords and not informational.

Example :

• In Google Ads for example, with Emelia, we choose not to position ourselves on the word cold email. Yes it may seem strange, but already all our competitors are on it, it's the primary keyword. So the price is higher in ads, but above all, someone who just types Cold email may just want to inform themselves on what it is or just want to learn something, but it clearly does not mean they want to buy, that they have a buying intention. On the other hand cold email software, there yes, they are looking for us.

• In SEO for example, this article you are on, if you were Emelia's marketing director, it would not be at all where to start, because it is little transactional, even if at the beginning of the article we talk about email and LinkedIn prospecting (what we sell), we mainly talk about the rest, so it is mainly informational, so less chance that this article converts. In our domain, in our environment, there is a lot of research, often in the US, where people type a competitor's name they know + the word "alternatives". That's why in our blog there are many "7 alternatives to..." articles. THAT IS TRANSACTIONAL! Someone who types Evaboot Alternatives lands on our comparison article that explains how we are better and cheaper, BAM they sign up and they pay.

• In prospecting, email or LinkedIn, you have to focus on your easiest customers, inclined to convert, first. For example, at Emelia, since we allow scraping LinkedIn Sales Navigator and prospecting via LinkedIn, I'm going to look for those who already have a LinkedIn Sales Navigator account, or at least those for whom I see on their profile that they have LinkedIn Premium. Because potentially they already do prospecting, I'm going to allow them to improve their process, automate, save time and lower their costs if they use other software, but they are already familiar with the concept, I don't have to "evangelize" them on the concept. You have to go first for those who will directly understand the interest and advantage of your solution or your service.

After, once you have done each channel independently, at each stage of the company's life, the whole then multiplies the reach of each of your actions: if you are known on social networks, your email prospecting will work even better because they will have already seen one of your posts; if you get views on YouTube, then the one who sees your ad afterwards regularly will be more inclined to click... etc. It's a virtuous circle, which takes time to set up, you should not scatter yourself at the beginning, but afterwards your business will grow more easily. It's always the beginning that is hard, so good luck to you!

And to start email and LinkedIn prospecting, it's through here !