about hero

The Effects Of B2B Online Marketing On Brand Authority

B2B ONLINE MARKETING - WHAT ARE THE EFFECTS OF BRAND AUTHORITY

While strategizing B2B online marketing, most marketers make the mistake of solely focusing on community building and increasing brand awareness. Not to negate the value of these two actions, but they hardly help to build a brand image and authority.

Ideally, you would want to build a brand reputation that demands customer loyalty. A brand that sells all its manufactured goods and services at ease. To do so, you do not only need to build brand awareness. You are also required to build brand authority.

In this article, we will get into the nitty-gritty of building brand authority. We’ll discuss how it relates to online marketing. But first, let us understand why creating a strong brand authority is important to business prospects.

How Brand Authority Affects Business

b2b online marketing

Brand authority and brand awareness are often confused with one another. They are similar but are not the same thing. Brand awareness refers to how many people are aware of the existence of your brand. Meanwhile, brand authority means the status that is ascribed to your brand.

A brand’s authority determines the value that people in your industry and outside your business associate with your brand. It is the trust and respect that your brand is viewed with.

Building brand authority is necessary. Since a brand is not an entity in itself, it is how your customers view it. This view changes the way your products are sold and talked about in the market. Therefore, the higher the brand authority, the more trust will be put into your products and services. This will directly and positively affect engagement and sales.

It is critical to remember that if you focus on building brand authority, you will automatically generate brand awareness. Moreover, the stronger your brand authority, the higher your brand will rank on search engines. The SEO and rankings for your brand are directly proportionate to brand authority and not brand awareness.

How to Conduct B2B Online Marketing to Improve Brand Authority

b2b online marketing

In order to improve sales and create a strong brand authority, you must win the trust of the masses. In the case of B2B enterprises, this is decisive. This is due to multiple stakeholders that are going to judge your brand.

B2B online marketing is the answer to such a trust-building. It is the basis of building strong brand authority. Such marketing helps brands to beat competitors and attract more customers.

Below is how you can conduct a B2B online marketing to improve brand authority:

1. Be Clear About Your Brand’s Marketing Goals

There is no point in formulating an online marketing strategy without aligning them with the company’s goals. Therefore, it is important to outline your brand’s marketing objectives before you set to lay down any strategies.

The goals that you set for your company’s marketing team should be measurable, specific and time-bound. They should also be realistic. All of these are necessary to keep the team motivated. More importantly, to be able to track monthly growth.

2. Have Aligned Sales and Marketing Goals

This is a crucial thing to do for one simple reason – you do not want your company to run backward. If your company’s marketing and sales goals are not in alignment, it may lead to creat non-match sales objectives.

Therefore, you must always make sure that marketing and sales go hand in hand.

3. Design a Roadmap and Define KPIs

Once you are done defining the marketing objectives for your company, you must create a plan of action. This action plan should summarize how you mean to achieve every goal on the list.

In order to create an action plan, you must understand your audience and online marketing platform. A clear understanding of how the platform function.

Before you start working on the action plan, you should build models on how you are going to measure progress. These models or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) must be listed for you to understand if you are following the right track.

4. Choose the Right Platform for Campaign Execution

Before building a campaign, choose the right online and offline platforms for a great B2B online marketing execution. You should also select multiple platforms as adopting a multi-channel strategy is no longer a unique execution.

However, you must understand the pros and cons of each platform and consider the one which is the most suitable for your business.

The main criterion for selecting the right platform is to consider the social needs and patterns of your customers. Demographics play a vital role in determining the right platform. For example, if your company’s target audience is teenagers, apps like Instagram and Tik-Tok are ideal. However, if your company’s target audience is over the age of 50, Facebook might be worth venturing into.

5. Manage an Omnichannel Authority Consistently

Since you will be following an omnichannel communication with your customers, you must create a brand uniform. Creating consistency between different platforms helps create brand authority since it dictates the mood and aesthetic of the company.

Repurposing content is perfectly alright. The tone and idea of the company should remain the same throughout all platforms. In addition, both offline and online information should be unswerving and clear.

While working with different platforms, you must also have an exact tracking mechanism for all your operation KPIs. This helps in the consistent calculation of ROI.

READ MORE:

Is B2B Marketing Agency Ideal For Your Company?
An Insight Into B2B Social Media Marketing
B2B Marketing Strategy – A Simple And Concise Guide

 

6. Create a Centralized Marketing Management System

When working in an omnichannel marketing network, you must have a centralized marketing monitoring system. The lack of one can cause haphazard information distribution, leads, and contacts miscommunication, among other things.

Tracking, analysis, and calculation of activities and ROI become supremely easy with such a system. Each campaign can be separately examined to test the effectiveness of B2B online marketing strategies.‍

Optimum B2B Online Marketing Strategies to Improve Brand Authority

b2b online marketing

It has been clearly established till now that a great B2B online marketing strategy can do wonders for brand authority development. The importance of brand authority is also clear and vivid. We must, therefore, begin to look into the best B2B online marketing strategies that brands can adopt for them to have brand authority.

The below-given strategies are tailor-made for brands that target to grow via B2B online marketing. So, without further delay, let’s get into it.

1. Tell Your Brand Story

The Internet is a mostly empathetic place. People love to hear about their favorite celebrities’ or influencers’ lives. Similarly, people would want to hear about your brand’s story. Such personal accounts help the audient to create a personal bond with the brand. There is no stronger way to build customer loyalty.

It is through storytelling that you humanize your brand and makes it presentable and vulnerable to the audience. This will create a great positive impact on your brand’s authority. Leveraging social media and the human psyche through telling a brand story is a great way to engage the audience.

2. Display Customer Testimonials

People trust others much more than they will ever trust a brand. Using customer testimonials gives new customers a sense of trust in the company. When people see that others have tried your products or services before them and immensely enjoyed them, they feel comfortable choosing you over others.

Displaying customer testimonials helps build strong brand authority by imparting a sense of respect for your brand. The credibility of your brand becomes a shared responsibility rather than the company’s effort to increase sales.

3. Stream Live Videos

Livestreams add to the authenticity of your brand. Videos are an incredible way to share when you are not in direct contact with your customers. Most people prefer watching videos over reading blogs by brands.

Livestreams are even better than social media posts and permanent videos because of the excess content packed into live videos. Livestreams could be short or long, depending on the topic being dealt with. However, effective B2B online marketing includes live interaction to help customers connect to the brand.

4. Inviting Influencers and Industry Specialists for Collaborations

Social media is a network of similar content strung together. This has made netizens hungry for content similar to what they’re used to. When a brand invites popular industry specialists or influencers, they also invite the audience that comes with them.

When a figure that is admired by the masses vouches for your brand, its authority effectively shoots up. The audience that reaches your brand through their trusted figures views your brand in a virtuous light.

Industry collaboration works both ways. When you benefit from your guests’ audience, they benefit from yours too. A productive discussion over a live stream on a topic of common interest is a universal benefit.

To Sum Up

In the world of marketing, there is little as important as building brand authority. A high brand authority ensures a constant inflow of organic and relevant customers and audiences.

With the advent of social media, B2B online marketing is the new norm of marketing. Establishing a strong B2B online marketing strategy helps to increase brand popularity, authority, and sales.

Contact Inquivix