Last updated on September 2nd, 2015 at 04:38 pm
Looking for ways to grow your B2B business? You may want to consider analyzing how much effort and spend you put into your marketing and social advertising campaigns.
According to a new infographic by Captora and Column Five, 46 percent of companies reported spending less than nine percent of their revenue on marketing, but companies that are outperforming their competitors are giving themselves an edge by planning a marketing budget increase to 13.6 percent.
That’s higher than the average spending increase by their competitors – those of which are planning to increase their budgets anticipate an increase to just 10.4 percent.
Also, the bigger the business, the bigger the marketing spend. Companies with an annual revenue of $500 million to $1 billion reported allocating an average of 9.2 percent of their budget to marketing, compared to 11 percent as allocated by companies pulling in $5 billion. That begs the question – do these high-earning companies know something about the value of marketing that the rest of us don’t?
Successful digital marketing isn’t as simple as sticking something up on the web. It involves using effective keywords to optimize organic searches (this is key, because organic searches are the No. 1 driver of web traffic, surpassing emails, referrals, paid searches and social media in every sector, every time). Also be sure to measure the impact of your content at every stage of the buyer lifecycle to learn what performs best where, and then leveraging these insights to maximize profitability.
Success almost always comes at the price of hard work, so don’t skimp on testing your content – this study showed that correctly targeting prospective clients with the right content means a conversion rate of up to 300 percent. And you’ll reap these benefits soon – companies that test their marketing content will see results in 60 days or fewer.
One final argument for knowing your client – they really, really like it when you’re talking their language, so to speak. Sixty-one percent of consumers are more likely to buy from companies that personalize their web experience, increasing sales up to 20 percent. Again, this goes back to keywords and knowing what your clients are looking for: 51 percent of B2B and B2C websites get their traffic from organic searches, so it’s crucial to know what prospective clients are thinking, even before they hit the search engine.
This study and infographic was done by Captora, a digital marketing platform that helps companies find new clients, and content creators and distribution strategists Column Five.
Flickr photo via Creative Commons license
