Welp MagazineMuch like how businesses spend time and money to market themselves to potentially acquire customers, businesses that are reliant on other businesses as their prime customers must also invest money and time to attract other businesses through marketing. This is what is known as B2B marketing. Today, most industries are run on relationships between companies. However, all these relationships all start from somewhere and a product offering. It’s important to have a high-quality product with real value before investing time in marketing it. For example, if Netent didn’t have popular slots games like Gonzos Quest to offer to casino operators, it would have been hard for them to make their case as one of the gaming software providers of choice.
Many B2B marketing strategies have been explored, some more successful than others. For any new business whose direct customers are other businesses, it is crucial to pay close attention to the marketing strategy they wish to go forward with. There have been many successful ones in the past, here are a few of them below.
1. Slack – So Yeah, We Tried Slack
Slack, a messaging program, tried out a rather unconventional B2B advertising strategy in 2014 using video. The video advertisement starts off by introducing a problem of communication which happens amongst workers of a business, named ‘Sandwich Video’. This has to do with the disorganization in the flow of communication between this workplace team. So as the slogan suggests, the business tried out ‘Slack’ to solve this problem.
The video is a creative and humorous one, almost as if it were taken out of an episode of ‘The Office’, giving it a playful and engaging effect to it. The aim of the video is to show businesses how the messaging program can bring all forms of communication of a business in one place and being the best in business for it. Therefore, the case-study-like video smartly presents the before and after of a business’ communication flow in a fun way, showing that Slack is the solution to their problem.
2. Mondi – Pergraphica
This next B2B marketing campaign is well known for its ‘Best Use of Emotion in B2B Marketing’ in 2015. The ‘Catching Feels’ creative project campaign is about Mondi’s ‘Premium Offset’ paper – Pergraphica, in partnership with Adobe Stock. ‘Pergraphica’ was their range of premium uncoated design papers at the time. It was created to compete with the Gmund and Munken brands, two of Mondi’s biggest competitors. However, advertising the products benefits wasn’t enough to drive awareness. This is when Mondi decided to market their product in a memorable and emotional way, that would try to form connections with their target audience.
According to Mondi’s Brand and Product manager, the ‘Catching Feels’ title of the book refers ‘falling in love with somebody or something’. In this particular case – To love at first sight or touch with Pergraphica’s paper. The book collaborates with 6 artists and their artwork, illustrations, or designs to explore the 6 different featured feelings in the book.
In addition, the Adobe Stock partnership is all about a digital design on screen and its journey when put a page. This partnership drove Mondi to increase their reach and improve their brand awareness and reputation.
3. Spotify – Wrapped for Advertisers
‘Wrapped for Advertisers’ was launched by Spotify for the advertising audience. According to Spotify, ‘Wrapped for Advertisers’ is ‘‘an interactive data visualization experience that explores how audiences streamed during the year and inspires marketers with ideas on how to effectively reach these on Spotify’’ in the following year. This gave Spotify a new audience, offering marketers and the media the logic behind the listening trends over the year. The campaign openly showed how advertisers can identify what audiences are listening to, and how these insights can help marketers when planning their campaigns. This was a successful campaign by Spotify, and the traffic numbers, package downloads and bookings do not lie. The fact that the ‘Wrapped for Advertisers’ campaign was re-launched in the previous year confirms this. Most probably, we will continue to see this campaign yearly due to its success, possibly with more accurate insights and more features. We will leave that up to Spotify though.
Conclusion
There is obviously no perfect marketing strategy. Businesses looking for the next grand idea for their B2B marketing strategy must first identify their core values, services, and market. Only then can they decide upon what idea or strategy is best for them. However, once that’s clear, these three B2B Marketing examples can serve as an inspiration to them!
