Communication strategies in a B2B context. A guide for a media plan.

Analog, B2B, Digital, Digital Marketing, Strategy

Public Relations

Finding the right individual communication strategy in a B2B context. Where and how do I start? A guide to a media plan.

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For industrial companies, well-thought-out media planning is just as important as communication with the customer. Whether via owned or paid channels, digitally via media channels, or physically in trade publications: Our 5 steps create the foundation for successful media planning with a clear B2B focus.

Your company wants to communicate the further development of machine xy. How can you best support sales with the right communication strategy? Get an overview of the most important options with our 5 steps so that you can use your budget optimally.

1. Customer Journey: Taking the prospect on the journey

To begin with, you should look at the search behavior of your prospects (engineers, buyers). As a rule, they search the internet themselves. This means that your potential customer collects information independently before the first inquiry or sales contact. You can influence at various levels what information they find, what quality it has, and how they categorize it as a result.

2. From Push to Pull: Content marketing instead of advertising

Classic advertising measures in the form of brochures, flyers, or designed advertisements certainly have their place. However, you are more likely to reach your B2B target group by addressing them unobtrusively and neutrally through content, thereby conveying valuable information about your company’s products. You must support your potential customers in finding the relevant information!

3. Seek and you shall find – your corporate website!

The goal of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is to optimize the corporate website so that it is found and ranks as high as possible among the first results on Google. This includes not only the optimization of the content itself – keyword research being the key – but also the user-friendly design – UX design. How often does a visitor click on the page and how long do they stay there? There is often still a lot of potential here that you can review for your corporate website.

But traffic on a website is not everything. If your company’s online presence is confusingly designed and difficult to navigate, it frustrates users. The result: they leave the site quickly, which in turn has a negative effect on the ranking. For a user-friendly website, various factors such as setup and structure, useful content, navigation, and design must work well together.

By the way: Search engine advertising (SEA) and Google Ads can also be used to move your content forward in the search engine rankings. However, the costs can be significant, depending on the keyword and cost-per-click (CPC).

4. Not all content is created equal

You can publish your content in different media types. A distinction is made between paid media, owned media, and earned media. These three areas represent the communication channels you can use to reach your target group. A mix of all three areas is ideal.

Paid Media stands for paid advertising. This includes formats such as advertisements and online banners, but also hybrid forms such as advertorials or native ads, which are sometimes hardly distinguishable from editorial contributions in their appearance.

Owned Media refers to your company’s own channels, such as a blog or landing page, social media, as well as newsletters and customer magazines. Your company can build long-term customer loyalty through owned media. However, these must be well-maintained and as up-to-date as possible.

Earned Media is, so to speak, the supreme discipline of the three and means that others report on your company: for example, in trade publications or user reports. Word-of-mouth also belongs in this area. The advantage here is the high level of credibility you achieve.

5. Media planning and budget

In order to use your communication budget optimally, it is helpful to consider exactly how the communication measures can best be combined to pick up your relevant target group at the right point in the customer journey and thus increase the conversion rate.

A combination of different channels is definitely useful in order to network them across media. Good long-term planning is just as important as continuity.

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