B2B Marketing Blog Posts | Michigan | Ann Arbor

Website Visitor Tracking Free Trials

How to manage a successful free trial for website visitor tracking software Last Updated: April 2019Many B2B firms are increasingly interested in turning their company websites into better lead generation machines. Using website visitor tracking software is one way to do this. Fortunately, most vendors in this product category provide a free trial period … Read more

Website Visitor Tracking Software

B2B visitor tracking software architecture diagram

What is website visitor tracking? This is the process of 1) identifying anonymous website visitors by performing a ‘reverse IP lookup’ on their IP address and matching this to a company or organization name, and 2) recording, analyzing, and scoring visitors’ website session activity for sales lead follow-up. Many marketing organizations use B2B website visitor … Read more

Google Analytics and B2B IP Tracking Tools

What Is B2B IP Tracking? B2B IP tracking is the process of identifying website visitors by performing a ‘reverse IP lookup’ on their IP address and matching this to a company or organization name. It is commonly used by business-to-business (‘B2B’) marketing and sales teams to support direct sales reps with more actionable website-driven leads. … Read more

B2B Customer Case Studies and Testimonials

B2B customer testimonials and B2B case studies — What’s the difference? In the world of B2B content marketing, real-world customer testimonials and case studies continue to stand out as preferred sales support tools for convincing new prospects that your solution truly does deliver tangible value. There’s a spectrum of possibilities here that differ in terms of complexity, customer commitment/involvement, and long-term value for the solution vendor. So what’s the difference between a customer testimonial and a case study? Here’s a breakdown that may be helpful:

Writing Branded B2B Customer Case Studies

B2B customer case studies come in several shapes and sizes, but one of the first considerations for marketing teams and their writers for each new case study opportunity is this: Should we go for ‘branded’ or ‘unbranded’?

What do we mean by this distinction? A couple of quick definitions will help:

Branded Case Study — A case study that clearly identifies the actual customer/client who is the subject of the piece. This customer willingly lends their name and logo to the finished piece, so we use the term ‘branded’ (or ‘fully branded’) here. Further, we can usually then also get a customer executive to fully participate in the finished case study, including name, title, and (optionally) a photo of the executive.

Unbranded Case Study — A case study that obscures the identity of the customer or client, usually at the customer’s explicit request to remain anonymous. These can still be useful marketing and sales pieces and can be faster to produce, but usually lack the punch and credibility of a fully branded alternative.

Estimating Target Audience Size in B2B Marketing

Image - Estimating B2B Market Audience Size

When thinking about a B2B target market segment for any particular solution, it’s obviously important to consider the size of the total (human) population the company needs to reach, at least as a rough estimate for framing the discussion about coverage and outreach efforts.

The diagram below provides one way to visualize this.

Target Accounts: The darker blue dots in the smaller circle at bottom represent the individual accounts the B2B vendor should be targeting with its solution. These can be company headquarters, geographically distributed divisions of companies, etc. They are basically any entity or ‘purchasing unit’ that can make an independent buying decision for your solution category, place orders, pay vendor invoices, etc. Estimates for this number should be available from your company’s market segment research and market sizing work.

In the business-to-business world, this number can range from literally a handful of accounts, to hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands or even more.

B2B Marketing