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Best B2b digital marketing strategies for Vietnam and Asia

When it comes to B2B communication in Vietnam, the industry has seen a wholesale transformation in the digital age. The changes encompass the marketing of your products, which can no longer be a static process since the technology we use is evolving constantly.

Your company needs to be nimble; ready to adapt and shift processes and activity to continue to engage with your audience. As nuanced as your B2B digital marketing should be, there are strategies that every company can, and should build into their plans.

Technology has always provided strong direction to businesses and showed them where the future was going. Such as it’s ever been, the pace of development in terms of technology is unprecedented.

As the technology changes and the platforms where people digest their news from continues to morph, it’s paramount that you reach your b2b customers in a way that they demand.

According to Forrester & Gartner, by 2020 executives are predicting that up to half of their revenue will be derived from their digital marketing efforts, and 56% of CEOs credit improvement in their bottom line to changes in their digital marketing.

In this article, you’ll find six strategies that are important tools to have you reach today’s clients and build your company’s success.

1. Your b2b website

This may sound glaringly obvious, why would your business not have a website? However, as the internet is always changing, you can’t just build your website, put it online, and leave it to tick over anymore.

You need to give your website some love, it’s an important part of your team and needs care and support just like your employees. An effective business website has to really show off what your company is capable of and demonstrate the solutions you offer to potential clients.

It’s not just a marketing tool, either. The website for your company should be:

  • A hub for industry resources
  • Entertaining, with dynamic content
  • Informative about the sector you operate in

These points are going to make it easy for your clients to find what they need. It’s also going to bring you a wealth of data on who interacts with you and how, along with lead generation.

From the perspective of B2B digital marketing, your website needs to:

  • Be suitable for the audience you’re targeting
  • Work effectively on mobile platforms
  • Include calls-to-action for clients to get price quotes, schedule demos, ask for a white paper, and any other services you offer
  • Feature recent testimonials
  • Link to your social media pages smoothly
  • Be packed with information relevant to your industry
  • Stay up-to-date and be checked so that it meets changing requirements regularly

When companies are carrying out B2B research, it’s a lengthy process that’s pretty mechanical and emotionless. Make your website stand out; show the potential client exactly how you will fix their business challenges better than anyone else in your market.

2. Focus on SEO and content

If your website doesn’t attract Vietnamese b2b visitors, there’s not much point in its existence. To get the traffic flowing through to your site you need to work on SEO, or search engine optimization. There are specific techniques that will help people find you through search engines and get you on that all-important first page of results.

SEO isn’t a simple solution, so to get the best out of your B2B digital marketing budget you should hire a person or company to handle your SEO needs. Their services will include getting the right keywords and phrases on to your site and enable search engines to show your page to the right people.

There are other tactics you can put in place to improve your SEO, too. It’s imperative that you get a blog up and running on your site. There are great SEO benefits and it will also show that you’re a leader in your industry with strong opinions and advice. Your clients will see that you provide knowledge and expertise and it’ll also attract new clients.

When your content is strong, clients will come back to your site, bypassing the sometimes lengthy B2B cycle. Great content can also build a relationship based on trust and in turn, bring about a fruitful conversion.

Opportunities for external engagement and having guest articles linking back to your blog and website are also worthwhile seeking out. You’ll build awareness of the content you offer and is proven strategy in digital marketing.

Having videos embedded on your site is also very important, allowing you to engage with and educate your audience. Video content makes your business more personal by attaching a face to the name. You can also include other types of dynamic content, such as:

  • Infographics
  • E-books
  • White papers
  • Case studies
  • Checklists
a screenshot of Asian Insiders' website

3. Consider PPC campaigns

If your budget has the room for it, you can explore introducing a pay-per-click campaign into your B2B digital marketing efforts.

Using SEO and great content is useful because it’s not a huge expense, and some of it can even be free if you’ve got the talent for it. But if things aren’t quite performing how you want them, a PPC campaign is a useful tool that can be budgeted depending on your resources. You only pay when potential clients actually click through on your ad.

You can also run campaigns on certain platforms that charge for the impressions or engagement on certain that you garner and have varying payment options. The segmentation that they offer can go really deep so you can precisely target the right people for your business. This could end up being your favored tool to generate more and better leads, as well as gain brand exposure and awareness.

4. Engage LinkedIn

You might be considering avoiding social media when piecing together your B2B digital marketing campaigns. There’s a lot of effort and man-hours that go into keeping your followers engaged. You need to remember that social media is here to stay and there is a steady stream of new platforms that are developing past Facebook, such as LinkedIn.

LinkedIn now has over 670 million members.

When it comes to B2B digital marketing, LinkedIn is the place to be, although might find value in Facebook, too.  For a simple way to harness the power of social media, you can use it to send traffic to your blog content. You can create posts that will send your followers to content that they’ll find useful and has information they’ll want, as well as boosting your SEO. Cross-promotion on all of your different feeds is also important.

Along with engaging visuals, your social media posting should include information along the lines of:

  • Tips about your industry
  • News that’s relevant to your sector
  • Solutions to common pain points
  • Updated information about your products and services
  • Testimonials and stories from satisfied clients
  • Case study and white paper links that lead back to your website
  • Happy customer videos
  • Instructional videos that your company has made

To see a really great LinkedIn feed, check out Grab. They use a creative approach to drive engagement and they’re very faithful to their brand image. Their tactics encourage followers to share their content and it shows the culture they’ve built in the company which is aimed at inspiring potential users, but also employees.

What you don’t want to do on your social media is going for the hard sell. LinkedIn is a top-funnel channel, your aim is to engage prospects and inform them, to pique their curiosity and lead them gently to what you can offer them. Basically, to open up the discussion.

5. Get integrated

When you’re spending money on B2B digital marketing, you want to make sure every penny spent is maximized. You need to harmonize your online and offline efforts, tying the two strands together whilst offering market-leading customer service.

Having 24-hour contact channels will keep your clients happy, you never know when they might seek your support and even an automated acknowledgment can be helpful. When marketing through:

  • Print adverts
  • Radio
  • Television

You can ensure that you direct people to your digital platforms such as your social media accounts, website, and landing page.

Having a landing page set up to send your external leads to is a great way to keep track of the success of your offline promotional work.

6. Redefine your b2b digital targets in Vietnam

One of the best things to have come out of B2B digital marketing is the exponential increase in reach it has facilitated. You can really drill down on your target demographics, which means that you can invest in some really effective campaigns.

You can put these campaigns together through Google search and it’s also effective through social media platforms. It’s even possible to change up the segments you’re targeting whilst it’s already in motion.

When combined with results that are presented in a clear way that are easy to analyse, you’ll be able to fine-tune your campaign to get even better results at a great value. You can even use tools for free, such as Google Analytics, which will help you to understand the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and how your targets are being affected.

Final thoughts

To get started on your strategy, list all the digital assets already in hand such as your websites, blogs, and social media handles. If you’ve got access to analytical tools already, you can see which of your assets are already performing well and generating leads and sales.

If you’ve not dived into this type of research yet, then check out where you’re already getting visits, clicks, and shares. This is the first step to gaining insight into what you’re already doing right.

The next step is to determine where you’re going to focus your efforts and build up your assets, whether that be instigating a PPC campaign or ramping up social media work. This is when you need to assess your budget and settle on where you’re going to invest your cash. Refer to your analytics to see where you’re going to achieve the best ROI.

When you’ve got your B2B digital marketing tactics all figured out, it’s time to create a content calendar so the plan is solid and easy to follow. You need to include in your plan:

  • A title or topic
  • Where you’re going to post it
  • When you’re going to publish
  • What your crossover opportunities for links are
  • Will there be linked PPC ads
  • Where your content is coming from

B2B digital marketing practices are open to anyone, no matter the scale or sector of your business. Taking advantage of these strategies will offer you simple ways to bring digital marketing into your overall plan.