This article argues that successful B2B marketing must be based on professional, personal, and interactive communication that is implemented throughout the business. The only way that you will be able to gain and maintain good business is to effectively communicate with your buyers and understand their market, as well as create cogent lines of professional communication throughout the business itself.
Effective business communication is always two-way and, thus, you need to be listening and engaging with your entire business, stakeholders, their clients, customers, and more. Marketing is the best-known form of business communication, and it is, therefore, imperative that your business understands the nuances of professional marketing if you are to succeed in the modern information and data age.
This article presents a detailed discussion of the elements of business-to-business marketing and shows why it will be impossible to achieve without a high level of communication throughout the business.
Effective Business Communication: Holistic Marketing
There has been an understanding developed in recent times in the world of marketing that has sought to show that the best form of the high-level business communication can be dealt with or covered by instituting a holistic marketing campaign.
What Is Holistic Marketing in the Modern Age?
In holistic marketing, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and, as such, every business entity needs to have marketing as a prerogative. The main components of the holistic marketing process are:-
- Integrated marketing. All the marketing processes are integrated and seamless.
- Societal marketing. The business is part of a wider society and as such your business needs to recognize this and engage with the surrounding communities and society at large.
- Performance marketing. This is a digital marketing strategy where the company pays for results, the number of clicks, views, or sales based on how the consumer or customer interacts with the marketing content.
- Internal marketing. Communicating the brand message and ethos to those who make the products and deliver the brand services to the general public and your customers.
- Relationship building. These are all the potential relationships that you have with clients, potential clients, partners, stakeholders, employees, and all those that you do business with and for.
All of these marketing types of forms are intrinsic in a holistic marketing campaign and will need to be developed in conjunction with each other to be their most effective at communicating a clear brand and business message. You aim to:
- Build a common goal. In holistic marketing, the communication and marketing messages that you design are implemented and used throughout the business. Then, every business sector and function will have the same or shared goal. This is vital to build a strong business team and then being able to express the self-same message through the products and services and in interactions with external stakeholders.
- Integrate and align processes and communication. Holistic marketing will allow your business to amalgamate and join various communication processes. You will, for example, be able to use those who have received the marketing messages within the company to share and spread these. It is also the main means to create internal customers. Once the workforce themselves believe in the services and products that the business produces, you are onto a winner and have established an additional market right there.
- Allow effective relationship building throughout the enterprise. As mentioned, the best way to build a strong business is to have a common goal and one of the ways to do this is to have good relationships. Holistic marketing aims to use effective communication to build positive relationships both within and with external stakeholders and customers. It’s just beneficial for business.
The Type of Effective Communication That Must Be Included
There are several ways that holistic marketing can be implemented, but at the most basic, it will involve several levels of professional communication that must be instituted and carried out. There should also be a means of recording, monitoring, and analyzing the communication to both improve and rate its overall effectiveness.
- Communication with Internal staff and employees. Just as you will need to put out a cogent marketing message to those you want to buy your products or services, there needs to be an internal means of communication or marketing. The idea is to institute a holistic marketing campaign or process that engages with employees and workers at all levels to ensure that the ethos or overall message put out by the company through its products and internal professionalism is in line with its external marketing message.
- This communication should be both upward and downward. The business needs should be communicated to the employees, while at the same time, also allowing the employees to communicate their own needs and ideas to management, as an impetus for change and improvement. No matter how low on the chain of responsibility, holistic marketing argues that all workers and employees alike should have a stake in the business and, as such, should be able to communicate any issues, challenges, and changes through the appropriate channels.
- Promote open models of communication. Everyone who has a stake in the business should be able to communicate their needs and expectations to the business simply and seamlessly. The aim is to have an open and effective system for two-way ongoing communication. This is the best form of marketing that your business should hope to achieve.
- External/with clients and customers/suppliers/buyers. Buyers and customers need to be at the forefront of your communication lists. Any business that wants to make inroads in any industry or sector will need to create a name and a brand, and then live up to the promises communicated in this marketing. Professional holistic marketing will see your business set up and maintain communication along and throughout your supply chain, your buyers and then onto your logistics and delivery processes finally reaching the end user.
There are many traditional marketing methods and means of eliciting communication at these levels, from surveys and telephonic research, but the most effective is arguably the online form. These can be completed on mobile, laptop, or PC, and have proven the most effective and convenient means of communication between the business and external stakeholders.
Online forms make for a great way to communicate, and it is all about ensuring that your business stakeholders and buyers can communicate with you as soon as they want to as to any challenges or issues, be it with delivery, logistics, or the products themselves.
The types of online forms that should form part of your holistic marketing campaign:
- Lead capture. These online forms have been improved over time and it is now accepted that to ask for a business contact or information about the browser on your website, you need provide the user with something. The lead capture form will gather at least an email address, but some will look for more. It should be simple and seamless and not take too long.
- Application and registration. Allow buyers, suppliers, and other stakeholders to sign up for a savings opportunity or to join a club linked to the business. These are great means of both gathering information, but also creating groups of buyers and stakeholders that can then be targeted further. Be sure not to make registration a condition for purchasing, as many buyers will simply look to test the business before making significant purchases or orders.
- Contact us. The contact us form is one of the most used forms online and allows buyers, customers, and clients to get in touch for whatever reason that they may have. The trend has been to use chatbots and automated responses to provide a sense of immediacy, but the tried and trusted email forms that lands in your inbox are also sufficient to allow your business to gather data and provide a feedback loop for constant improvement. No one wants them, but it’s essential to allow your business partners and all those who interact and communicate with the business to complain should they have an issue or have faced a specific challenge. Firstly, it makes your customers feel valued and that their experiences matter to you and allows you to make improvements and adjust any issues in a timeous fashion.
- International communication. If your business has any ambitions of an international client base and moving products overseas, then you need to be clear as to both the language as well as the specific business and marketing voice that you need to cultivate to be successful. The internet is one of the simplest means to add a layer of international communication to the business’s holistic marketing campaign, but any such moves must be well planned and thought through. It may be as simple as adding several translation options on your website, or the use of cryptocurrency for buyers to be able to interact with your business from wherever they are in the world.
- Online communication. Most modern businesses’ marketing and communication are conducted online, and this is the platform that allows the best feedback. The e-commerce and online business sector are the best means of communicating your products with others across the world, but it is even more important for the ability to provide almost instant feedback as to products and services and any shortcomings that customers and buyers have found. One of the most common aspects of holistic marketing and effective business communication is the ability to include a means of feedback for the end user to be able to communicate directly with the originator or producer of the product, rather than just its seller.
Understand the Needs of Your Customers
It is only through instituting the two-way forms of professional communication as discussed above that will allow you to gather feedback and genuinely understand the needs, wants, and preferences of your customers and clients. You need to be on top of recent business trends and innovation. A relevant example is the use of cryptocurrency, which is a growing trend amongst many businesses. So, you too will need to know about the various cryptos available to you and their value and exchange rates if they have for example moved to use crypto then you need to ensure that you are in the know and use okx.com to check values and exchange rates, from Bitcoin to Ethereum, and more. It is this level of interaction and flexibility that will be required for your business to succeed and for you to fully implement a cogent communication system for the business.
Once you have made such changes, it is then all about publicizing the innovation and making it part of the brand’s back story.
Monitoring and Evaluation
Marketing has always been a difficult spend to legitimize with direct inferences of increased sales and revenue generation. However, with a holistic marketing campaign, you will be looking to measure more than just an increase in sales – it’s about holistic business improvements. Staff well-being and happiness, products being made to the best of your business ability, and an overall improved level of genuine communication between stakeholders and with the business, leading to an overall improvement in business health.
Conclusion
These are the elements of a professional communication plan and strategy that will enable any business to build a successful business-to-business marketing plan. The main argument is that a modern holistic marketing plan is the best system or strategy available to the modern business to be able to develop and implement the type of effective communication that the best business-to-business marketing requires. Lastly, it must be reiterated that no matter how many channels and what the intention is with your holistic marketing and effective communication, you need to have clarity of message. There needs to be one clear brand message that you aim to put out there. Yes, there may be many products and services, but the most basic of messages about who you are as a business must be consistent, clear and correct. This is the best way to keep your brand’s name in a positive light.
