Let’s face it, B2B, aka Business to Business, is a bit of an ugly duckling in the business world – to many people, it lacks the glamour of sectors like Business to Consumer, aka B2C, and doesn’t generally have the big budgets associated with consumer-facing businesses in industries like Fast Moving Consumer Goods or the Entertainment sectors. Having worked in an industry with both a large B2B and large B2C division, I know that these factors have a knock-on effect in other ways – B2B departments are generally smaller and with less staff and lower budgets, the staff working in them are often on lower grades and salaries too versus a comparable job in B2C.

Selling widgets and washers isn’t necessarily the job you have always dreamed of, making marketing such products more challenging. In addition, buyers will almost exclusively be busy, serious types, and that job gets even more complex. It would have been nice if the rewards were higher in B2B, but they’re not.

B2B feels different

The reward of working in B2B, if you are fortunate enough to have stuck it out and realised this, isn’t financial or status. It’s realising that you’ve achieved success against all odds, working on a shoestring budget with difficult-to-please prospects and customers, and primarily dull products and services. That’s no mean feat and is to be applauded. And when you’ve cracked it, it becomes a bit addictive.

So, if you are in that sector and understand the challenges, it’s understandable that you might consider seeking out a specialist B2B SEO supplier. It’s not an easy challenge to find one as most agencies seem to prefer the glamour and budgets of B2C, and very few have much experience with the joys of cracking B2B. It’s such a shame.

We didn’t set out to be a specialist B2B SEO agency, but around 80% of our clients fit this description, and the percentage has been growing over the years, presumably based on reputation on results.

So, what’s so special about SEO for the B2B sector?

First, we must mention budgets and ROI. Because the sector generally runs on tighter margins, finding an agency partner that can operate on modest budgets and still do a high-quality job without defaulting to tricks or low-quality outsourced suppliers is essential.

Next, it’s essential to pick a partner who will get down and dirty with your products and, if necessary, loads of data to understand your business and its USP’s. It is never good enough, in our experience, to have a passing interest or knowledge in the products or services; it is vital to understand them as well as the client’s own staff. This isn’t as easy as it sounds, and most agencies simply don’t have the time. We’ve solved the problem by making all employees stakeholders in our business so they can try that bit harder and put in more hours at their own expense.

Creativity and outside-the-box thinking are perhaps the most vital skills to look for. We don’t mean it when we say that the products are boring – it’s a bit like it is impossible to have an ugly baby; in its parent’s eyes, it will always be super, and B2B clients love their products and services because they have to and because they work with them day after day. What we mean is a widget, say, is less glamorous than, say, the latest new iPhone or movie release as a comparison. So this is where it is essential to find a B2B SEO supplier with the skills to be creative and develop innovative ways of making your products stand out against competitors online, which means making them stand out in the eyes of Google, too – no easy feat.

Grammar skills become essential, too, as an essential skill will be to talk about B2B products and services in an on-brand, technically correct, and interesting way. Then, they need the ability to craft unique stories for each significant channel rather than jam the same old story out everywhere, which tends to happen more in B2C. In our experience, B2B audiences don’t have the patience for this kind of thing, and they respect creativity.

Math skills are also vital as on lower budgets, it’s essential to run short pilot campaigns that yield a good ROI for the client. Hence, you need to spot that ASAP, or at the very least, yield enough data to merit continued investment on a bigger scale. In B2B marketing, you can’t take your eye off the numbers for a minute, not just because budgets are precious (that applies to all clients). Still, in B2B, you’ve often got a whole team of support staff out on the road waiting to follow up on leads, so you can’t be caught slacking by not looking at the numbers.

That is how to find a good B2B SEO supplier, a good agency with the time and skills to learn about your business in detail and the flexibility to work on tight budgets and timescales while still delivering high-quality, unique work. It’s not as easy to fill, but get it right, and you’ll likely be astonished at how much a good SEO strategy can transform your business and its growth month after month, leaving those more boring competitors with less vision in your wake.

Stuart Haining
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