Introduction
Hannah Swinkin, the Head of Marketing at Boxhub and former Director of B2B Marketing at Reef, gave us an excellent and detailed presentation about the role of SEO in B2B during our lecture in week four.
First, Hannah shared her personal and professional journey with sincerity, which made me realize that she also encountered several obstacles and setbacks before becoming the head of marketing, and it was only after the constant exploration that she achieved her current success.
Reflect on Career Tips
Next, Hannah gave us a list of some "Top Career Tips" that she thinks will be useful for us to find jobs in the future. These tips are roughly divided into four categories, Day-to-day, Salary, Startups and Job roles. Those tips are beneficial to me, and the ones that inspire me are "Seize opportunities to create materials for senior leadership" and "Remain focused on the business goal. “She analyzed this from the perspective of senior leaders. Senior leaders are usually busy, so they need concise and explicit material to give them a quick understanding of the company's marketing campaign. As employees, we should collect the most valuable data for our bosses. To do this, we must stay focused and clearly understand our business goals to create the most concise and helpful material for our managers. And if I can do these two things, I might also get a chance for promotion. So, I think these two tips are essential.
Reflect on the difference between B2B and DTC
Then, Hannah began to analyze the difference between B2B marketing and DTC marketing to us in detail. The following is my reflection. Compared to DTC, B2B has a more significant average deal value in general, making B2B a business model more sophisticated/difficult than DTC. In this case, B2B marketers need to be mentally prepared to deal with the challenges of sealing the deals. Besides, because B2B deal value is high, it leads the business to include a higher quantity of decision-makers than the DTC business, which requires the marketer to be considerate enough to get along well with or convince different decision-makers. Besides, B2B offers marketers the chance to create more nuanced content about the product they are working with, which requires various logical thinking processes/goals/ interests compared to DTC. Last but not least, a B2B marketer needs to figure out what emotional hooks that work for them the best.
Also, Hannah mentioned that search is the crucial factor driving your website's traffic. Search engine marketing-wise, due to the characteristics of B2B, which involves more nuanced content and decision-makers, B2B marketers will have a higher number of questions to answer and a higher chance to dominate search results. A DTC buyer's search tends to be more straightforward and linear (Best Coffee maker / Where to Buy the Best Coffee maker). Conversely, B2B searches tend to be more complicated and nuanced. They not only want to know the price but the other facts of the product, such as ROI, potential, insights, etc. Thus, B2B marketers need to offer these people satisfying answers to win the SEO game.
Talking about the biggest misconception about B2B. Hannah mentioned that B2B business is not marketing to businesses but people wearing their professional identity. Her saying broke my stereotypical thinking about B2B business. In other words, maybe "B to P" is a more accurate word to name this business in nowadays society. Because at the end of the day, you are convincing the people in charge of the business/company to make a deal with you, not the company itself.
Reflect on Case Study
Next, during the case study that Hannah gave us, I found out that it is essential to optimize our product to an extreme to achieve our goal. For Gather, it is vital to refine the site's structure so that it offers people a smoother user experience and understanding of their business. It is also crucial to consider the answers to our prospects' questions.
Questions for Hannah
I do think B2B marketing is appealing to me. It is full of challenges since it is more complex, but I believe it is more rewarding. Also, I do have two questions to ask Hannah. First, "What should I do to effectively educate my internal stakeholders about SEO?". SEO is the soul; although stakeholders have heard of it, they do not understand it, so I am wondering how I should explain it to them in the most effective way? Second, "How do you prepare answers for your prospects on search engines?". B2B buys are more sophisticated to deal with, so I want to know how you think from a prospect's perspective to write the answers they want to know.
Conclusion
I think overall, Hannah's presentation is truly insightful and inspiring. I genuinely believe the career tips she gave us will significantly help me land a job because my mindset has changed. I also learned that organizing and optimizing the website is critical because traffic means a ton for SEO. I think with the knowledge that I drained from her speech. I can connect with people from the B2B field and ask them about their experience, which will benefit me in landing a B2B-related job in the future.
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