You need to approach branding and marketing differently, depending on your business industry. Not all tactics are going to work for every type of company. A brilliant example of this would be the difference in marketing between a B2B business and one that is selling to the general public.
If you are selling to the general public, then you need to approach marketing with a slightly different tone. The public still wants to buy from businesses that are professional, but they want more than the typical business relationship.
Ideally, they need to see your business as something that they can trust and rely on. Believe it or not, you can achieve this goal by striking the right tone. It needs to be friendly and approachable so that customers feel as though their needs will be taken care of.
For a B2B business, the tone will need to be more formal. They don’t care as much about the niceties. They are more interested in ensuring that they get a quality product or service for their clients. You still need to be open and accessible for your clients. But, not in the same way that you would be as a company catering to the needs of the general consumer.
Don’t forget, that when you approach tone, it must be consistent across every piece of marketing material. If you fail to do this, the contrasts in tone will be jarring for customers. Let’s look at some of other ways marketing changes based on specific business industries.
Using media
Images, graphics and videos will be used by all major businesses, particularly when marketing online. But they will be used for different reasons. A building or construction company will use images to showcase work they have completed. This gives customers an idea of the level of quality they can expect from the service they buy.
Construction workers aren’t the only ones that use imagery in this way. Web designers use images to show how a website could look with one of their designers at the helm. In this way, images can be used to sell products.
However, sometimes, the marketing is more indirect through the use of images. For instance, images can be used to stimulate a certain feeling or emotion from a potential customer. For instance, Law firms might use the images of shaking hands on their website to convey trust.
They may also release images like this as parts of the content that they share online. By doing this, they can build up the idea of a trusted business around their brand.
Digital marketing for law firms can also include video advertisements. However, unlike a physical business a law firm cannot use the video to showcase their services. Instead, they will use it to persuade customers they can be trusted through what is essentially a charismatic monologue. Firm owners will often speak directly to the client, promising a fight for justice.
Therefore, although these types of marketing are universal, they are used for contrasting purposes.
You might think that SEO is used in the same way, no matter what business you run. But that’s just not true. In fact, often SEO is changed depending on the type of business that needs it. For instance, many smaller businesses now focus on social media SEO marketing.
They know they can’t afford a marketing team that will get them to the top of the SERPs. But with social media marketing, they’ll spread word of their company and eventually, this will impact site ranking.
Another instance of SEO is the image in the SERPs. Now that more customers are using mobile devices to search they can get a snapshot of a site before they click on it. Research shows that having a face picture will promote more clicks for smaller companies. For larger businesses, the brand name and logo will obviously be far more important. Thus, even forms of marketing that seem the same are used in different ways.
Targeted marketing
Finally, when you are marketing business, you will be targeting a certain group of consumers. The way you promote your company will change depending on this group. At the very least, you will focus more resources on one area of marketing compared to another.
For instance, if you are marketing to the blogging industry it makes sense to focus on content. Similarly, for local service businesses, digitally, local SEO will be your top priority. As such a marketing strategy for one business industry will be completely different compared to another. When it comes to marketing, if the shoe doesn’t fit, you shouldn’t try and squeeze your foot in any way.