B2B customer marketing deploys satisfied customers to amplify a brand's allure, expand its reach, increase revenue, and enhance overall enterprise success through various customer-focused initiatives and engagement. In today's highly competitive business landscape, B2B customer marketing is the perfect tool to invigorate and optimize your prospective and existing customer relationships.

In this blog, we will dive deeper into the intricacies of B2B customer marketing, unveiling the reasons behind its exceptional effectiveness in driving growth within the B2B sector. Additionally, we will examine how Orca, a robust customer marketing application, can revolutionize and elevate your marketing strategies to unprecedented levels of success.

What Are the 7 Ps of B2B Marketing, and How Can Customer Marketing Enhance Them?

The components that comprise the seven Ps of B2B marketing, namely product, price, promotion, place, people, process, and physical evidence, are fundamental in developing an effective marketing strategy. Yet, to truly excel in a fiercely competitive market, organizations must transcend conventional marketing methods and harness the potency of customer marketing, as demonstrated below:

1. Product - The bedrock of your marketing strategy rests upon the features, benefits, and quality of your product or service. It is imperative that your offering distinguishes itself in the marketplace and offers tangible value to your clientele. By enlisting satisfied customers as references, you can demonstrate to prospective patrons that your product or service upholds its promises.

2. Price - Establishing the appropriate price point for your product or service can be challenging. Thankfully, customer marketing can serve to rationalize your pricing. By presenting contented customers who recognize the value of your offering, you can showcase to prospective clients (through a case study, for example) that your product or service merits their investment.

3. Promotion - Customer marketing is an excellent tool for promoting your product or service. Satisfied customers can impart their positive experiences to others through a variety of mediums, such as word-of-mouth, events, online reviews, or social media. This method of promotion generates an authentic marketing message that resonates with your intended audience. Create opportunities for your customers to share their voice.

4. Place - Using customer marketing provides valuable insights into your distribution channels. By harnessing the potential of your existing customer base, you can discern novel markets and distribution channels that align with your product or service. Moreover, by utilizing customer referrals and references, you can establish partnerships with new distributors and retailers.

5. People - The role of customers in B2B marketing cannot be overstated. By incorporating satisfied customers as references and even more so as advocates, companies can reinforce their brand's credibility and trustworthiness with potential customers. This customer-centric approach is essential to developing a successful B2B marketing strategy that fosters long-term customer relationships.

6. Process - Efficient delivery of products or services is crucial to any B2B company's operations. Customer advocates can speak on the reliability of your systems and procedures. This practice, in turn, can enhance your company's reputation and build trust with potential clients.

7. Physical Evidence - This refers to the tangible elements of the product or service, such as the way your platform functions or your branding and packaging. One of the most valuable ways to incorporate customer marketing is to solicit feedback from your customers—using their feedback, you can tweak your branding, develop guides and documentation, and generally update your collateral to delight current and prospective customers. 

The 7 Ps of marketing offer a cohesive framework that harmonizes with the various elements of a robust B2B marketing strategy, particularly when customer marketing takes center stage. But what is a B2B example of customer marketing, exactly? Let’s examine what this can look like within a broader marketing strategy in the next section.

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What Should a B2B Marketing Strategy Include?

Successful and innovative B2B marketing strategies will include several vital components to ensure success. Among these is the integration of customer marketing to utilize powerful references and advocates to bolster credibility and trust with potential customers. As such, it’s best to incorporate various types of B2B marketing tactics into a customer marketing strategy, some of which include:

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• Customer Advocacy Management - Identify satisfied customers willing to act as advocates for your brand, whether through testimonials, case studies, or other forms of promotion. How do you identify B2B customers who are willing to do this? By using a customer marketing platform like Orca. Orca's streamlined process helps to launch, grow, and maintain an advocacy program, making it easier to find and retain advocates, and keep them engaged. The automated advocate usage management functionality within the Orca platform also prevents overusing advocates and burning them out.

• Referral Programs - Have a process in place to facilitate and welcome customer referrals. Encourage satisfied customers to refer new business by making it easy through an email form or landing page, even consider offering incentives through loyalty programs if appropriate for your industry and personna. With Orca, your business can reward advocates and colleagues with gifts, automatically tracking everything directly within Salesforce as a native Salesforce application.

• Customer Feedback - Gathering customer feedback is essential for businesses seeking to refine their product or service, offerings, and messaging. Orca's powerful platform automates the feedback collection process, enabling you to evaluate trends and unearth valuable advocate feedback.

• Customer Events - Host events that bring existing and potential customers together to build relationships and showcase your product or service offerings. Depending on the types of B2B buying situations your business encounters, such events may take different forms, ranging from trade shows and industry conferences to product launches and networking events. Orca can show you the optimal customer advocates to invite to speak at such events while streamlining the scheduling process and managing logistics to ensure your advocates are cared for.

In addition, through Orca's reporting and analytics capabilities, you can showcase the ROI of your advocacy program with precise metrics, such as frequency of usage, success rates, and advocate evaluations. Demonstrating the fruits of one's labor is a critical aspect of success, and Orca can facilitate businesses in accomplishing this goal.

Are you interested in experiencing the transformative impact of Orca on your customer advocacy programs? Schedule a demo by visiting our website and reserve a 30-minute session with one of our seasoned professionals specialized in customer marketing.