The Importance of Excellent Design in B2B Marketing
Think of a popular B2B business. Go on, take a second.
Got it? Maybe it’s Salesforce, Dropbox or Shopify. Maybe it’s us (blushes). Whoever you thought of, I'll guess it was someone strong in the design department.
In a sea of B2B companies, strong design is what separates you from your competition. It’s the megaphone for your brand’s unique voice, advocating for the special talents your organization brings to the table.
If that sounds like a tall order, read on to learn how strong design can turn your marketing goals into reality in 2023.
Get ready to dive in:
Ideas for Using Design to Improve Your B2B Marketing
- Idea #1: Incorporate Motion Design and Multimedia
- Idea #2: Perfect Your Website’s Design Elements
- Idea #3: Master the Art of B2B Marketing on LinkedIn
Using Design to Market B2B Products
B2B marketing is completely different from B2C marketing, and calls for a strategy that speaks to business needs. It may include designing social posts, ads, a website or landing page, or email and print materials (just like a B2C campaign), but must still be calibrated to build confidence and demand on behalf of businesses.
Think about your buyers’ motivations. B2C consumers are mostly motivated by aesthetics, convenience or emotions. B2B consumers are thinking about ROI, growth, and long-term partnerships.
Ideas for Using Design to Improve Your B2B Marketing
Whether you address B2B buyers’ motivations explicitly or implicitly, those motives should influence your design choices. For example, you might design an infographic that shows the 6-month ROI of your product as part of your B2B ad campaign. Or, you could create an animated short showing how your service helped one of your long-time partners. Both are great ideas, and both require a high degree of design proficiency to be effective marketing tools.
So, how do you impress a prospective business partner? First, make sure your designs are top-notch by working with an ad creative service. Having a dedicated design team in your pocket (without the added costs of increasing headcount on your own team) makes it easy to create attractive, effective ads and other marketing material. If you don’t have a designated design ops team yet, get our guide on the Future of Design Ops.
Read on for design ideas and tips that will ensure your B2B offerings get the attention they deserve.
Idea #1: Incorporate motion design and multimedia
According to Linkedin, posts with images get twice the engagement of posts without images on their platform. You can use eye-catching images, videos, and motion design to stop a user from scrolling right past your ad.
Here are some tips for creating good multimedia designs:
- Include subtitles or on-screen text: According to Digiday, 85% of social media users watch videos with the sound off. Use a B2B design agency like Superside to include the closed captioning or on-screen text that will help you reach more viewers.
- Try an explainer video: According to Small Biz Trends, 59% of executives (who are often decision-makers for B2B matters!) would choose video over text to learn about a topic. If your B2B offering is something new or unique, explaining it with an animated short could be more effective than writing about it.
- Make your B2B designs mobile-friendly: eMarketer has reported that 75% of all videos are played on a mobile device. Your video will have a better impact if it’s effective on mobile. That means you should avoid small text and busy graphics. Check out our Video Marketing Playbook for more great tips on creating impactful videos.
- As you grow, your design should grow with you. Create scalable design elements — such as brandin25g, logos, or motion design elements — that you can use across your marketing materials. Reusing these elements will boost your brand identity and give you a solid starting point for new marketing campaigns.
Here's one of my favourite headers from this blog on motion design. Neat, huh?
Idea #2: Perfect your website’s design elements
If you post a B2B ad on social, you may be hoping to bring viewers to your website, where they can learn more about your company, read about your product, or make a purchase. Follow these tips to use design to make your B2B website more effective and enhance your B2B personalization.
- Even if you have the most beautiful ads ever, the potential customers who click on them could fail to convert if your website isn’t just as engaging. Have a consistent brand identity so that the transition from your ad to your website feels seamless. According to Forbes, having a consistent brand image across all platforms can increase revenue by up to 23%. Use the same logo, color palette, and fonts across your designs to create cohesion and boost brand recognition.
- Like we said above, people are watching your ads on mobile — and when they click on them, they’ll visit your mobile website too. According to Perficient, 61% of all US website visits in 2020 were on a mobile device, so make sure your web design looks just as good on a smartphone as on a desktop. Always test the functionality and appearance of the content to your site from different mobile devices. While you’re revamping your website, make sure you’re up on all the other big design trends, too.
- Instead of having your B2B ads lead to your main homepage, try creating beautifully designed landing pages instead. For example, if you create a B2B ad campaign featuring testimonials about your IT business’s web design services, it should link to a specific web design landing page. According to a report from Growth Marketing Pro, a good landing page includes videos (which increase conversions by 86%), testimonials (trusted by 9 out of 10 landing page visitors), and contact details (which increase sign-ups by 9%). You can create a page that does all that and more using Superside's landing page design services.
Idea #3: Master the Art of B2B Marketing on LinkedIn
Once you’ve followed the tips above, you should have attention-grabbing ads and beautiful landing pages. Now, it’s time to get them in front of your target audience — which you’ll probably do on LinkedIn (it’s the top platform for B2B marketing according to Content Marketing Institute).
Try these tips to boost your LinkedIn marketing:
- The Content Marketing Institute reports that 93% of the top B2B marketing groups are extremely or very committed to content marketing — because it works! While content marketing doesn’t explicitly promote your brand, it does give you a way to show off your expertise and keep your brand top-of-mind on social media. For example, you might write a post on LinkedIn about different challenges that face your industry, and include infographics with stats and tips that get readers interested in what you have to say. Include links to your website or your contact information so that interested readers can learn more.
- Encourage engagement on your posts to improve their performance in the LinkedIn algorithm. According to Hootsuite, when people like, share, or comment on your LinkedIn post, this lets the algorithm know that people want to see your content more — which means future posts can perform better, too. You can encourage engagement by posting thought-provoking graphics or videos and asking readers to share their thoughts.
Want to Supercharge Your B2B Marketing Designs?
Getting engagement-worthy creative for B2B marketing initiatives can be a cumbersome task for most marketing teams. Even those with design teams in-house can struggle, as those teams are frequently bombarded with marketing projects of their own.
Having a purpose-built team of experienced designers allows you access to lead-generating creative for a minor fraction of the cost of a new hire.
Talk to Superside today to give your B2B marketing strategy the superpowers it needs to stand out with our broad range of graphic design services.
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