How do I explain it to my B2B customers? Companies selling complex products are often faced with this question. One significant answer is good marketing copy. It has to be easy, understandable and, at the same time, informative. We provide 6 tips for successful communication.
Selling complex B2B products with effective marketing texts
Tip 1: Choose the right target group
Persuasion in the form of writing best works when it is perfectly adapted to the target group. This requires a tailored B2B content strategy. Your basis: an analysis of the customer structure. Ideally, it will give you a closely outlined picture of your clientele and their interests. Content, structure and communication for B2B are then based on this picture. This is especially important when a company is selling complex procuts. After all, it makes a huge difference amongst the usually acute target group if the person is sitting in the procurement department, in sales or in development.
So-called peronas have proven to be helpful in creating target-group-supported content concepts. These are personality profiles of fictitious persons who serve as examples of the customer group you aim to reach. The persona not only includes information about gender, age, education and occupational position. It also focuses on private characteristics such as hobbies, pets and taste in music, as well as desires and goals in terms of partnerships and family planning. Based on this information, a character study is developed which makes the target group tangible.
Tip 2: Communicate the right content
The next step requires a change in perspective. The copywriter must step into the personas’ shoes and explain: How can the company’s product help the target group? Which added value does it offer them?
The answers then define the topic and the direction the content should take. To successfully sell complex products, the excellent characteristics and functionalities of these must be highlighted.
Tip 3: Give visual examples
Complex products are not so easy to understand even for professional users. This is something companies must take into consideration in their industry-focused B2B communication. A business partner gains no value from marketing copy which is just as difficult to understand as the product being sold. Instead, the product’s practical benefits should be visualised using concrete examples. The easier, the better.
„A business partner gains no value from marketing copy which is just as difficult to understand as the product being sold.“
Tip 4: Speak the right language
The content of a text is one thing; the language another. If you want to sell complex products, you need catchy formulations. Experience has shown: it is often easier to explain difficult issues in a personal talk. This knowledge can also be leveraged in B2B marketing.
When writing, copywriters should imagine having a talk with a customer, or even a layperson. This helps them to formulate sentences in a more casual way. Once a first draft is completed, the writer should read it aloud to herself. Wherever it doesn’t flow right, the text should then be “smoothened” out. It frequently makes sense to turn one long sentence into two shorter sentences.
Tip 5: Find the right words
The attention span of Internet users has been declining for years. And the same can be said in B2B. So, if you want to score points with your product copy, you must take this into account. In concrete terms, this means you should:
- Use simple words
- Avoid the use of specialist expressions
- Use active instead of passive constructions
- Write simple, short sentences
- Ensure a clear structure using captions, bullet points, pictures and graphical elements
Tip 6: Use the right formats
Not every text is suitable for every purpose. For instance, promoting products on B2b marketplaces such as Europages is a way to display the most important hard facts the buyer needs to compare your offer with those from other sellers. Here, the name of the game is to prepare the key information in a clear way and thus enable effective research. The company’s own blog is ideal for practical topics centred round a product. White papers deliver, in contrast, more detailed information. E-books can be used in a similar way. What’s more, they can go into more detail and, for instance, replace or supplement a handbook. By the way: companies can best visualise the practical application of their complex products using videos.
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