The key to marketing for every type of business, no matter what type, is to create brand awareness. This is getting the public to become aware that your business exists, and this needs to be done before you can begin marketing to your target audience and your target market within that audience. Depending on the type of business you have, you may need to market to three different audiences: consumers, other businesses, and job seekers. Here are some examples of marketing strategies that are effective for each audience.

#1: Marketing Towards other Businesses (B2B Marketing)

The purpose of B2B (business-to-business) marketing is to create brand awareness among other businesses that you may want to work with in the future. Companies that use B2B marketing strategies usually provide a product or service that is used exclusively by business structures, such as office supplies and security solutions. Effective B2B marketing requires extensive market research to determine your target audience and run a competitive analysis.

B2B Email Marketing

The majority of B2B marketers use email because it’s one of the most effective forms of marketing— for both businesses and consumers. When using email to market to other businesses, use an enticing subject line, stick to one CTA (call-to-action), and segment your email to reach the most relevant audience. Businesses appreciate straight-to-the-point emails, and it’s not necessary to evoke a certain emotional response as you would with consumers.

B2B Content Marketing

Just because businesses are driven by logic over emotion doesn’t mean that content marketing won’t work for them. Content marketing is a great way to showcase your expertise and educate businesses on why they need you. Examples of content that attract businesses include checklists, whitepapers, industry reports, webinars, and case studies.

#2: Marketing Towards Consumers (B2C Marketing)

B2C (business-to-consumer) marketing is arguably the most well-known type of marketing because your target audience is made up of customers buying products, clients seeking services, or a combination of both. Traditional marketing techniques such as fliers and newspaper ads are still effective to this day, but you’ll reach the largest audience possible when you use digital marketing or marketing done over the internet.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is a digital marketing strategy that millions of people may already be familiar with, even if they’re not business owners. However, effective social media marketing utilizes the tools offered by major platforms (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, etc.) to drive traffic to their website. Having a social media presence for your business is just one-half of your online presence, which is necessary to be successful at digital marketing.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization, also known as SEO marketing, is a technique that gets your website to rank higher on search engines. Google is the most popular search engine in the world (although SEO marketing works for all search engines), so when someone searches Google when looking for something related to your company, you’re going to want your website to come up first— or at the very least, on the first page of results. SEO marketing can help you achieve that.

#3: Marketing Towards Job Seekers (Recruitment Marketing)

One final group of people that all businesses could benefit from learning how to market towards is job seekers. Small businesses that have just started may not need employees right away, but once they grow and expand, employees will be necessary. Recruitment marketing creates brand awareness among job seekers while also bringing you the best talent through:

  • Strategy (digital marketing)
  • Storytelling (branding)
  • Technology

This hiring strategy works better than traditional strategies such as help wanted ads and even job search sites such as Indeed because the target audience of job seekers are those who have the skills for the job position(s) you’re trying to fill. Recruitment marketing helps you reduce your employee turnover rate and creates a talent pool of qualified individuals ready to fill vacant positions.

All three of these groups that you may potentially need to market towards need to be aware of your business, which is why brand awareness is important no matter who you’re marketing to. Make sure to have a strong online presence (by having both a website and a presence on at least one social media platform) and then you can start utilizing these marketing strategies to attract your target audience. Educate yourself on different marketing strategies, or hire a professional marketing agency to help you attract job seekers and the attention of consumers and/or other businesses.