In this article, I will outline the different types of advertising and marketing services that B2B businesses need. We will be looking at professional service firms first, followed by real estate companies and closing with SaaS.

Professional Service firms

Professional service firms such as management consulting firms, law firms, agencies, etc. need to work closely with agencies that know the nature of B2B marketing with a focus on (from most important to least): 

• Writing good content for their website and blog so that it can be indexed by google and create thought leadership in their respective field. Writing content such as E-Books and whitepapers is also an essential part of content writing for professional service firms. These serve as lead magnets (a free piece of information that’s well researched and prepared in exchange for contact information that you download from a website). A lead magnet raises awareness about your business to potential clients depending on how you nurture them in your email or sales funnel.
• The ability to create a sales funnel that generates leads by understanding the time it takes for a lead to become a client of that firm. What we call in the industry MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) and SQL (Sales Qualified Lead) capability. For more information check out this concise blog post by Hubspot.
• Create automated email marketing campaigns that understand the process of lead nurturing and scoring in order to pass on qualified leads to the client’s sales’ team.
• Distribution of the content created on social channels through paid media (Facebook ads, google ads, LinkedIn Ads, etc.) 

Real Estate organizations

The services required for real estate organizations are the same exact as professional service firms, however there is less focus on content writing (blogging or creation of ebooks etc.). A real estate organization will want to generate leads quickly at cost. Therefore, the services that are crucial to a real estate organization are: 

• Creation of landing pages​ optimized to capture leads, not relying on Facebook or LinkedIn​ Lead form ads because they are very expensive.
• Media buying on Facebook and LinkedIn, should landing pages lag behind in development, the agency must be able to provide value nonetheless. 
• Have a clear understanding of Customer Relationship Management tools (Hubspot CRM, Odoo, etc.) and plug into the sales team properly without creating siloed effort. 

Software as a Service firms (SaaS) 

We can go into the nitty-gritty details of SaaS and the complexity of marketing them but in fact, they require almost the exact same set of services as a professional service firm. There is a slight difference in how the agency comprehends the product and how much consideration is required to adopt it. The main difference between SaaS and professional service firms is their marketing funnel success indicators (i.e. KPIs) or to put it plainly “after the customer adopts my product, how do I measure the success of its adoption?”​    

• The agency must be obsessed with your CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) and understand how to reduce it without spending too much on paid advertising (online of course)
• Provide a robust content marketing mindset especially long-form (E-Books, Video walkthroughs of the product, whitepapers on topics that the SaaS is solving, etc.) 
• Search Engine Optimization for all your long-tail keywords and the creation of corresponding sales pages 
• In the same vein as professional service firms and real estate organizations; the ability to leverage MQL and SQL strategies to increase leads and qualified adoption. 

That’s my guide for the agency services that B2B businesses need, if you’re a B2C business check out my B2C guide. If you haven’t already, check out my first article where I tackle some industry misconceptions and give tips on picking the right agency.