Category Archives: Business to Business Marketing Strategies

Tips for improving your business to business marketing strategies and campaigns.  Learn how to find a market niche, and why having a niche is so important.  There are also posts about finding your ideal client (and why you need that too).  Trying to market to everyone only leaves you “spraying and praying” without actually hitting anything.

These pages also cover common business to business marketing mistakes (made by companies both large and small). If you’ve made one of these, you’ll learn how you can fix the errors you’ve made (and avoid future gaffes).

Need more clients? Or better clients? Check out the posts on lead generation, how to set and negotiate higher fees, and what red flags to look for when prospecting for new work.

Finally, there are posts on creating your brand and your company’s “story.” What you are selling isn’t necessarily what you think.  The way you present your products and services can make a big difference in your results.

Is Your Business Niche Market Too Big?

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crowd of colored pegsTrying to sell to an audience that’s too small can kill your business before it starts. Hamster shoes, anyone?

Too big, or too varied a niche can be a problem too.

Trying to reach too many people (or two entirely different groups of people can sink your marketing before it starts.

A business marketing niche that’s too big

Just the other day, someone wanted a business name for a company she was putting together with two friends. She was having a lot of trouble finding a good name, and asked for help.

Each of them had a different specialty. They were: fitness, safety training (first aid and construction), and weddings.

Several people (including me) begged her to reconsider. We said, that’s three businesses, not one. Split them up. She left, disappointed that she hadn’t gotten what she wanted.

Why this business niche isn’t a niche

  • it confuses prospects – the three businesses are so different, people will wonder how you can be good at any of them
  • It may drive people away – do people looking for a wedding really want to see smelly people working out in a gym?
  • They’ll need three marketing plans, three brochures, three sales pitches on the web site, and three sets of audiences to build

A real niche marketing strategy

  • Picks a specific business to be in (say the safety training)
  • Narrows that down further (maybe safety training on construction sites)
  • Chooses a specific problem in that niche (safety training for new workers on commercial construction sites)
  • Addresses marketing, web, business cards, ads, etc. to the people in that niche and only the people in that niche.

Not everybody, just your tribe.  The blue guys.

If you really want to be in two or three different businesses, maybe you need two different web sites.

Tomorrow, can your niche afford you?

Image thanks to  svilen001

The Pajamas, the Lizard Brain, and the Employee Manual

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lizard imageMy mom got a  PajamaGram for Valentine’s Day yesterday.  It was packed in a pretty hatbox with a gauzy bow, bath salts, and a card. Someone clearly put a lot of thought into the packaging.

This seems like a win? Right? It turns out it was a small business marketing failure.

She not only loved the gift inside, she liked the hatbox so much she wanted to buy another one and use them for pretty storage boxes.

A marketing “win” gone wrong

So she called PajamaGram.  No luck.  No matter how much she tried.  They wouldn’t give her one.  They wouldn’t sell her one.  They said she had to buy something to get another box.

This could have been a chance to make a happy customer even happier.  She would have told people.  She would have raved!

The rules were more important than the customer

It would have been thoughtful and an easy way to make a connection with a customer, and gain a new fan. But no. Instead, they followed the “rules.” They did what the manual and the lizard brain (don’t stick out, don’t make your own decisions, be afraid) told them to do.

So, instead of a rave, they get a big Bronx cheer.

Manuals are great when they protect you from dangerous mistakes (turn off the electricity before you touch an exposed wire). They’re not so good when they create a barrier between you and your client.

Image: morguefile

Is Your Business Niche Big Enough?

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hamsters in a wheel

Is your niche big enough?

Sometimes businesses make the mistake of thinking too big (trying to sell too many things to too many different types of businesses and people).

However, you can also make the mistake of thinking too small. You may want to sell sandals for hamsters, but that doesn’t mean anyone will want to buy them.

Yes, build a tribe. Yes, focus on a narrow niche – but not so narrow that you and three other people are the only ones in it. If you do, your business won’t have enough customers or prospects to survive very long.

Do some research first

Check Google. How many results do you get for “sandals for hamsters” (with the quotes)?

Is there a newsletter? A magazine? How about blogs? Are there any other sites selling hamster footwear?

Find a good angle

If you want to focus on hamsters, maybe you need a different angle. Like hamsters 101, or hamster accessories. Or build-your-own hamster habitats.

If there are people who share your interest, they’ll be on the Internet – they’ll have forums, magazines, blogs, Facebook groups, and events.

Hamster shoes are, of course, silly. The real point is to do some research and make sure there is a market for what you want to sell (hamsters with cold feet?), that it’s big enough to support you, and that they can afford/find value in what you’re selling. $5,000 gold and diamond hamster shoes? Probably not. How about a nice plastic wheel instead?

Photo: cdrussorusso

The Biggest Web Site Subscription “Fail.” Ever.

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fail roadNewsday (a newspaper in the New York area) just spent $4 million (US) putting their web site behind a paywall.

Subscription cost: $5 per week.

In three months, they’ve gotten 35 subscribers. That’s $11,428.57 per sign up.

Total earnings so far, $9,000. Not much of an ROI. And a pretty big web marketing failure.

Apparently, the site is awful. It’s hard to navigate. Many of the links are broken. The reporting isn’t very good.

When not to charge

Newsday apparently thought that putting content behind a paywall would work for them the way it’s working for The Wall Street Journal. The Journal’s content, however, is perceived as more valuable, and more focused, namely business news.

In addition, many companies pay for employee subscriptions. No company will pay for Newsday – it’s too general, and not even a very good newspaper.

When to charge

If you’re going to charge, charge for something that matters to your audience. Charge for convenience. Or exclusivity. People will also pay for convenience (say taking 20 articles scattered around your site and packaging them together with new material).

Charge for information that solves a specific problem (like poorly performing web sites – look for more on this next week). Or charge for something that’s not on your web site at all.  You can also charge for something that offers special access or personal attention.

Don’t get so caught up (like Newsday did) in your own needs that you forget what your subscribers and clients want. Or what they will think is worth paying for.

Photo: fireflythegreat

Do You Make This Common Online Marketing Mistake?

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mistake

You carefully set up your online marketing campaign, selected “your people“, offered solutions to their problems, designed eye-catching graphics, and sent it out into the world.

And it went splat.

What happened?

You missed an important step.

When you create an online campaign, there are three places you can send people.

Home pages

Your home page is the “front page” of your web site.  The door where most people enter your site.  Check your stats; it’s probably got more visits than the other pages.  It’s great as a general introduction to what you do and to invite people to explore your site further (here’s mine).

It’s not so good as a direct sales tool.

Product pages

Then there’s a product page.  That’s a page that’s talking about a specific product or service you offer.  It can be a selling page, or informational (like this one on Amazon).  This is better as a sales tool, and but there’s a better choice (especially for services).

Landing pages

Finally, there’s a landing page.  The landing page is a special page (or sometimes a mini-site) set up to sell something, encourage sign ups (to a newsletter), or encourage visitors to download information.

Landing pages have fewer navigation buttons, so that visitors concentrate on what’s in front of them (and don’t wander off elsewhere on your site).  The goal is for visitors to arrive, read what you have to say, and take action right there.

There’s a fierce debate on the web about long vs. short copy, but landing pages tend to be long in order to answer questions and explain everything about the product (since you can’t do that in person).

When you run a campaign, send people to a landing page.  Tell them what they need to know to buy your product.  Don’t distract them.  Get more sales!

Image:  jyri