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.

Are You Making Sales the Right Way?

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salesman imageSeth reports today that Anbesol conned him into thinking that it would ease the pain when his tooth fell out. His dentist said it actually makes the pain worse! They cheated to make a sale.

A friend of mine just told me that when she tried to scan something with her multi-purpose fax/printer/scanner, she found that HP doesn’t support scanning on the latest Mac OS. They’re cheating to try to get her to shell out hundreds of dollars for a new machine (when the old one works perfectly).

Cheating may get you a quick sale, but it will annoy your customers, who will spread the word (as Seth, my friend, and I just did) that you’re more interested in a quick profit than a long-term happy customer.

It’s an old rule that one dissatisfied customer will tell 10 people about their experience. Instead of cheating, why not provide support or products so remarkable that your customers will be eager to talk about them (and encourage their friends to use them)?

Photo:pete simon

What You Ought to Know About Lumpy Mail Before You Send It

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Last week, I wrote about lumpy mail. Greg said he’d sent out expensive gifts to some prospects, but used a format that only allowed for a short message. There was no room to explain what he did, or why the people getting the package should care. Nobody responded.

This is what probably happened:

Package received
Wow, this is great! Who sent it?
Greg?! Who’s Greg?
I don’t know any Greg. Why would he send me this?
Bet he spent a lot of money.
Hey, Joe, do you have that information on the Greenberg account I asked for?

Greg had a few seconds to connect, and he blew it. However, he knows better now.

Lumpy mail works, but just sending a package isn’t enough. The package, is essentially, the headline; it’s the introduction that invites people to find out more. Once the package is open, the rest of the contents (such as the sales letter or the brochure) have to make the case that your product or services are worth clicking on, calling about, and buying.

To quote David Ogilvy, “When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it ‘creative.’ I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product.”

Photo: alvinman

An Easy Way to Get Prospects to Open Your Mail

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A somewhat mysterious large brown envelope arrived in my mailbox a few weeks ago. I wasn’t expecting anything, so I pulled it out from the pile and opened it first.

Why? Because it was “lumpy mail”. What’s lumpy mail? It’s something in a package (rather than a flat envelope). Seth Godin famously packaged his book Purple Cow in a purple milk carton. Catholic charities sent my mom a crucifix (good idea, very poor list selection).

In this case, the package was from Bill Roozie. Bill runs a design firm in Texas. I’d helped him out with some marketing advice on the Amex Open Forum, and he sent me a thumb drive as a thank you.

Sending something that stands out from the rest of the bills, the catalogs, and the brochures, increases the chances it will get opened. If you want to connect with your customers or your prospects, send them a thumb drive shaped like a camera (if you’re in the video business) or a purple milk carton. A plain brown wrapper doesn’t only protect privacy, it also makes the package more interesting and mysterious. It’s clearly not a bill, and could be a present (everyone likes presents).

Don’t you want to know what’s inside these boxes?

Oh, and speaking of presents, Happy Birthday Seth!

Photo: alvinman

Is Your Web Site User-Friendly or User-Hostile?

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no-no
My dad was trying to reserve a book online the other day. He hit submit on the county library web site and kept getting an error message. Then he did it again, same problem. Finally he looked more closely and saw that underneath the submit button were two check boxes that said, “Select library set”.

After some more puzzling, he realized that the library system is divided into two parts, one with about 5 branches, and then 33 other branches in the other set (no idea why). If you want a book, you have to specify which group to order it from!

Now, dad is an experienced software systems guru (and the former CEO of a small software firm). It took him 15 minutes to figure out how to reserve a book. What chance does an ordinary, non-technical person have with a system like that?

And why should a library patron know (or care) which branch the book comes from, or that there are two sets of libraries? If I want a book, I just want the book (as quickly as possible).

If there’s some reason for the division, why not say so, and in a way that makes sense to the user?

To paraphrase a recent article in MacWorld (June 9, 2009), bad sites are produced by people who know how to write code to make a computer do something, but have no idea how regular people behave and how those people expect to interact with that site.

As MacWorld said, “It really doesn’t matter if it’s a microprocessor or a system of tiny pulleys hauled by gnomes that’s inside that shiny glass and plastic product. It just needs to work the way they want it to.”

Look at your site through your customers’ eyes. Is it intuitive? Do visitors have to sit through a Flash presentation in order to get to the “meat” of your site? Is it easy to find your products and services?

Does your blog require a login in order to comment? Are you helping your customers use your products? Or frustrating them?

What about navigation? Do visitors visit one or two pages and then leave?

A site, or a product, that’s easy to use will encourage more people to use it (and interact with it). If it’s too hard, people will go elsewhere to find what they want.

Photo:keees

What Did You Want to Sell Me?

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David Meerman Scott pointed out this video:

Before you start selling, you’ve got to build up credibility. You’ve got to answer the questions swirling around in your prospect’s mind:

Who are you?
Why should I believe you?
What are you giving me?
Why should I care?

If you want to break into a new market or start selling new products, you’ll have to establish trust first. Emailing people you don’t know, or producing four-color media kits (printed or electronic) won’t get you in the door. Neither will spewing way too much information about your eating habits on Twitter. Don’t assume everyone (the press, the public, your potential customers) are sitting around waiting anxiously for your call. They don’t want “you”, what they do want is a relationship with someone they trust to solve their problems.