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.

How to Narrow Your Marketing and Improve Your Results

Posted on by

milk jugsA client told me that his wife often sends him to the store to buy groceries. Seems simple, right? But, there’s a hitch. She says “dairy,” when what she really wants is:

½ gallon 2% milk
1 pint whole milk
1 dozen eggs
1 lb. unsalted butter

If he comes home with just the milk, or only one kind of milk, and no eggs, he’s in trouble. Not knowing what groceries you really want can annoy your spouse, not knowing who your customers are can jeopardize your business.

When going shopping, you need a list of what you want to buy. When looking for customers, you need a list that describes your ideal customer.

To avoid problems at home (and at work), decide what you’re selling, what problem it solves, and who you want to sell it to.

Who are your ideal customers?

Can you describe them? Build a picture in your head. Are they companies? Consumers? What kind of people? Men? Women? Executives? Plumbers?

What problem do they have?

Poor replacement pipes? Accounting software that takes five hours to run payroll for 100 people?

How can you solve the problem?

A lightweight exhibit design that cuts shipping costs in half? A payroll system that runs the same report in 10 minutes?

Where are they?

Worldwide? Next door?

Can they afford your services?

Do they have money allocated to buy what you’re selling? Is your offer appealing to them? Does it save them time or money or both?

When you know who you’re looking for, and what they’re looking for, it will be much easier to find them, and find more of them.

(I gave this same advice to someone recently, telling him to focus on a niche. He took down his general marketing message, re-focused on a specific industry, added appropriate content and keywords, and his traffic went up!).

Photo: LFL16

5 Ways to Stretch Your Marketing Budget

Posted on by

stretch marketing budget

Yesterday’s post touched on low cost marketing tactics to extend your budget (and your marketing campaign).  Here are five more ways to stretch your marketing budget, build partnerships, extend your business’s reach, and  earn more money.

1) Partner with a complementary business.

I’m a copywriter and a small business marketer, but I have relationships with graphic designers, web developers, and video producers that allow me to offer additional services.

Plus, we can refer business to each other.  If you specialize in exhibit design, partner with a video producer.  Both of you focus on trade shows and events, but you don’t compete.

2) Content marketing. This is the hot “latest” buzzword now, but it’s not really new. Writing on your own site is important, but you need to expand your reach and get in front of more potential clients.

Have guest posts on your blog, or guest articles in your newsletter.  Approach other bloggers and request a guest post (make sure your article is appropriate and relevant to the topic of the blog).

Post answers to common client questions on social media, Google+, and don’t forget industry blogs and forums.  Don’t just post your own material, share others’ posts too. If you see a question you can answer, do that in the comments.  It often encourages people to follow your account, building your following and extending your reach.

3) Ask permission, even if you don’t have to.  When I started my newsletter, I put together a free marketing guide with expert advice from business and marketing experts.  They had given permission to reprint the articles (with attribution), but I thought it was polite to contact them and let them know.

Several offered to promote the newsletter and the guide in their own, established newsletters, which got mine off to a good start!

4) Share your ideas.  Got more ideas than you can execute?  Partner with someone else.  Feed them the ideas, let them implement them, and share the income.  Just make sure you set out the terms of the agreement clearly, on paper, and in advance.

5) Create a referral network page.  Add your partners’ logos to  your Web site, or set up a special web page with information about their services.  Use the page to refer business to each other, and to extend your reach. With more services (through your partners)  you’ll look bigger and can get more business.

If that’s not enough, here are 27 free marketing ideas that won’t cost you a penny.

The $100 Marketing Campaign That Packed the Room

Posted on by

low budget marketing tactics

As promised on Friday, you don’t need buckets of money to run a successful marketing campaign. The photo on the right represents my entire budget for a marketing campaign several years ago: $100. That’s it.

Here’s how I ran a successful campaign and only spent $75. Yes, I actually had money left over!

Low budget marketing tactics

My assignment in this case was to promote a small breakfast seminar.  It was a new program and they were hoping to get 15 paid attendees.  Since my budget was so tiny, I had to think creatively.

I couldn’t use any of the usual tactics.  Normally, I would do a series of mailings, with a save the date postcard, send emails, even rent lists.  Or, I would buy advertising space in relevant publications and newsletters.

But, with a limit of $100, I couldn’t do any of that.  I couldn’t even pay for printing, let alone postage.

Start with  existing contacts

The first thing to do was look and see how many contacts or relevant prospects I already had in my house list.  Since the seminar was about selling financial services to Hispanics, I sent text emails to people who had attended prior events concerning either Hispanic marketing or financial services marketing. But, that wouldn’t be enough. I also sent a fax marketing sheet (you could do that then); still not enough.

Reach more people without spending any money

I found a way to expand my marketing campaign and get it in front of more people (without spending money I didn’t have).

However, thanks to my previous job at The Economist Intelligence Unit, I knew someone who ran a multi-cultural marketing newsletter which went out to thousands of people, far more than I had on my list. She sold advertising in her newsletter, but at $250 for an ad, or $900 for a solo email it was way over my budget.

Try barter

I couldn’t buy an ad, but I could give her something else she wanted.  The names I already had were potential subscribers to her newsletter and other services.  They were people she wanted to meet and network with.

So, I negotiated a deal. She included the ad in her newsletter, in return for two seats at the table at the seminar.

I sent my emails and my faxes, and she sent her email to her subscribers.

Stop the promotion:  we’re out of space!

The original goal was 15 people. We got 45. We had to start a waiting list. I had to cancel the last wave of promotions and stop marketing! There was no more space in the room, it was becoming a fire hazard.

I can’t share exact results, but attendees paid between $25-$45 to attend, so at 45 people, the ROI on my $75 investment was tremendous.

Partnering can give you greater reach, bring in new business, and save money. More ways to stretch your marketing budget tomorrow.

Photo: kugelfish

A Lesson in Penny-Pinching from the Pentagon

Posted on by

penniesNewsweek reported (April 19, 2009) that the Pentagon is using a new “weapon” in Iraq. A redesigned Humvee? An improved rifle? Nope. An iTouch.

What Can the iTouch Do for the Pentagon?

It’s certainly not the first gadget that comes to mind when you think of the army, but they’re using it to translate, store video (say of a tribal leader advising villagers to cooperate with the soldiers), and share data about suspected insurgents. Since it has an existing support structure and development tools, it’s not difficult to find programmers to produce specialized applications to display video from drones or use the iTouch as a remote control for a bomb-disposal robot.

Say Goodbye to $400 Hammers

Instead of following the well-worn path to $400 hammers and $5,000 toilets, someone decided to look past the military-industrial complex and use comparatively cheap, off-the-shelf tools.

You don’t need boatloads of money to be successful; you do need to think creatively. Leverage what you have. Use existing resources in different ways. The founders of Apple, Yahoo!, Blogger, etc. didn’t have VC funding. They had ideas, and the ability to execute them (dreaming is great, but without execution it goes nowhere).

Draw Outside the Lines

In a recession, it’s even more important to look at where you’re spending money and figuring out how to get better results from your efforts. Are you better off Twittering? Or putting an ad in a (gasp) magazine? Should you concentrate on brand awareness? Or monitor the Internet for mentions of your company name and brand (positive or negative)?

It’s not about the money. I once ran a very successful marketing campaign for $75; more on this Monday.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/totalaldo/503335275/ total aldo

Why are Referrals Like Buried Treasure?

Posted on by

treasure map

Getting referrals can be like finding buried treasure. They’re a low cost way to get more business, and come with a built-in testimonial from someone who already knows you. But how do you get more of them? And, do you know what triggers someone to refer you?

If not, you’ll need to create a “Referral Trigger Map”. Here’s how to do it.

Set up a document (or a spreadsheet) with a table. Create two columns, one labeled “Prospects” and the other Labeled “Referral Sources”. Under Prospects, type “clients, friends, associates who talk about”…. Under Referral Sources, type “I can help these businesses and their clients…”

Under the Prospects column, list situations and discussions that would lead a friend, current client, or associate to refer you.

Then match up the situations with businesses and people you frequently come in contact with. Do they have a problem you can solve? Or, do they know other companies that do? Add those to the Sources column.

For example, if you’re a Web designer, a trigger point might be a small business owner frustrated with a designer whose business to business Web designs turned out to be pre-fabricated templates with daisies and teddy bears (you may laugh, but this has happened).

Then, make a second table with the headings: “Conversation Starters” and “Referral Triggers to Listen For”.

For the Web designer, it might be expressing sympathy with the business owner, and offering her the opportunity to discuss a more professional solution.

If you build super-light exhibits for trade shows; a trigger point might be hearing someone complain about the $1,000 they just spent to have their exhibit shipped.

It should look like this:

Download the map and take a few minutes to fill it in. See what treasure you can find!