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.

Learn These Trade Secrets

Posted on February 19, 2009 by Jodi Kaplan

Nearly every interest, business, industry, and activity has a newsletter or a magazine. These publications focus solely on people in particular industries. And most of them are free.

Here are 5 ways to use them:

1) Keep up with what’s going on in your industry, your customers’ problems (or the problems that businesses like them are having), and get information that will help you better serve your customers, or develop new products and services.

2) Many have online forums or email newsletters. Use the first to make useful (not promotional) comments. Answer questions and, where appropriate, point to an article or a resource on your Web site that will be helpful. This is also a good way to get traffic to your site. Once on that page, offer an e-book, or other “ethical bribe” to sign up for your newsletter.

3) As a promotional tool. Submit articles and get your name, and your business, in front of readers who are potential prospects. Just remember, write something that offers information and solutions, not a sales pitch. Check their editorial calendars (usually posted on their Web sites) and also look at the masthead to find the name of the editor. Writing articles in trade publications will raise your profile among your target audience, and establish you as a believable expert in your field.

4) Write letters to the editor (see yesterday’s post)

5) Advertise in their e-newsletters or in the magazine (if budget allows). Many also have event calendars, which you can use to publicize an upcoming conference or seminar.

To find a list of trade magazines, and subscribe, visit my Web site at KaplanCopy Trade Publication List

Photo: mannhobai

Get More Clicks (Without Spending a Cent)

Posted on February 18, 2009 by Jodi Kaplan

I got 120 new visitors to my book web site yesterday (without spending a cent). There’s been a raging debate on Shelf Awareness (a book industry newsletter) about the pros and cons of e-books. I run a Squidoo lens arguing that printed books are better, so I decided to weigh in on the topic. I wrote a letter to the editor arguing that publishers (and authors) will have to change their strategies and interact with readers in order to survive, and included a link to my lens.

Shelf Awareness posted the letter in their newsletter, and the clicks started coming. 77 in the first hour and a half, about 87 by lunchtime and 120 by this morning. Letters to the editor may seem like a relic of the last century, but people still read them. And, with the Internet, instead of waiting days or weeks for the magazine to print, the response is virtually instantaneous. Even better, you can include a live link, so readers can click directly to your site for more information.

Remember, don’t be overtly promotional. Offer insights, useful information, and reasoned arguments for your position. Target the publications you write to. Keep them within your sphere of expertise. There’s no sense writing in to a neurosurgery magazine if you’re not a neurosurgeon. Then, sit back and watch the clicks roll in.

Photo: Laineys Repertoire

Why Does a Business Need Story Time?

Posted on February 18, 2009 by Jodi Kaplan

Two very different conversations about business storytelling struck me today.

The first was Seth Godin’s post about the rational marketer (and the irrational customer):

The most common frustration I see, and I see it daily, comes from marketers who can’t figure out why more people won’t buy their product…Let’s say, for example, that you have a service that can deliver leads for five percent of what it costs to get them via a trade show. Why would any rational business, particularly one that says it wants qualified leads, spend that money on trade shows and not on you?…The problem is that your prospect doesn’t care about any of those things. He cares about his boss or the story you’re telling or the risk or the hassle of making a change.

The second was from a New York Times article about vitamins. It quoted a scientist who couldn’t understand why people buy vitamins (when study after study shows no positive effect from taking them).

I’m puzzled why the public in general ignores the results of well-done trials,’” said Dr. Eric Klein, national study coordinator for the prostate cancer trial and chairman of the Cleveland Clinic’s Glickman Urological and Kidney Institute. “’The public’s belief in the benefits of vitamins and nutrients is not supported by the available scientific data. (NY Times 2/17/09)

emotional business storytelling beats logic

The cold, hard dull facts may be truthful, but they’re not emotionally engaging. Don’t give statistics, tell a business story instead.

Vitamin-takers (and prospects) don’t care what the studies say or how logical it is to skip the trade show and spend money on a different method of lead generation.

What they do care about it is how they feel about it. They “feel better” taking the vitamins. It doesn’t matter what the science says; the emotional payout is higher from taking the pills, plus it’s easier than changing your diet.

Going to the tradeshow is easier too, especially if it’s what you’ve always done. Switching to a different lead generation method is hard. It takes work and it takes time to start working.

Emotional stories get more sales

Tell your prospects a story about how well your lead generation program worked for other customers: Customer XYZ started with three leads a month, struggling to stay afloat; after hiring us it was up to 10 per week. Now, they can make payroll easily every week, and they’re opening two new offices.

Focus on the emotional toll of the wrong solution, and then explain the feel-good payoff of the better choice. Describe how your solution cuts your customers’ stress, or let’s them go home earlier, or may get them a raise.

Photo: yogi

The Kosher Tribe Isn’t Jewish

Posted on February 16, 2009 by Jodi Kaplan

The New York Times reported last year (10/9/08) that more than 70% of the people who buy kosher food in the US aren’t observant Jews. In fact, the population of observant Jews in the US isn’t large enough to support the market for kosher products.

What’s happening? Many non-Jews are buying kosher products because they believe they are higher quality, or rely on strict ingredient labeling to protect them from food allergies or other religious concerns. According to The Times, many candy and cookie companies regularly ask for kosher certification for Christmas and Easter confections!

I, personally, once helped a Muslim immigrant from Afghanistan choose a brand of jam based on the fact that it was kosher pareve (no meat or dairy products), proof that it contained no pork or other ingredients he couldn’t eat.

The lesson from this is that it’s important to know who your customers really are (and to adjust your products and services to meet their needs). Otherwise, how would a candy company ever know (or think) to make kosher Easter bunnies?

Photo: rushingmania

The Elephant and the Marketing Plan

Posted on February 5, 2009 by Jodi Kaplan

Jennifer on LinkedIn wanted to know if it was worth a large investment of money to redo her web site. She’s an interior designer and isn’t happy with the way her site currently looks. She got lots of answers.

Some advised her to concentrate on search engine optimization (because graphics don’t matter as much as marketing strategy), others recommended she insist on a content management system (an MS Word like interface that makes it easy for a non-technical person to change the site’s content).

I’ve heard others in similar situations insist that words don’t matter because nobody reads.

The graphic designer focuses on the design, the wordsmith on content, and the SEO expert on optimization.

It’s like the old folk tale about the blind men and the elephant. One touched the elephant’s side, and declared the elephant to be like a wall. A second felt the tusk and said, no the elephant is a spear. A third, holding the trunk, insisted the elephant was like a snake.

The truth is that the elephant, and the Web site, are all of those things: side, tusk, trunk, words, design, marketing strategy, and traffic.

A web site with poor design, that’s hard to use, or read will not be successful. A site with poor wording will not convince anyone to buy; one with no traffic (or the wrong traffic) will not make sales if nobody sees it.

The design, the colors, the layout, the traffic, the marketing strategy (her points of difference, her story, her call to action) must all work together. Without legs the elephant will fall. With no trunk, it can’t eat.

With no marketing strategy or poor traffic, the web site will founder. Take away any single one, and the whole thing fails. Look at the whole elephant (and the whole site), not just pieces.