Tips for Marketing Your B2B Start-upsubmitted on 26 July 2018
The principles of marketing are broadly similar across the board, whether you’re trying to sell directly to consumers (B2C), directly to other businesses (B2B) or a combination of the two. Identifying your target customer, selling benefits rather than features, having the correct price point, and many other fundamentals of marketing apply equally to all three of these models. However, in B2B marketing, there are a couple of key differences that you need to factor into your marketing strategy. If you are setting up a small business that is solely or predominantly selling to other businesses, it’s vital to be aware of how your marketing needs to differ from direct to consumer campaigns if you want to achieve your targets.
Defining your target market
This is a crucial element of your strategy, as failing to communicate with the people who are likely to be interested in buying your product is a recipe for failure. All marketing requires the identification of an ideal customer, often referred to as an avatar. However, for B2B marketing, you actually have a distinct advantage over your B2C colleagues, because your target customer is far more easily identified. For instance, if you sell refills for hand towel dispensers, your target market will be the purchasing managers of companies who use hand towel dispensers. Simple enough as far as it goes, but there’s more.
Refining your focus
The broader market should be fairly straightforward to identify. Once you’ve got a clear marketplace defined, you then need to identify the size of the company most suitable as a customer. For example, as a start-up, it wouldn’t be practical to target your marketing at large corporations as you are unlikely to be able to fulfil the size of an order from a business that size. Instead, look at the small to medium businesses that you could supply without overstretching your new business. You also need to decide if you are selling within a geographically restricted area so that this can form part of your targeting strategy.
Why mass media marketing is best avoided
B2C businesses will, if they’re smart, refine their ideal customer avatar as much as they can to ensure that their marketing materials are seen by a high percentage of people who will be interested in their products. For a very narrow niche, this can work well, but many products are less easy to narrow down to such a tight focus. This is where mass media methods of marketing such as television and radio are most useful because it’s far harder to narrow down the typical consumer of, for example, breakfast cereal or a loaf of bread. For this reason, B2B marketing doesn’t use mass media platforms as a rule, as the results would be too hit-and-miss. In fact, B2B has an advantage in that once you’ve identified the types of businesses who would be potential customers, you will be able to market to them far more directly and cost-effectively than by employing a mass media campaign.
What are the best marketing methods to use?
This will depend to some extent on what you’re selling, and how specialized it is. Trade shows will be a staple component of your marketing strategy, for several reasons. Firstly, you know that visitors to trade shows will be comprised of people who have the requirement, need and buying power to place orders – basically, your ideal client served on a plate! Shows are not all about sales, however; building contacts is an equally important aspect of attending. Building up your presence, getting your name out there, and demonstrating the quality of your products is a vital part of building your future customer base. Not everyone who visits a show will be in a position to place an order on the day, but you want them to be aware of you and your business so that they will think of you when they are ready to buy. Trade shows aren’t the only events you should attend. In fact anywhere that your target clients will be present is a viable marketing opportunity, so conferences, networking events and training days will all give you access to the right people.
Email and SMS marketing
Email marketing has been a key strategy for many years now and shows no sign of diminishing in its effectiveness. SMS is still growing, but given that buyers will almost certainly have a phone that they refer to on a regular basis, the potential is enormous. The key to using these outlets is to make sure you aren’t spamming your potential customers. If someone has signed up for your emails or agreed to receive text message marketing from you, you know they are interested. Therefore, getting people to sign up is your goal, because once you have their email and/or mobile number, you can send them informative, valuable information that you know they want to receive. Email and SMS messages are only perceived as spam if they aren’t valuable or interesting to the recipient, whereas if a buyer is receiving information and choices that help them make the best purchasing decisions for their company, you are helping them to do their job.
Social media
Facebook, Twitter, and other popular social media sites aren’t just useful for B2C marketing. In addition to maintaining a well-constructed, SEO optimized website, having a social media presence is a great way to build you and your team’s reputation as experts in your field. Publishing interesting, useful content and targeting it appropriately will raise your profile and help you to become a well-known and respected figure in your sector. It’s very important to remember you are talking to other industry experts and use the appropriate level of language and technical referencing to demonstrate your own expertise. It’s also important to keep your posts regular, fresh, and valuable, as if you aren’t providing content of value to someone, they will quit following your business.
To be successful in your efforts, remember the key differences you need to use in your approach to marketing, and use the advantages of being in a B2B selling position to maximize the effectiveness of your strategy.
|
