Deep Dish Blog

It seems like a lot of resources devoted to marketing are weighted towards business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing and feature examples of Fortune 500 type companies that have the money and people to execute sophisticated campaigns across multiple channels. However, in my neck of the woods there are far more business-to-business (B2B) organizations that employ marketers. I've actually spent my whole career working for B2B organizations. So, this list of 15 tips is for you B2B folks. It's business time!

Customers buy you before they buy your brand

The high involvement nature of B2B products/services requires the development of relationships between buyer and seller so it's critical that you use marketing strategies that encourage this. Relationships are formed based on the sharing of information and sharing of time together. Customers will be far more concerned with your level of expertise and reputation than the emotion your new logo evokes or the candy basket you sent as a Christmas gift. Besides face-time with clients there are online things you can be doing so that your reputation precedes you to facilitate the relationship building:

1. Recruit the experts in your company to contribute to a blog.
2. Author in-depth white-papers and host them on a landing page in exchange for an email address.
3. Conduct training seminars or host an industry conferences.
4. Shift some of your media spend to highly targeted online advertising (I.e LinkedIn advertising or online industry forum advertising).
5. Use an online reputation monitoring tool like Mention or Sysomos Heartbeat to track what's being said about your industry online and then join the conversation.

Purchases are based on logic more so than emotion

This may seem counter to the previous point, but a purchase won't even be considered until a relationship is established. You need to have a relationship prior to getting the request-for-proposal and if you don't then your chances of winning are slim to none. Customers want to make themselves look good to their boss by choosing the most reliable supplier that can deliver the most value for the budget available. In a nutshell, customers want to mitigate risk and do their job successfully. Choosing the supplier will usually come down to price and the level of support that buys. So, save customers some time and headache while making yourself look preferable to the competition:

1. Avoid flowery product/service descriptions and stick to the main features and benefits. You're not selling a lifestyle, you're selling a business solution.
2. Avoid using corporate buzzwords and internal lingo. You won't impress customers with fancy terms and internal acronyms, you'll only alienate them. Be straight to the point about what you provide.
3. Offer comparison tools that contrast your product against the competition.
4. Be flexible with pricing and disclose as much of it as you legally/comfortably can on the website or in brochures.
5. Customers want a relationship but they don't necessarily want to be your friend - Keep things professional until you earn a friendship.

The most important thing - Generating leads

Marketing is easy to do but tough to do well. You can waste a lot of money whether it's advertising in the wrong places, hiring the wrong people, or spending money on too many ephemeral initiatives.  It's easy to lose site of the goal when you're distracted by fun things like social media, designing a new logo, or planning the next staff party. Far too often these things are where marketers end up spending most there time whether it's consciously or assigned. You need to do better than this, and it requires focussing on strategies, objectives, and tactics that result in leads using a process that's repeatable.

1. Maintain an email database of your prospects and customers with a strategy to nurture them using email software.
2. Quit trying to use social media as a direct sales channel - you're wasting your time. Position it for aiding awareness and customer service.
3. Make it easy as possible for prospects and customers to interface with your staff by using such things as a chat feature on your website, web based project management tools, and online dashboards for project reporting or delivery notification.
4. Embrace marketing automation software like HubSpot, InfusionSoft, Marketo, or Optify to help systemize your lead generation efforts and schedule communications.
5. Have goals associated with your website and track them using analytics (e.g email subscribers, inquiries, ebook downloads, sales, etc).