Business to Business Marketing

The hardest part for my business is finding the right person to contact. That in of itself makes my job a whole lot easier.

I've begun utilizing tools like Linkedin to narrow down my prospects by location, industry and job title. This has made finding that right person 10 times easier.

Hi Richard,

With our first business, a marketing communications firm, and our second, a marketing e-zine, we are totally B2B. Naturally, the newspapers and radio don't work well for us.

We have found that developing a personal brand, networking and heavy involvement in business-focused organizations have been crucial to getting the word out about our business. We are very involved in two local Chambers of Commerce, with "light" involvement in a third. My husband is on the board of directors of two and chairs the marketing committee of one. We attend events, sponsor networking breakfasts, etc. We belong to three Chambers: Renton, Auburn and South King County (in your neck of the woods, I think.)

We have also found that getting involved in these communities in other ways has helped, too. We donate in-kind graphic design and copywriting for some of the local nonprofits, offer discounted services for annual reports, etc. for our favorite charity (Communities in Schools, a dropout prevention nonprofit) and we get publicity for those contributions, too. Applications for business awards, through which we have won several awards, has helped, too.

Basically for us, it has been networking, networking, networking. It is very time consuming, but on the other hand, you cultivate a list of people who know you, value what you are doing and are much more likely to buy from you.

That's local. Going global with our new business (the online e-zine) is a different story. That's more challenging because we have to get ourselves placed high enough in the search engines to attract people to our website and blog, first to sign up for our free weekly marketing e-tips (to cultivate their trust by providing free content), and then, hopefully, to buy sell our membership subscription e-zine.

Sorry to be so long-winded. I guess I had more to say than I thought.

Finding decision makers in mid to large size companies. This is a difficult task. They are often buried behind several levels of gatekeepers. Once a face to face meeting is to be had a successful outcome is almost guaranteed. Just gotta get that appointment.

Besides networking, I have found that making in-person cold calls on the business and just flat asking who the decision maker is, works the best. Of course this takes a little guts and drive to walk past the NO SOLICITING sign on the front door. Only 1 out of a 100 ever shoot me down over the sign. Most often people are wonderful and since I am not asking anything of them personally, they let me know who to call on.

Then the challenge really begins.....

This is a great topic as in my business (telecom) reaching small businesses is really key.

What I've realized over the years is there's two options - you can make yourself available to be found when they're looking or push your message in front of them regardless of their need.

Making yourself available when they're looking are things like yellow pages, pay per click, and search engine marketing. No matter which way you go, your competition is right there with you and the customer has to know your service exists and has to take time to find it. Sales growth is limited by placement and how many people go looking.

Or you can push your message out in newspapers, direct mail, cold calling, etc. Most of this gets overlooked since they overwhelmingly don't want what you have at the time, though a few will. But at least you get to put your message in front of people instead of waiting for them to go looking.

Networking and referrals of course are great...but they can be very slow and when you want to ramp up sales its hard to achieve the growth desired. Plus you have to look at time involvement - time is money after all.

Any way you go, the cost per client acquisition is a tough issue - most of us can't spend $2k on a direct mail campaign only to get one client.

Having said all that, so far this year three of my four major sales were due to online marketing with Social Media Systems.

My other solution was to start another company which is a different kind of direct mail B2B marketing product - and we're doing 5000 mailings for $750. Our first mailings go out in May.

A resource I use extensively is Jigsaw.com

How Jigsaw Helps? Bypass gatekeepers. Go straight to decision makers and influencers. If you're a salesperson, recruiter, marketer or business owner, Jigsaw will save you precious time.

What is Jigsaw? Jigsaw is an online directory of more than 7 million business contacts. Every contact in Jigsaw is complete with full name, title, postal address, hard-to-find email address and telephone number. If your success depends on reaching out to others, Jigsaw is essential.

Here is an excellent article with lots of tricks on getting through or hack through a PBX....

http://tinyurl.com/2okn8q

Hi,

Now a days it is really difficult to reach the right party contact but still list companies can solve your problem, you can reach the prospects through multi channel means name, telephone. emails and direct mailing address. I agree you cannot have access to less data but still subsription offers are for all kind of businesses

Hi,

Let me know the kind of prspects you are looking for, if can help with something.

I need the following details : 1.Industry 2.Geography 3.Titles

Regards

Getting the client to take the time to learn about my products and services is always the hardest challenge. The way I've gotten over that has been by developing a great reputation for service and pricing. That gets the referal machine roling. Art T.

What I've been running into lately is that larger companies are pulling back or regrouping and not contracting much work to an independent like me, or due to regulations and policies are making it a burden for me to stay in their prospect pool because of bond and insurance requirements, etc. I can't afford to work with them.

Entrepreneurial clients are not seeing projects through to completion. I accomplish part of the work and then they put things on hold.

You can tell I'm in a client-building mode at the moment.