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B2B marketing on a budget – 6 strategies to maximise your resources

So, you are a small business that is just ticking along but you know that your product is great, why do your customers not see this too? A few more sales could really make a difference, but you don’t have a big marketing budget to set the industry alight.
Here are a few simple tips of how you can ensure more sales at minimal or no cost to you.

1. New customers

Creating new leads is the number 1 on businesses’ wish lists, but how do you do that without resorting to cold calling? First – don’t cold call, I am sure there is a well-oiled script that everybody in your company reels off every time they receive a spam caller. Make sure you are visible online, convenient and quick to use, and easy to understand. Make sure your potential customers can find you online on those platforms they use. This presents you with a free way to advertise yourself, so make the most of it. Fill in your bio on all the big-player-sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram. Link back to your website. Use relevant hashtags and keywords.
Engage with customers in your industry by liking, commenting, retweeting and sharing their content.

2. Improve customer experience

62% of customers will spend more on a simple buying experience. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly, fast, easy to navigate and tells your customers clearly what you do. Have your contact details easily accessible and only put things on there that are interesting or important to your new and existing clients.

3. Remind your previous customers of your existence

A sale should not be where the relationship with your customer ends. There could be a million reasons why they have not come back – so send them an email or a letter. Offer a discount or a freebie next time they buy. Give rewards for referring your business to their network. If a customer returns and has a hassle-free experience, they halfway to becoming a loyal customer. The minimum follow-up should be to ask for feedback, this gives you data for testimonials.

4. Only useful, important, entertaining or exciting content

What are the kinds of questions you are answering all the time? For every time you have explained something in person, there are at least 100 people trawling the internet for answers.
You could:

Do a video tutorial or introduce a new product
Write a How-to guide
Write content in ‘list format’ such as this one. No more than 10 – nobody is interested in a ‘Top 40’ and it is wasted content
Use infographics that are informative/important to your audience
You can use these across your email marketing, social media pages, and your website
You can recycle some of the best performing post a few months later
Share relevant 3^rd party content
Include customer testimonials in your online presence
You could even turn these into a slide show video (30 secs max.) – videos rank highly on engagement
MOST IMPORTANTLY – be active online and give your customers stuff they want to read or watch, or stuff they didn’t know was important to them

5. Create a loyalty/reward system

customers collect points to get free stuff
or you give them exclusive promotions or discounts if they come back within 30 days or spend over £££
Offer rewards for referring up to 3 new customers

6. Prove of how good you are – Industry awards

Most industries have awards that set the standard
Gives clients confidence in your business and is proof of your credibility and expertise

7. It’s party time!

Well, depends on your line of business or industry I guess. The term ‘event’ is probably more appropriate. This could be:

Online – offering a day or week of bonuses, discounts, deals and competitions
A real-life event to tempt new and existing customers to visit you
Opportunity to answer questions or introduce a new product or range
Create an inviting atmosphere, a buzz – drinks and nibbles, maybe a DJ if your budget allows
free samples – or any free stuff
A competition, giveaway or a raffle – basically free stuff

This allows for interesting content in the build-up. Use good-quality pictures on social media announcements or flyers and distribute across all your online platforms. Competitions make for online engagement. And finally, why not print some flyers and hand them out? It’s simple and cost-effective. These tips will help you to find new leads, strengthen existing ones and hopefully get people talking about your business.

How to generate leads for your small business in 2021

Leads are the lifeblood of every business.

In order to survive and thrive, your organisation will need to have a steady stream of sales leads, but even seasoned professionals can find it difficult at times.

It’s no surprise; securing that steady flow is hard work. It requires you to continuously attract new leads, qualify and nurture them, and ultimately turn them into customers. This process, called lead generation, is essentially a technique of finding the right mix of channels that will get you in front of the right people. Using an effective lead generation system will make this process a whole lot easier, but just like any tough job, lead generation requires you to invest some time and effort upfront.

If you’re not sure where to begin, this guide will get you started by leading you through five key strategies to capture and convert those all-important leads.

Create buyer personas

A lead is a prospective customer, so the obvious starting place is to work out just who is likely to buy your product or service, and how you can reach them. Begin this process with research – use the internet to find similar companies to you and see how their consumers are, and study your existing customers, you’ll learn a lot. Consider the basic components that make up a consumer – age, gender, likes, dislikes, purchase habits and financial situation, then feed these into a pen portrait to build buyer personas of your ideal prospect. You should also look closely at the information you hold on existing customers to help build this picture.

Build your marketing plan

Build your plan using SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-Based) goals, and remember to employ a wide range of techniques, with a sharp focus on inbound marketing techniques designs to draw potential clients to you. This ensures the leads coming to you are ‘warm’, making your job securing the customer that bit easier. Here are a few of our recommended inbound techniques:

Digital Advertising

Social media channels and search engines offer incredibly targeted ways of getting your business in front of potential leads. Often referred to as Pay Per Click, they are an effective way to get visitors to your site.

SEO

Digital advertising won’t work for every business, and in some cases SEO is worth greater investment. Google gets an incredible 3.5 billion searches a day, making it prime real estate for lead gen. SEO will improve your visibility in search engine rankings – hopefully keeping you away from the fateful second page of Google results! It must be routinely updated and maintained in order to bring in a steady stream of leads, but when done well can bring in endless warm leads ready to be converted to customers.

A Statista survey conducted among marketing professionals in the US, found that 43% of respondents believed SEO to be the most effective channel in producing high ROI, so this is a powerful place to invest your lead gen budget.

Blogging

Creating engaging content that is promoted well will position you as a thought leader in your field, demonstrating your credibility and bringing a human element to your company. Be sure to include a call to action at the end of each post.

Build a sales pipeline

Once your leads start coming in they’ll need to be nurtured to be transferred into sales. Using a sales funnel model will allow you to organise your customers journey. Once in place, your pipeline will also give you an overview of where prospects are in the sales process. There are a number of reputable platforms that can support this work.

Embrace automation

As you begin to get leads in, you’ll need to find an efficient way to keep in contact with them and nurture them through the pipeline. Plan ahead and look at where automation, such as email marketing, could help you in this process. The beauty of automation is its ability to allow you to scale your marketing efforts whilst keeping your content personalised to your audience. Automation does not mean impersonal – Liana Technologies reported that almost 70% of marketers found improved targeting of messages was one the most important benefits of marketing automation.

All of your prospects have different needs, and having the option to treat them as such will seriously strengthen your relationship. Look for an email service that offers segmentation and tailored, dynamic content which gives you the chance to customise content based on your contact’s needs.

Harness the power of social media marketing

Social media now stands as one of the most effective lead generation channels, and it should therefore feature significantly in your strategy. These platforms are excellent for enabling relationship-building, and once you begin regularly posting engaging content, you’ll attract followers who you can then drive to your website. Here are our top suggestions for using the major platforms to generate leads:

Twitter

According to Optin Monster, 66% of people have discovered a new business on Twitter, so it’s a great place to make yourself heard. Promote your new content such as your blogs, and stay active. Commenting, sharing and engaging is vital to keep a vibrant community.

LinkedIn

One of the smartest things you can do on LinkedIn is to take advantage of the platform’s targeted advertising. It’s in users best interested to keep their profiles up to date, which makes LinkedIn an advertisers dream – you can zone in on just about any part of your audiences profile.

Facebook

Like LinkedIn, Facebook has some incredibly precise targeting options. The platform gives you the option to create campaigns using a Lead Generation objective that allows consumers to fill in a form with their contact information. Most internet users are on Facebook, therefore it’s unsurprising that Smart Bug Media reported that 84% of marketers choose to use this platform to acquire leads.

Remember, business growth can be a difficult and long-term process, and a sign of sustainable progress is a steady increase in sales, rather than random sale spikes. Following these tips will give you insight and overview, allowing you to scale your operations up gradually. Good luck!

How brands should behave on social media during COVID-19

The Coronavirus pandemic is perhaps the largest challenge most brands have ever faced.

As the world changes rapidly before our eyes it’s vital that we respond appropriately in this trying time. Companies are finding themselves being challenged by consumers like never before – be it about the treatment of workers or how they’re contributing to the cause, how your brand acts on social is more important now than ever before.

Your inclination might be to go quiet across social media. We understand that urge. How do you compete with a global pandemic? Is it even ethical to do so? A number of high profile brands directly affected by the pandemic have made that decision – there hasn’t been any Twitter activity from easyJet since 17th February as they contend with refunding and rearranging their customer’s flights and hand sanitizer producer Purell haven’t tweeted anything aside from official statements since February. Hygiene companies such as Purell could be accused of profiteering so their silence is probably a wise choice. However, unless the nature of your services or product puts your brand at risk of being insensitive, we strongly suggest you do not go dark.

Done well, this moment represents an important opportunity for your brand. Perhaps surprisingly, SOPRO has reported that as much as two-thirds (65%) of all industries will experience stable or increased demand – with more than a third (39%) likely to see increased demand during the pandemic. Therefore, it’s vital that you keep active on social media to keep your business afloat, however, this must be done in a sensitive and appropriate manner.

So how do you navigate this confusing time? Whether your business has temporarily ceased trading, is still in full operation or if you are contending with fewer customers (or too many panicked customers) we’ve assembled these guidelines to help you find a new focus to your digital content strategy.

First things first, 2 very important rules:

Do not try to profit from the crisis, or do anything that could be interpreted as profiteering:

A global pandemic is not a marketing opportunity. It would be not only insensitive but downright dangerous for a brand to try to profit from this tragedy. Corona (who, granted, are in a very unusual situation sharing the name of the virus) have come under fire for running a campaign for their new Corona Hard Seltzer with the tagline ‘Coming Ashore Soon’. It should go without saying, but Coronavirus is not something you want to associate your brand with.

Do not run campaigns that could be considered ill-timed amid a global pandemic:

KFC recently paused their ‘Finger Lickin’ ads, amidst criticism that encouraging customers to lick their fingers during the global spread of coronavirus was a rather bad idea. Geico also halted their campaign ‘Perfect High Five’ after customers made noise on Twitter about how inappropriate it was. A Coors ad titled ‘Official Beer of ‘Working’ Remotely was also put on hold over concerns that the message would come across as tone-deaf as most of us transition to working from home. The lesson – a campaign that was seemingly inoffensive a month ago could be seen in a very different light today.

A New Social Strategy

Due to panic, curiosity or the fact that a majority of people are now stuck at home, time spent on social media is significantly up. 85% of Chinese consumers reported an increase of at-home screen usage during the outbreak. Bearing in mind that your content will likely be sandwiched between rolling news coverage on Covid-19, you should consider the following when creating content amidst the pandemic.

Distraction

It’s important to steer your focus away from hard-selling. Remember, the increased time we are all spending online is prompting a lot of people on social media to be even more vocal than usual, particularly on platforms such as Twitter. If your company comes in trying to make a hard sell for a product that feels ill-timed, your followers will let you know about it.

In these economically uncertain times consumers are looking for distraction, so consider what you could offer for free to provide that for your customers. Offering tips to survive lockdown is a good idea, as is providing ideas to keep the kids entertained.

Connection

Now is the time to build a sense of trust in your brand. ‘Trust content’ allows you to spend more meaningful time connecting with your audience, something they will appreciate when things return to business as usual. Consider creating long-form content such as articles, video series, podcasts or training content. Adjusting the volume of social media content, you post is perfectly reasonable right now. Give additional attention to creating high quality, meaningful trust content instead.

Figure out how your company can create good will and stand by your customers during this time. Be it offering more customer service across social or extending return windows, it’s a chance to deepen that all-important brand awareness and trust.

Community-building

People are seeking social communities online like never before. Virtual communities are popping up across social media – from bands performing live streamed concerts to fitness trainers providing live streamed classes – people are coming together for a whole new type of experiential moment. If your brand can offer this type of experience, great! If not, think of other ways you can rally your audience together, such as sharing content that connects us all to help build that feeling of coming together over a common cause.

Consider changing the focus of your campaigns from hard-selling to raising brand awareness. Community- building should be the focus of your social campaigns, maintaining your recognition level, so your customers can respond when they are ready to spend. For instance, set new conversion goals on your Facebook campaigns so they are raising brand awareness rather than trying to make sales.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

With the indefinite timeline of the Covid-19 pandemic, it can be challenging to look to the future, but brands can serve a vital role in doing this. This does not mean offering discount codes for 6 weeks down the line, but just providing simple positive messaging that reminds us all this will come to an end. Switzerland’s tourist board is a particularly good example of this, giving their social media followers a slice of Switzerland from afar, using hashtags like #neverstopdreaming and #staystrong to bolster morale.

Companies must remember that there will be a point someday where everything will return to business as usual. If your business has gone quiet on social media for months on end the effects could be catastrophic; customers would have good reason to think you had gone out of business during the pandemic. Instead, use this time to distract, connect with and support your customers. If you can successfully adapt and offer your customers value in this time of uncertainty, you will win their trust and when normal life resumes and they do spend again, it will be with you.

Make LinkedIn work for your small business this year

LinkedIn has long been known as the home of B2B discussion, and in 2020 the opportunities to engage and grow your business are expanding. Companies of almost any kind can benefit from maintaining a LinkedIn presence, and although it does require a dedicated, platform-specific approach, the numbers speak for themselves:

LinkedIn has more than 645 million users, across more than 200 countries and territories;
LinkedIn has added nearly 150 million new members in the past two years;
94% of marketers use LinkedIn to publish content;
Of the LinkedIn users who are engaging with the platform monthly, 40% access it on a daily basis;

LinkedIn is the world’s largest and most active professional networking platform and your company page represents a huge opportunity to establish your brand as an industry thought leader, as well as attract top talent from around the globe. Here’s how to optimize your business page and improve your presence, authority, and recruitment prospects on the platform.

How to create and optimise your page

Step 1

Step 2

Select small business from the list of options.

Step 3

Fill out your company’s name, a public LinkedIn URL, your business’ website and your business’ industry.

Step 4

Check the verification box to confirm you are authorised to represent your company, then click create a page. If you don’t have enough connections, you may not be able to create a community page. If this happens, build your network then try again.

Step 5

To really unlock your business page’s potential, you need to optimize your page – according to LinkedIn, completed pages get 30% more weekly views. Start by identifying keywords and using them throughout your page.

Include relevant keywords at the very beginning of your company tagline as well as in your headline, overview, specialisms and life section. Keyword research will help you understand the actual search terms that people enter into search engines. Use tools such as Moz Keyword Explorer or SEMRush to help you.

Step 6

Using those keywords, write a strong ‘About’ section. Work up an engaging overview of your business, that answer the following questions:

Origin Story: Where did our idea and passion come from?
Vision: What future do you want to help create?
Values: What core values support our vision and decision making processes?
Positioning: Who are our customers and where do we fit?
Products/Services: What are our core product & service offerings?

Step 7

Creating backlinks to your company page will help boost your SEO ranking. A good way to do this is to ask your employees to update their LinkedIn profiles so that their page’s a link back to your business.

Step 8

The best way to improve your company’s ranking is to regularly share relevant content. Read on to discover the best type of content to share.

What posts to share

Social media content is all about who you want to reach and if it will drive viewers down your marketing funnel. Here are a few types of content that work especially well on LinkedIn, including a deep-dive into video, our top-tip for 2020.

Publishing how-to blogs or list posts

Writing informative articles is a great way to raise your visibility and start conversations on LinkedIn. It demonstrates your industry expertise and positions you as a thought leader. How-to blogs and list posts receive the most attention on LinkedIn, and given their easily digestible formatting it’s easy to see why.

Sharing Industry-Adjacent Content

The key to LinkedIn articles is to consistently share information that interests your clients. This content gives you the opportunity to showcase other topics you’re familiar with that could be helpful to clients. Customers remember smart people who offer up reliable advice, so sharing industry-adjacent content helps keep you top of their mind in the long run.

PowerPoints and PDFS

LinkedIn owns the service SlideShare, which offers tools to help you make your own presentations. Take advantage of their tools and courses and share original slideshows on your LinkedIn page.

Make Predictions

Prediction posts at the start of the year are a winning tool for boosting your LinkedIn engagement. Making predictions about your industry positions you as a sector leader and encourages people to share their opinions with you.

LinkedIn Video

Video is 5 times more likely than other types of content to start a conversation amongst LinkedIn members, so it’s a great tool for increasing brand awareness, offering a more human side to your company.

According to Wyzowl’s 2019 State of Video Marketing…

79% of people say a brand’s video has convinced them to make a purchase
87% of people would like to see more videos from brands.
What’s more, 59% of executives agree that if both text and video are available on the same topic, they are more likely to choose video.

Despite this, video is still a relatively untapped marketing channel. Don’t be put off by a lack of budget of technical know-how, you can create this content affordably in – house your video content doesn’t necessarily have to be professionally produced to be effective. Here are a few ideas for creating that captivating video content.

Create screencast tutorials and presentations.

A screencast is simply a video recording of your computer screen accompanied by audio narration. Use a PowerPoint presentation or high-quality visuals, and narrate as if you were giving a presentation. Screencasts are one of the most cost-effective techniques for producing video content and are the perfect place to start if you’re camera shy or don’t have a video camera.

Show behind the scenes of your business

Giving your followers a backstage pass offers a unique insight into your business – why not highlight your best employees, or flaunt your office culture and brand values?

Try DIY animated videos

Hiring professionals to make animated videos will set you back a fair bit, so why not try giving it a go yourself? Animated videos are a great tool for simply explaining concepts, whilst enchanting your viewers. Try cloud-based animated video creation platforms such as Sparkol or Vyond. These platforms are not free but are more affordable than employing a professional, and many of them offer free trials.

Share video testimonials from happy customers

User-generated videos take the pressure off your company to produce content while offering social proof – something you can never get enough of as a business. Customers product reviews, social media shout outs and testimonials are invaluable tools to grow your business, and if they are video testimonials, even better! To cultivate your customers, why not consider offering them discount codes in exchange for video testimonials of your product.

Interview experts and thought leaders

Associating your business with influential thought leaders in your field will help you become recognized as an industry leader. Interviewing experienced leaders in your industry is a tried-and-tested way to build trust and authority with your target audience.

Pro tip: Add subtitles to your video content – studies have found 39% of people are more likely to finish a video with subtitles.

How to grow your followers

You’d think out of 645 million users, it wouldn’t be that difficult to quickly build your connections, but after you’ve exhausted your own contacts list it can be a challenge, especially when you want to make sure those connections are relevant and add value to your network. Here are some simple steps to help grow your followers:

Add a page link in your signature

If you’re already emailing someone professionally, it’s likely your page will interest them.

Add the follow company plugin to your website

This drives visitors from your website to your LinkedIn, increasing your reach.

Ask your employees to add your page to their current work experience

This will help you get more backlinks and gives you the opportunity to share your employees’ best posts on LinkedIn, profiling your top talent as well as leveraging their networks.

Mention companies and pages in page updates

By mentioning companies with the @ symbol it’s easier for them to reshare your content in front of your audience. Think about the companies you admire and have strong followings and mention them in your updates.

Keep it up

Post consistently – according to LinkedIn, pages that post daily get twice the member engagement. Try the 3, 2,1 technique to keep your content varied- every week aim to post 3 pieces of industry-related content, 2 pieces of ‘proud’ content (content that makes your employees and followers feel good) and just one piece of product-related content.

Remember to engage promptly – reply, comment and ask questions and keep your business details and photos up to date. Building a community on LinkedIn requires attention.

Make LinkedIn work for your small business this year

There are endless opportunities to make your small business LinkedIn Page work wonders for your company. Of course, running a small business can be challenging, but with a good plan in place and the right tools, LinkedIn can be a fantastic tool for helping your company grow. We hope you’ve found this guide helpful, and are inspired to make LinkedIn work hard for you in 2020!