Business To Business
Marketing Strategy


The best business to business marketing strategy may be something you wouldn’t necessarily expect in a world seemingly ruled by social media.

In fact, you’re missing the boat if you’re a B2B company and you’re not using the strategies I talk about in this article.

Ever hear older, experienced people … like me … talk about the “good old days”?  The way things used to be.  And how it was better and done better back then.

Depending on your point of view, many things were better.  But for many people, now is the best time to be alive.  It all depends on your perspective.

Think about the investing and trading world.  Before online brokers, there were stockbrokers.  People who made their living hyping and selling the publicly traded stock of companies on various exchanges. 

If you wanted to invest in the stock market, you called up a broker and told him what you wanted.

You probably even asked him for his advice.  That advice could just as easily have been good or bad.  But you paid for that advice.

I wanted to be one of those guys.  And I almost went to work for Merrill Lynch to be a stockbroker.  They used to be strictly a stock brokerage company with offices all over the world. 

Now … after being bought out like so many conventional brokers … they’re known as Merrill Lynch Wealth Management.  As their name suggests, they’re a wealth management division of Bank of America. 

Good old-fashioned stockbrokers are now nearly obsolete.  As are a lot of the old-school strategies used in B2B marketing.

Direct mail is still used to an extent but nowhere near where it used to be.  The cost is so prohibitive for the uncertain results so often received.  It costs huge dollars to even test a direct mail campaign.

And sales reps … who used to physically call on businesses … have now become account executives in so many cases.  There are a lot fewer of them and they often sit in an office rather than actually visit prospective customers.

So what is the best business to business marketing strategy?  Well, it’s email.  Email is used to such an extent now that ... for many companies ... it’s their primary source of getting leads and closing sales.

Email marketing is so powerful that B2B companies send out more than 1 million emails each week in the US.  And they do it because it works.  Better than any method they've tried.

Some of the ways B2B companies use email marketing as the best business to business marketing strategy are:


1.  Lead Generation

It’s a simple formula.  The more leads a company can generate, the more the more sales they can potentially make.  They know that a predictable number of those leads will lead to sales.

A lead is a prospect.  Someone who has expressed an interest in a company’s product or service.  And leads eventually develop into paying customers.

Companies offer prospective leads something for free in exchange for their email address … and often … their name.

The most common free offers are:

  • Email newsletters
  • White papers
  • Case studies
  • Brochures
  • Free trials
  • Product demos

Using emails for lead generation usually involves sending out “content” emails.  Information the prospect will find interesting and informative.  These are interspersed with more “hard sell” emails although they don’t have to beat prospects over the head to be successful.


2. E-Newsletters

B2B companies send email newsletters … e-newletters … to stay in touch with prospects.  And continue to develop a relationship with them.

E-newsletters are typically sent out once a month but sometimes more often. 


3.  Nurturing Leads

Using ongoing email to stay in touch with prospects.  This usually involves a series … maybe even delivered by autoresponder …as a follow-up to the free offer mentioned above. 

These emails will typically offer links back to a sales page offering your products or services.


4.  Special Announcements

These emails are used to keep prospects … and even paying customers … up-to-date on new offerings:  products, services or a new blog post. 

Software companies … for example … might send out a special email broadcasting the introduction of their latest product.

Please read through the rest of this site to learn more about why email is still the best business to business marketing strategy there is.

 

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