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You have developed a new product or offer a new service and are now looking for customers. Without proactively addressing potential new customers on all channels, you will fail sooner or later as a B2B service provider, because: No matter how much online advertising you place expensively, the number of potential leads via search engine marketing is very limited compared to B2C business and is usually not enough to cover your costs in the first place. Therefore, deal comprehensively with the topics of cold calling, advertising letters & lettershop as well as customer acquisition via LinkedIn, Facebook and social media.
Most of your eventual buyers are NOT currently looking for
No matter how great your product or service is, most of the customer groups you have in mind won't need it. Don't expect the number of searches on Google and other search engines to be enough to get enough leads from which you could generate any customers at all. In reality, over 80% of your potential customers are not currently actively searching for your product or service, and therefore not Googling for it. So the only way you will reach these customer groups is through a phone call or letter.
The price is NOT the central decision criterion for your customer
The actual price charged is secondary in terms of your customer's buying decision. More important is to clearly present the benefits of your product or service to the customer in spé and build trust. Address the individual needs, which can be not only the current, but also the future needs of the customer, and see where the shoe pinches, or where problems and potential for improvement lie.
Make sure that potential customers get information on your website
Most of your website visitors are gone faster than you can look. You've invested thousands of euros in redesigning your website? Congratulations, but you would have been better off investing that money in telephone sales. Often, your website is only called up and visited a few times after the successful initial contact and your offer is scrutinized before a positive purchase decision is made. You should therefore make sure that you collect the contact details of prospective customers, e.g. through a newsletter registration, request via contact form incl. the declaration of consent for a later contact.
Most buyers of your products will NOT use them
If you have managed to convince your potential customer of the benefits of your product or services (by identifying and addressing their pain points) and have created a level of trust through communication, the customer will buy - regardless of whether they currently need the product or will use it in the future. The average B2B customer typically buys an opportunity, potential, tool, or even a way to improve his situation, situation, or opportunities that he will want to access and benefit from in the future when he will actually need it. In this sense, he is buying an additional item in his arsenal.
A few of your potential customers are swimming in money, but most are not far from insolvency
Make sure that your offer is aimed at a clientele that is solvent enough to pay the prices charged - and on time. Nothing is more annoying than unpaid invoices, chargebacks and avoidable reminders. Depending on the scope of your service, installment payments or monthly lump sums may be an option. In addition to the option for customers to order on account, you should also offer payments via PayPal, Klarna (formerly Sofortüberweisung) and possibly by credit card. However, note here that additional costs arise.
Without networking and personal network you will not be successful
Without referrals from actual customers who, in good conscience, introduce your products and services to acquaintances and friends entrepreneurs, agency owners or other self-employed and freelancers, you will not grow sustainably. Referral marketing should be a central part of your marketing strategy. Therefore, also consider setting up your own affiliate program to benefit from the network effect.
For many B2B service providers and companies, acquiring new customers is a major challenge. Often, the market environment is very competitive, i.e. there is a multitude of comparable offers and competitors in the respective niche, region or industry. With increasing competitive pressure within the market segment, click prices for online marketing campaigns also rise, resulting in lead costs in the double- or triple-digit euro range.
What is the alternative?
With the help of so-called content marketing, you attract potential prospects and convince them of your offer. This is a marketing strategy that often pays off if you can't compete with the multi-million dollar marketing budgets of international corporations.
What is the alternative?
Collect leads and contact information for later contact
Has the prospect:in moved on your website, you have managed in the optimum case to trigger a direct order. In the vast majority of cases, however, this is not the case and so it is important to at least get the website visitor to at least bookmark your website for a later revisit or to make a request, e.g. to use a demo version, a free consultation or an individual offer.
There are various sources and strategies for generating leads (both as a B2B and as a provider in the end customer business). Basically, a distinction can be made between unpaid (so-called organic) and paid sources of leads, e.g. in the form of Google Ads.
The situation for most companies and providers in the B2B sector is as follows: There is strong competition/stiff competition in the respective niche, high click prices, escalating marketing budgets as well as ad campaigns that do not work. The downward spiral of ever increasing costs with ever poorer conversion rates is supposed to be stopped with a further increase in the marketing budget - which often enough fails.
But what is the alternative to expensive online marketing?
With the help of so-called content marketing, you provide potential prospects and customers with free knowledge with added value and thus create trust. The goal is that the customers in spé deal longer with your offer and do not leave your website after a few seconds, but click through your website. The more articles, i.e. content, you provide on your website, the more this testifies to competence in your respective field and will increase the likelihood of a purchase.
In the best case, you manage to get interested parties to sign up for your newsletter, for example, to be informed about future discount promotions, make an inquiry via contact form or phone. It is important to obtain their consent to be contacted in order to be able to contact them in the future in the so-called follow-up process and to convert them into customers in the long term. After all, the majority of B2B customers only buy after the second, third or fourth contact. Here, it is also important to understand the so-called sales cycle in the business-to-business business.
If you have managed to direct interested parties to your site through thematically relevant articles or blogpots, the first hurdle has been cleared. Therefore, think about how you can maximize the number of visitors who come to your site for free (so-called organic traffic). These can be, for example, articles with titles that consist of specific questions as potential customers enter them in Google or other search engines, articles about current news in your industry or niche, product news or reviews.
The idea of monitoring mentions of one's own company on all channels sounds tempting. After all, measuring the success of sending out a press release can be quite useful.
For this purpose, there are a number of providers who monitor the media market on a daily basis with crawlers and specifically search for your company name in the monitored media sources.
For this survey and analysis service, which often includes the automated preparation in simple dashboards, often thousands of euros per year are due.
The easiest and most practical way or work around for the vast majority of companies is to simply create an Altert on Google News that will notify you when your company name is mentioned in an article, because - if it's not there today it's not relevant. With the ability to set the time period, for example, to one year, and the number of search results to 200, you can quickly copy the URLs to the articles, along with the teaser text, into a spreadsheet, and most importantly, for free.
Some providers already charge several thousand euros per year just for depositing these so-called press clippings (=links to the articles) - in addition to the costs of media monitoring or press clippings, which provide the URLs to be deposited.