Monday, September 3, 2012

How to make Big B2B Marketing and sales results with a small budget


Many small and medium-sized businesses fail due to lack of effective marketing and sales program. Entrepreneurs can be very good at their core business, but I know very little about marketing. Some people have the theory espoused by Ralph Waldo Emerson: "If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door." They are innocently involved in a love for their products or services and believe that the world will really beat a path to their door when prospects hear about the fantastic new product. This attitude is wrong, dangerous, and not in line with the practices of successful B2B marketing. In reality, most of the time, marketing upper beats a superior product.

Another reason for failure is that an effective marketing campaign is hard work. Since marketing is probably not what motivated the entrepreneur to start his business, receives less priority compared to product development and other activities. Marketing also is often short when funds are allocated scarce. Unfortunately, there are start-up companies that spend tens of thousands of dollars in furniture and equipment, while complaining that there's nothing left for marketing.

New companies also make a costly mistake by assuming that advertising agencies are unable to cost-effective, low-budget marketing. Or employ sales and marketing talent with great companies, and these people are often unaware of how to get results with a limited budget. So if you're a small company, be careful to hire the hotshot from a big company to come fix your problems. It often does not work. This does not mean that everyone from a large company is not able to be effective with a small budget, some are great, no matter the company size.

Small and medium enterprises and start-up facing two major obstacles that are not shared by large, entrenched companies. First, if you happen to be a small fish in a big pond, you will be faced with competing with much larger advertising and marketing budgets. Secondly, you may need to spend a greater percentage of revenues compared to the old market, organizations involved.

Given the reality of this situation, you need to squeeze as much efficiency as possible out of every dollar. Be sure that much can be done on a limited budget, and expensive does not always mean better. I used often limited and strategies to beat the big players and you can do the same. And the lessons you learn in doing so frugal will serve you well, no matter how successful you become, or how the marketing budget expands. Here are a set of strategies and tactics for small budget you can use to beat the big boys:

Small budget Site Strategies:
1. Do not oversize your website. There are ways to create an impressive site using less complex or an open source model approaches.
2. If possible, have an easy to remember the address of the website that refers to what your company.
3. Please enter your web address (URL) on all business materials.
4. Make sure your site is optimized for organic search terms. This is a low-cost strategy that will make it much easier to find.
5. Try narrowly focused low-cost pay per click search terms.
6. Giving away some free information to increase your website viscosity.
7. Create links with many other sites to boost your search engine visibility.
8. Update the content frequently. Do not let the site go stale.

Small budget: Social Media Strategies
1. Start your own blog and comment on other blogs.
2. Always list your Web address on your blog posts and any electronic communication.
3. Leverage LinkedIn and other networking sites.
4. Use Twitter to find relevant messages and perspectives.
5. Be controversial (but not too controversial) to attract attention.
6. Choose a niche where you can be an expert.
7. Write articles and get them published in the online media.
8. Focus on one or two social media. This focused attention bring more attention to your efforts to throw five or six points.

Small Budget Strategies Email:
1. Work hard to build your prospect file email opt-in names. This will be a gold mine in low-cost leads and sales.
2. Include a promotional message and your website address as part of your email signature standard.
3. Contain links to valuable information in your e-mail, not only fields of product.
4. Make your e-mail interesting and / or unusual.
5. Run the copy e-mail through a spam detection tool, as EmailExam, Acxiom Digital or Lyris ContentChecker to ensure your emails are not caught in spam filters.
6. Having a simple opt-out process. If you do not want to keep sending emails to people who want to be removed from the list.

Small budget direct marketing strategies:
1. Please send your lists more effectively using demographic, psychographic, and some of the other list segmentation tools available. The purpose is to send a smaller number of packages and obtain a greater response.
2. Check your mailing and telemarketing in small quantities before committing large sums of real programs. Equally important, use the information learned about each program for the next best job.
3. Try a postcard mailer. Production costs are low, the first-class postage is less expensive to mail, and pull very well. You can drive prospects to a web form or toll-free telephone.
4. Cut four color process direct mail packages. Unless you are selling food, magazines, resort properties, or other products that require excellent graphical representation, you can probably pull as much response with two-color printing.
5. Consider the third list with class instead of first class postage. Depending on whether you presort file, this will save you a lot of money, and most prospects will not notice the difference. The exception is with time-sensitive offers, as third-class mail can take one more week to get first class.
6. If mail to a large number on a national basis, or send mailings highly concentrated in local or regional areas, using pre-post selection for lower shipping costs.

More cost reduction ideas:
1. If you are a small company (a flea), finding a large company (a dog) to work with. This will make it much easier to sell to larger companies.
2. Read the chapter on public relations carefully and start to play his advice. PR is a low effort, high reward vehicle that is often under-utilized by small marketing budgets.
3. Be persistent. Remember the rule eight times: there is no need to spend a lot of money to any communication, but it is necessary to repeat the message up to eight times to gain awareness perspective.
4. Write handwritten personal notes to prospects and customers. They are cheap, but have a big impact.
5. Ask for the referral. They are much easier to sell at a lower cost.
6. Use experts. Consulting a specialist will cost you something in the short term but can save you money and aggravation in the long term.
7. Index the primary products and services, stationery and business cards, or anything else you give to potential buyers.
8. Since consistency is crucial for people with small budgets, make sure that every one of your marketing efforts supports and strengthens the Unique Selling Proposition (USP).
9. Hone your bargaining skills. The media are hungry for business and many have unsold advertising space. Use this to your advantage in negotiating aggressively.

Another important principle is to practice the lever. Try to create content once and use it in different marketing scenarios. This is less costly and time consuming, and the consistency of the message is important .......

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