The best way to get leads for a B2B solution is to do prospecting research online.
What should you look for? Very depends on your type and stage of business.
Assuming you are completely new here are some questions that would get you started:
1) What problem are the business you are looking for having or what goal do they have?
2) Do they have a burning need to solve it?
3) How does what you offer help them solve their problem or their goal?
4) What stage of business are they in? What industry? What size?
And that is just for starters. Best approach for online research from there on out depends on your answers to the above. Once you have them, set up a call and I can help you further.
Firstly, get some testimonials and case studies for the product.
Build a website and pay to have it SEOed professionally.
Plan a blog writing year of articles.
Get public speaking opportunities to showcase your expertise and if you can, mention the B2B solution.
Buy a mailing list (or build your own) and use direct mail to educate the audience in your area of expertise. Later mention the B2B solution and build a landing page on the website to capture inbound enquiries.
Seek referrals and word of mouth from happy customers.
In order to do these things you will need the following marketing assets: Website, brochure collateral, marketing automation software, CRM database, SEO and strong copywriting.
Happy to help with more detail if you arrange a 20 minute phone call with me personally. I can either tutor you in how to do it yourself, or my team can do it with/for you.
This is a very typical question and most people, even other business owners here will tell you just about the same thing. Get SEO, print out flyers, hit up some doors, etc. What if you have no money and or no time? Part of my Unthink Coaching focuses just in this topic.
Here is my advice:
1. I do agree you need SEO, but seo is not a single solution. What you need is called Search Marketing. This couples a lot of things into one cohesive simultaneous effort that takes into consideration social posts, locations, shares and their own locations, link creations, copy, blogs, shares, times, google ad marketing, etc. SEO alone won’t do anything and is not sustainable and is very expensive on its own. Starting out I would skip this.
2. Create landing pages, or hire someone to do them for you. Instapage.com is cheap to get and super easy to do. Learn about A/B testing. Then couple this with Mailchimp which is free and write your “blog” content type emails here…ending every single one with a different link to a particular subset of that list. But how do you get these leads?
3. Well, find your talent. If you are good at design, offer to create flyers for other businesses for free in exchange of your logo being in a corner or somewhere mentioned there. Find a horizontal competitor business who you can cross promote with. Piggy back on their marketing efforts. Example, in Arizona I grew HonestMaids, part of how I did that was realizing that there is a deep personal connection that landscapers or hvac/plumbers don’t get… I found these businesses who wanted to increase their sales – we became their referral system in exchange for them adding our brand to their site, flyers, and ad campaigns. Might not seem fair but 1 referral/suggestion from a friend is worth more than $100 dollars spent in ads. The maids having that closeness are very valuable in their opinions when they spot a homeowner with other maintenance problems. I suggest you do your homework on this because is huge. You didn’t mention your type of business otherwise I would have given you some ideas.
4. Call 5 businesses within a 15mile radius of your home (not office) every day. Google them, call them. That easy.
5. Make sure all your offerings and branding are cohesive.
6. Never compete on price. Be stubborn about what you offer and how much you charge.
7. Look into Blue Ocean Strategy – or give me a call
8. Offer your service for free to emerging businesses not established ones. Everyone goes for the established ones, but the newbies become evangelists a lot faster and easier.
Another example for #3, I helped a new accounting firm in Arizona accelerate their sales by adding more value to their offering. They reduced their prices by 80% and claimed to instead get 50% off whatever savings they found extra from previous years that the business clients’ previous accountant missed. This equaled to more than they would make on the 80% each single time. Not only that but I came up with the simple idea of offering a reinvestment service of the client’s 50% to gain interest and avoid taxes for the current year. This alone helped them find a market of business owners who invest on their personal time and thus were attracted to them. Creating simple facebook posts, flyers, business cards, youtube videos with email link or phone… is all you when you have such clear differentiation.
Give me a call if you want to chat. I am an international strategist currently in Arizona, I an MBA and have had about 100 successful business launches I have been part of as partner, contractor or advisor. All sustainable, most with very little startup capital.
Do inbound and outbound marketing. Most startup companies with limited budget would go for direct emails and such, then investing on ads after getting new clients.
For the outbound marketing side, you may try salezgen.com they will solve all your pre-sales online outbound marketing needs.
