When searching for prospects to buy your
products or services, you want to find those companies who have a problem for which you
have the solution. The methods you use in finding and contacting those companies will
determine if your business-to-business lead generation efforts will be a success or a
failure.
Begin by creating lists that rank your current customers
in three categories:
- Gross revenue. Place the largest companies at the top of the
list and the smallest at the bottom.
- Profitability. List from “most profitable” to
“least profitable.” Keep in mind that the most profitable are not necessarily
those with the most gross revenue.
- Fit. Which companies represent the best fit for what you are
selling? This ranking is more subjective than the first two. It identifies the companies
you know well, those with business you understand, those that are fun to work with, those
you understand best and those with which you have—or could have—a great working
relationship. Rank these companies in order, descending from the best fit.
Your ideal customers are those that are at, or near, the
top of all three lists. While reviewing your existing customers, consider the following
questions:
- What industries are they in?
- Are they small, medium or large businesses?
- Where are they located geographically?
- What is their Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) code?
- What are the titles or job functions of their
decision-makers?
This information will help you focus your efforts to find
similar companies and decision-makers to target with your b2b marketing efforts. Determine
what is unique about these leads so that you can find more like them.
In addition to looking at your current customer base,
review your company’s internal expertise and credentials to determine likely
prospects for your solutions. If your company is a start-up and has no existing customers,
you can leverage your own past experience and that of your people. Think about the kinds
of companies you and your team have had success with in previous jobs.
You also can educate yourself on a vertical market (i.e., a
particular industry, such as residential or commercial construction, banking, distribution
or the retail clothing business), weaving the industry’s concerns and buzzwords into
your marketing-for-leads materials. This will suggest that you do understand the market
and its needs. However, be prepared to answer the question, “Who else in my industry
have you served?” It is bound to come up.
If you don’t believe you can successfully sell into
vertical markets, consider horizontal markets. These are markets that cross industry
lines. For example, if your ultimate goal is to sell to the residential or commercial
construction industry, you might want to first target small- to medium-sized businesses in
need of material handling equipment.
Another way to look at the marketplace is geographically.
Then you would focus on targeting companies within a particular area, whether it is a
city, state, region or country.
Although theoretically every company, in every business,
may benefit from your solution, you can’t afford to try to be everything to everyone.
You must pick the companies with which you are likely to have the best success and the
individuals within those companies who are in the best position to recommend or buy your
products or services.
The next step in targeting your marketplace is to determine
to which media the target audience is exposed. For example, what trade magazines do they
read? This may include national publications, regional magazines or the regional editions
of national publications.
In addition, think about:
- Websites your target contacts visit for professional
information.
- Professional associations to which they belong.
- Conferences and tradeshows they attend.
- Newsletters to which they subscribe.
Each of these, potentially, is the source of a mailing
list, Web site, conference or publication that would be appropriate for reaching your
target contacts. You are now ready to devise ways to utilize these target resources to
generate leads.
There are a number of marketing vehicles available to you,
ranging from newspaper advertising to putting your company logo on the Goodyear blimp.
However, some marketing methods have proven to be more successful than others for
business-to-business marketing. Once you have targeted your audience and you’ve
developed your marketing database, you are ready to put together a plan utilizing
tried-and-true basics of marketing for leads. These include:
- Direct response marketing, which utilizes direct mail or
direct response print advertising to generate inquiries.
- PR in industry or trade publications, newsletters or Web
sites.
- Online marketing, which utilizes email and/or banner ads
with strong offers and easy-to-use response forms to catch searchers.
- Company Web sites that have been optimized to be found at
the top of search engine results and bridge the gap between marketing and sales with more
in-depth pre-sales information.
- Relationship marketing to nurture and qualify the
longer-term prospects.
- Events to help move prospects towards purchase.
- Sales tools to help your sales team sell.
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