3 major phases. For every B2B business. And pretty much any business.
- Engineer Awareness.
- Effect Leads.
- Engage Prospective.
Engineer Awareness
The first is of course to engineer awareness in circles related to the business.
Awareness. Awareness. Awareness. If nobody knows your business, there’s no reason for you to get sales.
Here’s a long list of places/techniques for generating awareness:
- List the business & products in the several global B2B trading portals
- Open company/brand social profiles across the internet
- Facebook.com
- Twitter.com
- LinkedIn.com
- Medium.com (For publishing articles related to your industry)
- Tumblr.com (For publishing articles related to your industry)
- Launch your company/brand website (designed for the target customer)
- Get a professional agency to help you out: LeapDifferent.com – Professional, helpful, and very good at what they do. (And reasonably priced.)
- Find a freelance web developer instead on PeoplePerHour.com, Freelancer.com, UpWork.com…
- Publish articles on your website related to your industry (to help you get found on search engines)
- You can find professional copywriters on those websites to write for you, or you can also work with a professional agency like LeapDifferent.com. Yes them again.
- Invest in strategically placing advertisements of your website/company/brand in popular websites and blogs. Try BuySellAds.com.
- Invest in good Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Exhibit your products in B2B exhibitions – Find an exhibition.
- Create link backs to your website from the articles that you write. A live example is this post you’re reading right now, that’s linking to all the helpful websites. You can do the same.
Engineering Awareness also involves describing your business and it’s products clearly. The keywords and phrases that people popularly search for, is what should be included in your product name and descriptions, and there’s techniques for finding out what people search for. One of the ways to find the right keywords, is to use Google Keywords Planner.
Effect Leads
Leads grow on trees.
When the fruit is ripe, it’s ready for picking. But if it is too high up the tree, the chances of it being picked is lower.
Every website, every customer facing mechanism needs to make it very easy for customers to reach out, or take action.
Imagine a website without a telephone number, an email address, a contact form, and any other contact details. Imagine if all these elements exist, but are hidden away somewhere on the website that the customer isn’t going to bother searching for.
To effect leads, you need effective customer portals. Effective websites, effective advertisements, effective call-to-actions…
“90% of consumers want to message directly with businesses (think SMS, WhatsApp, Messenger), but 81% say it’s too difficult.” – SendGrid.com
On AkramJiffry.com, the developer built a brilliant product inquiry system, that allowed customers to inquire about a product directly via WhatsApp.
Engage Prospectives
This is up to your sales skills. When the prospective customers filter through the awareness stage, through leads stage, and ecoming prospective customers, it’s pretty much up to you to ensure that they receive a good experience.
Using a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool is meant to greatly help you record prospectives, follow up on them regularly, and finally close a sale. Try Hubspot.com‘s CRM.
With WhatsApp being one of the most popular messaging apps in the world, one the easiest ways for many prospective customers to reach out to you, is via WhatsApp. Don’t forget to reach out to a developer, and get them to code and implement a WhatsApp mechanism for your website, or product page. Try LeapDifferent.com.
..and so that there is the blueprint of the digital business world. Not only for B2B businesses, but also for B2C, and P2P businesses.
Engineer Awareness. Effect Leads. Engage Prospectives.