If you have a product or service that you sell only to businesses and not to consumers, than you probably already do some sort of business to business marketing. This could be advertising in an industry trade publication (which can be prohibitively expensive) or even buying vendor space at an industry trade show (also expensive when you include booth costs, giveaways, and travel).
By far, the best use of your business to business marketing dollars can be your corporate website. Have you looked at how many visitors are actually going to your corporate website every day? Better yet, have you looked to see WHO goes to your corporate website? (Most website statistics not only give you the number of “hits” and number of visitors to your website, they even give you the names of the companies that visit your corporate website. For more information about website statistics, see our Reports page.)
If you look at your website statistics, you will probably find that the people visiting your corporate website on a regular basis are your employees, your customers, and your competitors. Your corporate website is probably not taking full advantage of business to business marketing; it is probably not drawing in potential customers and new sales leads. This is completely normal; most corporate websites do not draw in potential customers and new sales leads. But this can be easily fixed.
How do you make your corporate website engage in b2b marketing, bringing in potential customers, new sales leads, ultimately increasing your company’s sales? Make sure your corporate website can easily be found when a potential customer looks on the internet for a product or service your sell.
Let’s face it; unless your corporation is a Fortune 500 company and a household name, chances are there are potential customers out there that have not heard of your company. And even if you’re a Fortune 500 company and a household name, there’s a good chance that someone just won’t think about your particular company when they’re researching a product or service on the internet. (We explain the business to business sales process elsewhere on this website.)
What can you do? Since you already have a corporate website, follow the tips and techniques on this website to make sure that when a potential customer looks for a product or service that you sell, they find you. They should find you when they search at the search engines (you should probably be listed in the top 10 results that are returned). They should find you when they go to an industry trade publication’s website (most industry trade publications don’t charge anything to be listed in their online buyer’s guides). They should find you because there was a link on another related website such as a Partner’s website or other website that’s related to your business.
Your marketing department, your webmaster, your search engine optimizers, and your sales people should all work together to maximize the ROI of your corporate website. That’s what this website is all about.