B2B marketing for startups

[timeroll]

Hello members,

I have just started out into the world of business and have spent a fair amount of time reading various resources regarding marketing; however, I would like to know if anybody has any particular tips with regards to how to go about marketing business to business?

My company provides employee time tracking and task management solutions online.

Our initial strategy is as follows:

- a small targeted ad-words campaign (=< £100/month)
- local marketing (business fairs mainly)
- attend networking events in our local area to meet a few contacts
- offer a few lifetime accounts to a few small local companies to 'try' our service and give us some feedback and/or testimonials for our website.

Once our budget increases with revenue generated we would look to advertise in other types of media such as magazine, business event sponsorship etc.....

Are there any other methods that would suite this kind of business in its first 6-12 months? I was thinking maybe email marketing but I have no ideas about what to look for in terms of buying 'good' email data and what kind of price I would expect to be paying for this.

Thanks for reading!

Regards,

Ste.

 

[Colin Smith CBP]

Hello members,

I have just started out into the world of business and have spent a fair amount of time reading various resources regarding marketing; however, I would like to know if anybody has any particular tips with regards to how to go about marketing business to business?

My company provides employee time tracking and task management solutions online.

Our initial strategy is as follows:

- a small targeted ad-words campaign (=< £100/month)
- local marketing (business fairs mainly)
- attend networking events in our local area to meet a few contacts
- offer a few lifetime accounts to a few small local companies to 'try' our service and give us some feedback and/or testimonials for our website.

Once our budget increases with revenue generated we would look to advertise in other types of media such as magazine, business event sponsorship etc.....

Are there any other methods that would suite this kind of business in its first 6-12 months? I was thinking maybe email marketing but I have no ideas about what to look for in terms of buying 'good' email data and what kind of price I would expect to be paying for this.

Thanks for reading!

Regards,

Ste.

Ste,

Welcome to the forum and to life as a small business owner.

In response to your question, there are literally dozens of different B2B sales and marketing tactics that might be appropriate, but these will be a function of your market entry strategy. What you have described above is a list sales and marketing tactics. I know that many people use the terms interchangeably but believe me the distinction makes a difference. I often explain the difference to clients by saying that "strategy is done above the shoulders whilst tactics are done below the shoulders".

Strategy relates to your positioning in your market. It is the answer to questions such as:

• Who are your customers?
• What will you do for them and what won't you do?
• Why should customers care about your business?
• What can you do for them that your competitors cannot?
• Why should they leave incumbent suppliers to use your services?

Tactics are the specific things that you plan to do to communicate your unique strengths and offering to your customers. Once you have a handle on strategic issues such as these, tactical sales and marketing issues such as branding and communications will become easier. Once you know who your customers are, for example, your sales and marketing tactics will be aimed at engaging with them where they naturally gather. Ask yourself questions such as:

• What media do they consume? (social media channels, magazines, websites)
• What organisations do they belong to?

I'd be happy to advise on specific marketing tactics if you can fill in a few of the strategic blanks. The marketing tactics employed by a company whose strategy is to be the low cost supplier of a general service would obviously be very different from someone who is selling a premium service to a niche audience and to give you general advice without such information would be to set you up to needlessly waste some of your initial sales and marketing budget.

 

[timeroll]

Thank you very much for your advice Colin.

Regarding your strategy questions;

Who are your customers? Most businesses could use our services but in particular our service probably suits more established businesses that have upwards of a few employees as any smaller may not have a need to have the level of monitoring/report generation that the software provides (although some will). So business owners and decision makers are the people we would be selling to.

What will you do for them and what won't you do? We host/provide the software as an online solution. We look after that application and there is no need to download anything or update anything. Users can also manage their own accounts. This will enable the company to generate reports that can be used for payroll.

Why should customers care about your business? Because we provide an application that increases the companies efficiency, saving them time and money as we can remove the labour intensive manual timesheet process.

What can you do for them that your competitors cannot? We can provide an application that has the same functionality but at a lower cost and a simpler easier to use interface. We feel we already have the advantage over download/install software as we are online and therefore the customer does not need to ensure they have the capable hardware to run the application or worry about future updating/maintenance.

Why should they leave incumbent suppliers to use your services? As above.

I hope I have provided some useful information, the more help I can get at this point should save me important startup capital!

Regards,

Ste.

 

[Colin Smith CBP]

Thank you very much for your advice Colin.

Regarding your strategy questions;

Who are your customers? Most businesses could use our services but in particular our service probably suits more established businesses that have upwards of a few employees as any smaller may not have a need to have the level of monitoring/report generation that the software provides (although some will). So business owners and decision makers are the people we would be selling to.

What will you do for them and what won't you do? We host/provide the software as an online solution. We look after that application and there is no need to download anything or update anything. Users can also manage their own accounts. This will enable the company to generate reports that can be used for payroll.

Why should customers care about your business? Because we provide an application that increases the companies efficiency, saving them time and money as we can remove the labour intensive manual timesheet process.

What can you do for them that your competitors cannot? We can provide an application that has the same functionality but at a lower cost and a simpler easier to use interface. We feel we already have the advantage over download/install software as we are online and therefore the customer does not need to ensure they have the capable hardware to run the application or worry about future updating/maintenance.

Why should they leave incumbent suppliers to use your services? As above.

I hope I have provided some useful information, the more help I can get at this point should save me important startup capital!

Regards,

Ste.

Ste,

Happy to help. It's definitely worth pausing and doing some strategic thinking now as once you have committed yourself to a position, it is notoriously difficult to re-position your business.

It seems from your reply that you are positioning yourself as a low cost provider of time tracking and task management software. What is the actual difference in pricing between yourselves and say Kronos or Profess who seem to do something fairly similar to what I think that you are looking to do? In my experience, a strategy of being the low cost provider of any product or service only works if there is a significant (20% or more) difference in price. Think Aldi versus Tesco or Asda. If the cost difference was only slightly less, Aldi could not legitimately lay claim to the low cost position in that market. You will struggle to gain any real traction unless your customers can clearly see that your service offering and pricing are aligned with the marketing message. If you cannot profitably offer your service at a significantly lower price than your competitors, then you will need to find some other way to differentiate your business. "Me-too" businesses have to compete with all the other businesses that are exactly like it for attention and that can be very expensive.

 

[timeroll]

Hi Colin,

Thank you again for the advice. We are certainly cheaper than both of those providers (40-50%). The difference between the two products is that we are far simpler in what we offer. Our application is less feature heavy if you like.

We have basically created our app around what clockspot look to offer in terms of features but do so based in the UK and at a lower cost (40% approx less).

Hopefully we have our positioning correct!

Regards,

Ste.

 

[Colin Smith CBP]

Hi Colin,

Thank you again for the advice. We are certainly cheaper than both of those providers (40-50%). The difference between the two products is that we are far simpler in what we offer. Our application is less feature heavy if you like.

We have basically created our app around what clockspot look to offer in terms of features but do so based in the UK and at a lower cost (40% approx less).

Hopefully we have our positioning correct!

Regards,

Ste.

Ste,

Sounds as if you have nailed the positioning of your service. I regularly speak with clients whose products and services are so similar to those of the competition as to be indistinguishable to the casual user. However, a 40% price differential would be hard to miss. I think you can definitely lay a strong claim to the low cost position in your market with a service at that price point.

The next step would be to focus on a particular segment of the market you have identified. There are over 1.75 million small and medium sized business owners in the UK who employ at least one other person other than themselves, so it would be impossible for a small business with a limited budget to launch your service to the whole UK market. I would segment the market geographically (e.g. small businesses in the Chester area) and by industry (e.g. marketing agencies), choosing the location nearest to where you live and the industry in which you are most connected. Having made these choices, I would then actually draw up a list of all the businesses that meet the criteria of the segment you have defined. If the list is longer than 400 - 500 businesses, you need to segment again. This list then can form the basis of your outbound marketing efforts.

In a B2B situation, there is no substitute for outbound marketing. Using some combination of the traditional outbound marketing methods (e.g. direct mail, e-mail, telemarketing and direct sales), I would contact every organisation on my list. Persistence is key in traditional sales, so be prepared to be patient and to follow up with these prospects many times. I would also network extensively, both online and face to face, with a view to building relationships with people in your target segment When you have exhausted the list, you will probably have a good idea of other segments to focus on based upon your networking and the results of the inbound marketing campaign you should run concurrently. Draw up another list and go again.

At the same time, I would run an inbound marketing campaign. A geo-targeted adwords campaign, local SEO, real engagement with local prospects via the social media channels and a blog which offers information of value to your prospects as well as the search engines will all drive potential customers to your website. Your site will need to be properly optimised for conversion and, as you mentioned in you original post, capturing e-mails in order to stay top of mind with interested prospects who haven't converted yet would be a good idea.

This is not meant to be a definitive list of tactics or a how-to guide. Ultimately, it will be a case of trial and error for the first year. However, as long as you track how effective each channel is, you will be able to simply do less of what isn't working and more of what is.

Hope that's useful. If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask. Also, feel free to PM me to discuss any aspect of your new business that you might not want to discuss on a public forum.

 

[timeroll]

Thank you Colin for your excellent advice!

 

[AMS11]

Hi - I would be very interested in looking at your system. Could you send me your website details or some such so I can contact you? I do believe you may need to PM me this.

 

[andycan]

I am also interested in your system. I will PM.

 

[CardswitcherUK]

Hi Timeroll
On email marketing, we use a company called Intelligent Data Services. We did a beauty parade of quite a few in the market, including the well known names, and opted for these guys because they were knowledgable, direct and competitive on pricing. Pricing very much depends on volume - most providers publish pricing somewhere on their website and are usually prepared to negotiate on it.

 

[timeroll]

Thanks for the recommendation cardswitcheruk. I will take a look at them!

I have PM'd those who wanted more information.

Thanks,

Ste.

 

[Victoria753]

Collins advice is spot on.

In terms of reaching and marketing to these companies, it's best to segment a list of potential people who could buy from you. It's then a case of making contact you can send them a letter, email or telephone to introduce your company and the services you offer. If the company have an interest they'll usually proceed forward.

The hardest part is knowing how to present your business so that the right people have an interest. There's loads of materials online on how to sell or introduce your products via direct marketing tactics. You can also purchase business leads for lead directories which gives you information such as decision makers name, email address, business sector, turn over, employee size, ect.

 

[XanderMarketing]

Hi Ste,

We work with a number of software-as-a-service businesses doing all of their marketing for them. As others mention there are many tactics you can use. We have a couple of free guides on our website specifically about marketing SaaS businesses which may be of interest:

http://www.xandermarketing.com/marketing-resources/saas-marketing/
http://www.xandermarketing.com/marketing-resources/saas-marketing-new/

If you need anything else give me a shout.

Alex

 

[altboost]

I've been generating sales leads for another time and attendance company in the UK and email marketing seemed to work best. Try to find good lists of schools and sports centers and design a nice email that explains why your company is better than the others.
Google Adwords generated a very limited volume of leads, if I were you I would give LinkedIn ads a shot it could work really well with a good targeting.
Don't hesitate to PM me if you need further assistance or want to know about my rates.

Fabien

 

[SamRapidSwitch]

Have you thought about white labelling your product to businesses like umbrella companies (who process payroll for the self employed etc), or recruitment agencies etc? There's a lot of hype around "the cloud" right now, so for them to have a cloud based payroll could be an easy win for you.

Failing that (without teaching you to suck eggs) definitely pitch yourselves in this respect, ie the future of payroll is in the cloud & all that jazz!

Good luck withy the venture, sounds like it holds huge potential!

Cheers,
Sam

 

[timeroll]

Thank you for you responses!

SamRapidSwitch - We have thought of this yes, essentially a very good way of getting our product out there; however, I have come a little stuck when trying to work out what kind of companies our product would sit perfectly alongside.... I was thinking along the lines of some start up company website/product service, umbrella companies might be a good idea I will have a look around!

Thanks,

Ste.

 

[SamRapidSwitch]

Thank you for you responses!

SamRapidSwitch - We have thought of this yes, essentially a very good way of getting our product out there; however, I have come a little stuck when trying to work out what kind of companies our product would sit perfectly alongside.... I was thinking along the lines of some start up company website/product service, umbrella companies might be a good idea I will have a look around!

Thanks,

Ste.

High street recruiters / temp driving or warehouse agencies could be a good shout, but more so to sell directly to.

On the partner front, maybe companies that offer outsourced payroll but aren't up to date with technology? Or those who don't offer it, but could as to their portfolio, like outsourced HR?

Sam