Direct Marketing Advice

[Deleted member 325090]

My business provides bespoke IT solutions to SME's and I need some advice on marketing. My plan is to send a customised marketing email to a PSC (shareholder/owner) or a director of each business, giving them specific examples of how we could help them increase their efficiency and profits via automation.

I'm not interested in spamming the same email to 10,000 businesses, so once I have the business data, I'm going to do some research and contact businesses in small groups/individually.

I suspect that businesses with a turnover of say £500k -> £5M might be the sweetspot, where they would be perhaps outgrowing whatever systems they currently use and would benefit from automation.

I've already approached one direct marketing company to get a quote for data on local businesses, but I'm wondering if there are any alternatives, anything I should watch out for, or any direct marketing companies people would recommend.

Thanks in advance.

 

[intheTRADE]

LinkedIn is ideal for this sort of thing. Connecting and building relationships with your identified Directors and Shareholders directly on there as opposed to a marketing email - which will be seen as exactly that, marketing.

The data is something we could do for you also if you wanted a quote for it - just drop me a PM if so

 

[AllUpHere]

The fact that you are referring to the contact details of potential clients as 'data', and you are hoping to buy it, is a pretty clear indication that you are going to get ridiculously low response rates (if any).

Realistically, how much work are you trying to generate? How many new clients per week or month do you need?

 

[Deleted member 325090]

Thanks @intheTRADE. Linked-In is certainly an option for us, my main problem is that I reckon a lot of our target market may not be on there. It's always struck me as a platform mainly for recruiters, tech companies and larger organisations.

But I think you have a good point that email is not always the best solution if there are lesser used alternatives.

 

[intheTRADE]

Thanks @intheTRADE. Linked-In is certainly an option for us, my main problem is that I reckon a lot of our target market may not be on there. It's always struck me as a platform mainly for recruiters, tech companies and larger organisations.

But I think you have a good point that email is not always the best solution if there are lesser used alternatives.

You'd be surprised how many companies are actually on there now - if not the actual companies, employees of companies have profiles.

We work with a software company who target construction companies with turnovers from £1m-£10m and they do extremely well on there.

 

[Deleted member 325090]

The fact that you are referring to the contact details of potential clients as 'data', and you are hoping to buy it, is a pretty clear indication that you are going to get ridiculously low response rates (if any).

Realistically, how much work are you trying to generate? How many new clients per week or month do you need?

Its not just their contact details, it's information about their business. Turnover, staffing levels, business sector etc.

Once we have identified the types of business we can explore the types of issues they face, how we can help them and then contact them with something a bit more specific than the usual spam that people receive.

If we don't buy this company information to allow us to determine potential clients, I'm not sure of realistic alternatives.

I think we'd only be able to take on a handful of projects per year. We are already at nearly full capacity, but we are trying to diversify our customer-base and grow, so one or two more would be nice, to build up a pipeline of work.