Most entrepreneurs have been focusing on digital marketing tactics in recent years, with options such as SEO strategies, Google ads, creating online content, social media, and other affordable and targeted techniques.
However, if you want to take your B2B marketing to the next level, it pays to remember that you can still obtain plenty of success from trying more traditional, offline avenues to target your key customers. Here are some options you could test out in the coming months.
Table of Contents
Promotional Products
You can enjoy an excellent return on investment when you purchase promotional products to giveaway to your customers or winners of competitions, followers on social media, and the like. You can buy items to suit different budgets, target audiences, and needs, such as quality water bottles, coffee mugs, caps, notebooks, tote bags, and more.
These types of products get used repeatedly by many recipients, especially in offices, which means that they and those they come in contact with will see your logo, business name, website, etc., many times. This exposure helps with brand awareness, building loyalty and engagement, and promoting new products or services, if that’s what you advertise on the wares.
Mailouts and Letterbox Drops
You might like the idea of sending out mailouts to your databases, such as catalogs or special offers. Alternatively, arrange for letterbox drops of the same materials in locations where you want to build a bigger business audience or market to those already on your books. Some companies like to include low-cost samples with these mailouts or letterbox drops, too, which is feasible and strategic when you sell products that you can do up in sample sizes and therefore not outlay too much.
Physical postal or letterbox deliveries are particularly useful at busy times of year for many firms, such as Christmas, Thanksgiving, Black Monday, or the end-of-the-financial-year. These marketing campaigns are an excellent way to remind other ventures of your operation, what you sell, and how you can help them.
Speaking at Events
Another way to cement your status in the B2B market is to engage in more speaking opportunities. Now is a great time to start heading to in-person events again after the last few years canceled so many. Put your hand up to speak at places where you know your prime business audience will be attending. For example, this might include conferences, trade shows, and the like.
When you get up in front of people and chat about what you know well or what your company does and why you get the chance to showcase your expertise and demonstrate why people should pay attention to your firm’s offerings. You can boost your credibility in the industry and demonstrate just how passionate and knowledgeable you are about one or more topics.
Also, speaking engagements provide an opportunity to demonstrate what an effective communicator you are and that you, and by association your team, will be good to work with and dependable – all things that business clientele want to feel secure about before hiring services or saying yes to product purchase contracts.
General Networking
There are other networking occasions you can be a part of to help boost your brand and generate more leads and awareness. People are keen to chat face to face a lot more these days after having to do so many online meetings for the last few years, so take advantage of this openness and network where you can. Don’t worry if you hate small talk or the idea of pushing yourself and your venture on others, though.
You don’t have to do a hard sell at all at events or pressure people into doing anything for you. Instead, see various meetings as places to get to know new people and what they need or the pain points they face in their businesses. Develop relationships organically and naturally and focus on creating authentic connections. Try to attend some of the same group meetings regularly, so you see the same people often and thus foster connections easily that way.
Look for opportunities to chat with current clients in-person, too. You might offer to take them for coffee or lunch or dinner or go to an event where you know they might be. Use the one-on-one time to see how they’re going, what has changed for them recently, and generally reconnect. These conversations can help remind people that you’re available to assist them and allow you to update your contact information in your database for more targeted future offers and other communications.
Other ways to ramp up your B2B marketing strategies in 2022 include hosting a party or exhibiting at an industry event, or designing more impactful packaging that gets remembered. You could run some in-store competitions or advertise on billboards, radio, TV, or print media such as magazines and newspapers, too.
The list of offline strategies is longer than you might have thought and is worth testing out ASAP. Pick one technique to try at a time and test your return on investment to see which options work best for your business.