B2B Marketing Options

[dr_pie]

Hi all,

In the past two weeks i launched my website www.fiveinterviews.com. In short I sell interview scripts to small businesses who do not have the resources to have their own Human Resources professional on staff or they can't afford to hire a headhunter. I sell an interview system that shows people how to hire the best person for the job and I give them an interview script so that they know the exact questions to ask.

As the site has just launched I have been focused on just getting it out there and driving traffice to the site organically. I offer a free download called The True Cost of a Bad Hire to entice people to come to the site. I have been posting brief articles on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn all with linkbacks to the site. Lastly I am working on creating a blog which should go live in the next week or so.

I'm not expecting massive traffic overnight. I am still working out bugs on the website and building the blog. I also don't have the means to spend a lot on advertising at this time so the organic growth approach is what I am working on.

Can any of you recommend some other areas on marketing a B2B digital product? Are there some good business forums that you have had success with or B2B affiliate marketing sites. I am just trying to get sense as to what has worked for others who have sold a digital business products and what will get traffic to the site.

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

 

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[Promodo]

Hi Dr_pie!

Firstly, I would suggest to make the use of Google alerts, set it to notify you every time the services you want to offer are mentioned on the Web - then you will be probably first to answer the question and secondly you will learn about forums you are looking for.

Secondly, about website online promotion. If you don't have budget large enough to run an extensicve marketing campaign, I would still advise you to do some basics of SEO optimization - espesically if you are going to stuff the website with a lot of content and launch a blog. In a few words - select the landing pages which you would like the users visit first of all, then define a list for keywords for which to promote these pages. How to find keywords? Look at your competitors, make the note of what keywords they have been ranked for in the search engine, then go to Keyword Tool and choose the keywords with medium and above medium search volume and make sure to incorporate them in three places: website page titles, page texts and links which will lead to your website.

To be honest I would create several separate pages optimized for specific group of keywords - for example, one page for ebook donload, another page for your services. At present its kind of put everything together.

As for the blog - make sure to optimize every post for low-volume keywords too. And if you have a possibility to write quality posts, you can contribute aritcles to different blogs.

Here are some guides on how to promote business online- it might help you as well SEO case studies and internet marketing guides by Promodo - PDF downloads

Regards, Elena

 

[MJ DeMarco]

In short I sell interview scripts to small businesses who do not have the resources to have their own Human Resources professional on staff or they can't afford to hire a headhunter.

Curious, have you validated this concept and defined a need? As a business owner who hired/fired employees, I would not be interested in your product. Of course, my sole opinion doesn't mean shit unless that opinion is the prevailing market opinion. If there isn't a need, the marketing becomes irrelevant. If you have validated the need, can you scale the venue in which the validation occurred?

 

[DennisD]

Make some calls to businesses.

Talk to them about your product. Talk to them about problems they're having. If you can get 5% of your

Spend 2 weekdays calling 100 business. Not 10, not 20, but 100, at least.

You're sure to get rejected PLENTY of times.. but you've got to force yourself to call at least 100 anyways, even if they're all rejections.
After getting rejected 10 times you'll be mentally drained. But what were the chances that in the 10 people you called, you'd have a customer? Low.

I expect you to get a 5-10% success rate.

But the thing is, you can call 95 people and not make your 5 sales until the last 5 people you call. You can call 190 people and not make your sales until the last 10. It's just the luck of the draw.

I'd love to see you take the plunge and call 100 people. I'm sure you'd make some immediate cashflow, you'd validate your business, you'd get some testimonials from satisfied customers, and generate word of mouth buzz.

My advice? Don't spend a day 'preparing'... making a script, or making a list in excel of businesses. The problem is the amount of PREP work you put in drains your energy... making you more likely to give up after only 7 calls.

Find the number, make the call. Find the number, make the call. Find the number, make the call. Take notes along the way if you want. If people are going to buy your product they'll do it over the phone. If you're setting up your website and optimizing, you might be wasting your time for 3 months if you're not addressing the needs that already exist in your market.

 

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[dr_pie]

Once again thanks Fastlaners for your feedback. Very informative as usual and will greatly assist me in developing my business.

MJ: Thanks for the response. I've read your book and that is why I am here. Your words fully motivated me to get off my butt. I have validated the concept and there is a market albeit one that has not taken me to Fastlane territory yet (I believe it will). As a business owner you understand the cost that comes with hiring employees and the significant costs that can come as a result of a bad hire. Although some times bad hires are unavoidable, just think if you had a product like mine you may have not had to fire as many people and you may have even got better hires for your job vacancies.

Thanks again everyone.

 

[VikingTrad3r]

"In short I sell interview scripts to small businesses who do not have the resources to have their own Human Resources professional on staff or they can't afford to hire a headhunter. I sell an interview system that shows people how to hire the best person for the job and I give them an interview script so that they know the exact questions to ask. "

Very Cool. No idea if there is a market for it... still very creative...and I guess you will find out.

Have you thought about fax blasting? We recently did a fax blast in November and December of '12. We bought a list for 5K, then spent 1K on faxing 100,000 businesses. We sold 52K worth of product by end of January from this fax blast and about 3 in 4 of the customers we picked up during that campaign we have received repeat orders from.

Not very "information age" but maybe that is why it cut through the clutter a bit better. It was a 1 page black and white marketing advert that got the message across very quickly, and directed them to either A) the website that guided them through the order process or B) the toll free number, which directed people back to the website. Our goal was to automate the prospecting and then automate the order taking. In the end we did have to speak to over 80% of the customers. We are working on ways to reduce that as well.
Hope that helps.

My first post!

Regards,

VikingTrad3r