Low-Cost Marketing Strategies for B2B Serving Mid-Large Companies?

[DoTheWork]

Hey guys,

I run a website management company (running and building out websites that already exist -- not building new sites).

I've been doing this since 2020. Here is a quick background of the pivots I have made.

Phase 1 (2020-2022):

• Serving small-midsize businesses on WordPress
• Helping with website changes/edits + maintenance & security.
• Was working okay. I ran Google Ads and my campaigns were terrible, but it was still profitable.
• I still have most of these clients on a monthly plan today.

Phase 2 (2023):

• Still serving the same audience.
• Shifted to focus more on maintenance and security, and less on actively building out their sites and helping with changes.
• I did this because I was too focused on what I wanted from an operations perspective (maintenance & security was easy), not what the client wanted.
• Tried Google Ads again (with a much better strategy and website) plus Reddit paid & organic and it's clear that this pivot was a failure. I've also received tons of feedback from my target audience and other people in my industry.

Phase 3 (2024+):

• Serving mid-to-large companies.
• I've now shifted to focusing on design, development, and technical support for existing websites (more activities focused on company growth, rather than preventative maintenance).
• I made this pivot because it's more in line with how my services were back in 2020-2021 when things were working (and a handful of other reasons).

I am ready to launch Phase 3 and have just finished rebranding and redeveloping my offer.

However, I feel quite lost about where to get started promoting this. I don't have a bunch of cash that I'm willing to risk. I'm willing to risk $2k-ish, but can dump a ton of cash if something starts working well.

• Google Ads
  • My Phase 2 Google Ads strategy failed terribly (1 low-quality lead with $2k in spend even though my ads & landing pages were good [thanks @Andy Black]). The offer was the problem (from my best judgment and feedback from others).
  • Google Ads worked in Phase 1 even though my campaigns were complete trash. However, I'm still hesitant because of my experience in Phase 2.
  • Again, I am hesitant to risk money at the moment unless I know something is going to work (because of my personal health situation).
• Cold email
  • Not sure how I feel about cold email. Seems like it is working for some people in my industry, but it feels wrong.
  • Was thinking about sending personalized emails to companies offering to do a review website review via Loom and send them my feedback. No obligation for them to hop on a call with me or anything. I know I can produce some very valuable quick audits for these companies.
  • Someone on Reddit posted a strategy in nearly the same niche and they had a 3% conversion rate from emails to paying customers.
• SEO
  • Extremely competitive and not an option for me right now.

I've been recovering from a health issue for the past 2.5 years which affects my cognitive abilities quite severely. I have a very hard time coming up with ideas for this reason. I'm not sure what other viable options I have for marketing, especially low-cost ways so I can prove that my offer is good.

 

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[AutoMan]

• Was thinking about sending personalized emails to companies offering to do a review website review via Loom and send them my feedback. No obligation for them to hop on a call with me or anything. I know I can produce some very valuable quick audits for these companies.

I like the sound of this. Cost effective and would only take a few minutes per website to review right? I feel the personal touch of taking the time to review their website will go a long way...although I am no expert in marketing .

 

[Black_Dragon43]

Hey guys,

I run a website management company (running and building out websites that already exist -- not building new sites).

I've been doing this since 2020. Here is a quick background of the pivots I have made.

Phase 1 (2020-2022):

• Serving small-midsize businesses on WordPress
• Helping with website changes/edits + maintenance & security.
• Was working okay. I ran Google Ads and my campaigns were terrible, but it was still profitable.
• I still have most of these clients on a monthly plan today.

Phase 2 (2023):

• Still serving the same audience.
• Shifted to focus more on maintenance and security, and less on actively building out their sites and helping with changes.
• I did this because I was too focused on what I wanted from an operations perspective (maintenance & security was easy), not what the client wanted.
• Tried Google Ads again (with a much better strategy and website) plus Reddit paid & organic and it's clear that this pivot was a failure. I've also received tons of feedback from my target audience and other people in my industry.

Phase 3 (2024+):

• Serving mid-to-large companies.
• I've now shifted to focusing on design, development, and technical support for existing websites (more activities focused on company growth, rather than preventative maintenance).
• I made this pivot because it's more in line with how my services were back in 2020-2021 when things were working (and a handful of other reasons).

I am ready to launch Phase 3 and have just finished rebranding and redeveloping my offer.

However, I feel quite lost about where to get started promoting this. I don't have a bunch of cash that I'm willing to risk. I'm willing to risk $2k-ish, but can dump a ton of cash if something starts working well.

• Google Ads
  • My Phase 2 Google Ads strategy failed terribly (1 low-quality lead with $2k in spend even though my ads & landing pages were good [thanks @Andy Black]). The offer was the problem (from my best judgment and feedback from others).
  • Google Ads worked in Phase 1 even though my campaigns were complete trash. However, I'm still hesitant because of my experience in Phase 2.
  • Again, I am hesitant to risk money at the moment unless I know something is going to work (because of my personal health situation).
• Cold email
  • Not sure how I feel about cold email. Seems like it is working for some people in my industry, but it feels wrong.
  • Was thinking about sending personalized emails to companies offering to do a review website review via Loom and send them my feedback. No obligation for them to hop on a call with me or anything. I know I can produce some very valuable quick audits for these companies.
  • Someone on Reddit posted a strategy in nearly the same niche and they had a 3% conversion rate from emails to paying customers.
• SEO
  • Extremely competitive and not an option for me right now.

I've been recovering from a health issue for the past 2.5 years which affects my cognitive abilities quite severely. I have a very hard time coming up with ideas for this reason. I'm not sure what other viable options I have for marketing, especially low-cost ways so I can prove that my offer is good.

Building relationships through LinkedIn is the only thing you should do for B2B clients for websites. Google Ads don’t work for medium sized businesses — you won’t get these execs to buy that way.

My whole business specializes in this, if you want DM me and I’ll shoot you some details about how we do it that you can apply yourself if you don’t want to work with us.

It’s also much cheaper than ads — $2K gets you two months with us, and a medium-sized B2B client is worth 5-10x that.

 

[DoTheWork]

I like the sound of this. Cost effective and would only take a few minutes per website to review right? I feel the personal touch of taking the time to review their website will go a long way...although I am no expert in marketing .

Yep. I can easily spot improvements and problems with these sites and it'll only take a few minutes to record. And I'd only be doing this to people who respond to my emails (since I don't want to be sending links in the first email for spam reasons).

Building relationships through LinkedIn is the only thing you should do for B2B clients for websites. Google Ads don’t work for medium sized businesses — you won’t get these execs to buy that way.

My whole business specializes in this, if you want DM me and I’ll shoot you some details about how we do it that you can apply yourself if you don’t want to work with us.

It’s also much cheaper than ads — $2K gets you two months with us, and a medium-sized B2B client is worth 5-10x that.

I've heard good things about LinkedIn. Not sure why I didn't think about it.

LinkedIn feels very fake to me, but I haven't spent much time on it. I'll PM you.

 

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[Black_Dragon43]

LinkedIn feels very fake to me, but I haven't spent much time on it. I'll PM you.

Fake or not, it’s how I gained 90% of my clients last year lol

 

[random_username]

Fake or not, it’s how I gained 90% of my clients last year lol

I've recently started posting on Linkedin and I'm very interested in this. Would you be willing to share more on this topic? Do you achieve this with outreach or they come as inbound leads?

 

[Black_Dragon43]

I've recently started posting on Linkedin and I'm very interested in this. Would you be willing to share more on this topic? Do you achieve this with outreach or they come as inbound leads?

We use both outreach and content. Outreach is what helps you build relationships and gets deals done, but content is what nurtures people and provides authority. You definitely need both. Doing just one is sort of like driving a car with a flat tire.

Our focus is on building relationships, helping people identify problems, and then offering solutions. What service are you trying to sell via LinkedIn?

 

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[random_username]

We use both outreach and content. Outreach is what helps you build relationships and gets deals done, but content is what nurtures people and provides authority. You definitely need both. Doing just one is sort of like driving a car with a flat tire.

Our focus is on building relationships, helping people identify problems, and then offering solutions. What service are you trying to sell via LinkedIn?

My services are higher end programming services like bootstrapping projects, fixing projects that are stuck, optimizing slow applications and security code review. Basically a fixer. Guy you hire after you already threw away money on a cheap programmer.

I don't want to hijack the thread, but my initial line of thinking was that getting leads on LinkedIn follows roughly this formula for all industries:
- Connect with target leads you want
- Warm them up with quality content you post
- Engage with people, not brands
- After some time contact them, or even better, they contact you if your offer is clear

I assume you are doing something similar?

 

[Black_Dragon43]

I don't want to hijack the thread, but my initial line of thinking was that getting leads on LinkedIn follows roughly this formula for all industries:
- Connect with target leads you want
- Warm them up with quality content you post
- Engage with people, not brands
- After some time contact them, or even better, they contact you if your offer is clear

I assume you are doing something similar?

No. Feel free to DM me and I'll send you a link to grab our strategy if you wish.

 

[DoTheWork]

I don't want to hijack the thread

Please do. Definitely similarities between our businesses.

 

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[random_username]

Please do. Definitely similarities between our businesses.

Well, what I wrote above is what I have currently. Like I said in another thread where we talked previously, I'm shit at business currently. My main strategy is LinkedIn and writing posts for now and see what happens. I've posted two posts so far, and both time only people that know me personally from way back when engaged. I did get some profile views. Gotta do more, then will probably have some better information. Reason I'm focusing on LinkedIn is because I've talked to one guy who worked in a decently large agency and he explained to me how to business development engine works in actual agencies, and they use Linkedin for it.

From what I remember in other thread, you might have an easier time than me on Linkedin, since you seem to have a better defined offer. My offer currently is all over the place, I work with only custom built software, with no particular industry in mind, and I do everything to fix the blocker. Which I think is valuable, because there are less people competing on that. I'm still working on how to communicate that. It also seems that we have fundamentally different goals. If I'm not mistaken you are building an agency for specific services, I'm doing this to build myself as an long term authority and to help with finding leads for freelancing while I build products that I will sell.

 

[Black_Dragon43]

Reason I'm focusing on LinkedIn is because I've talked to one guy who worked in a decently large agency and he explained to me how to business development engine works in actual agencies, and they use Linkedin for it.

Yes, LinkedIn is a goldmine. We’ve generated over $10M worth of new opportunities for our clients from it. Every B2B agency who isn’t using it simply doesn’t know what they’re missing out on.