How Would You Spend $100 On B2B Advertising?

Hi Paul, I have operated many a campaign on a shoe string budget and have developed marketing campaigns for a vast array of products and services. In fact, New Business Development is what I am most endorsed for on LinkedIn.

The key to increasing the effectiveness of any campaign is to refine your target market to increase the probability that your ad will get a response. This means it is all about your database. In your case you can research Free government sites that issue occupational permits or new business licenses. I do this for Restaurants and its very effective. This will increase the probability that the business will be in need of your services. With a little extra work on Google and www.sunbiz.org (if your in Florida) you can get the name of the owners and the business phone number. Now depending on the size of the target market their are two options. If there are only 100 to 200 new businesses every month within your 20 mile radius then a nice post card (Vista-Print) followed by a personalized letter (1 week apart & envelope should be hand written if possible.)

Now here is the key that skyrockets the conversion rate. On the day that I expect them to receive the letter I call to "follow up on my letter". For bigger list I use a "Press 1" automated voice broadcasting service that only cost me .10 per minute. A personalized professionally recoded voice message can be create on FIVERR.com for around, you guessed it, $5. Targeted B2B voice broadcasting consistently gets me some of the lowest per lead cost of any form of advertising I have done. With my restaurants campaigns my cost per lead comes in under$35. Hope this helps. If you do lettering for restaurants send me a connection request so we can network, Good Luck!

Great question, Paul! I too run a "local" service-based business, in Oakland, CA.

I'm assuming this is the amount you've earmarked specifically for "Advertising" both online and offline and not other types of marketing? You pretty much created a strategy by what you said about not being known in your area. You have to "create awareness" of your business.

Here are some ideas:

1. Ask your loyal customers how they found you?

2. Ask your loyal customers to refer you to a new business and give them an incentive to do so. Your current customers are your best sales people.

3. Find out about community events in your area sponsored by the local merchants associations and do signage for them as a way to advertise your business (and get involved with your local merchant association if you haven't already).

4. If you're a member of a local chamber, ask them for their help and get their directories to see what other retail businesses are in your area and mail them a "call to action" or go and visit them

5. Make sure your "Google My Business" page is up-to date and then invest in some Google Ads. (PPC advertising)

6. Drive around town and see who has crappy signage and introduce yourself.

7. I'm not sure how you do this, but there is a way you can get a list of all new businesses that recently filed fictitious business notices or DBAs (doing business as) with your city. Did you ever notice how much marketing mail you got as soon as you started your own company?

Hope that helps. If you want to exchange more ideas, feel free to Direct Message me.

Lis

First off stop paying YP....you're wasting your money.

Every city usually has an ad mailer that goes to everyone in the entire town. It usually comes in an envelope with a stack of ads in it. It's usually not that expensive. Even if it goes to consumer homes.....remember every business owner lives at home.

Then I'd take one of your signs and put it on a car and park it somewhere, where there is large business traffic.

I would spend the money first on research. Choosing a media first is a guaranteed way to get frustrated.

The research should determine who your ideal client is. Then where they are to be found using all the available media choices. Then create a list, online and offline, of similar avatars, and determine what message THEY need to hear to engage with you. Finally, I would use the research money/time to determine the best way to convert suspects to prospects and prospects to buyers. It may be online or offline, only research will show.

Think of it as two roads to riches:

-the first road is the one everyone points to screaming 'this is the best way'. But the vast majority of people taking that path fall off the cliff.

-The second road is longer and takes some planning to ensure you get to the destination. But it's been proven by millions of businesses to get to the destination.

'Choose a media first' is the first road.

'Do research first' is the second road.

The choice is yours.

Mark

Is it me, or did this question change overnight?

To answer "this" one, I'd either do Facebook Ads, or if I wasn't getting new 5-star reviews weekly I would automate my review getting system by calling me, and asking for a special Alignable only deal to blow my review count out of the water.

That way Google and Yelp both make you look like a rock star when ppl see you in search results.

Hi Paul... if you're a local business some of the suggestions here are great. Facebook and Google when used properly are incredible. What else I would suggest is "debit after income" marketing.

What this means, is you don't pay for the marketing until AFTER you have been paid by the customer... and then you only pay a small %.

A large network reached out to use recently to find businesses that they could promote to their buyers list of around 100 million. (nationwide, but we target specific areas as well) The beauty is we don't charge anything to put you in the network, the advertising is free.

We send you business, and you get billed a small % the following month... and you always charge full price. If I can help anyone with questions, send me a message or check it out - http://leadsahoy.com/network

Nick

There are some very good answers here. All worth considering.

I'm going to go at it from a different direction.

Paul, check into your local BNI organization.

Chapters are crazy for people that do specific targeted promotional & branding items. Find a chapter that has a lot of other B2B business in it. Like a Commercial/Business Insurance person, Commercial Realtor, Business attorney, Business Coaching a/or consulting, Web design, IT businesses, other promotional businesses.

There are some other factors I would consider also.

If you decided to go this route and would like more information, I am happy to talk with you. I am an Ambassador for BNI in my region. So yea, I drank the Kool-aid. ; )

We have found that google ads work very good. Service Trade with other companies works great! I personally lost faith in paper media. It is repetition, works but when people needs a service, first thing we do is google that near me, they do not pull magazine or flyer from trash can. Online the way to go

Hi Paul,

I'm really surprised that with B2B advertising that nobody suggests the #1 search engine in the world, Google. People today tend to search Google for what they want.

I tried Yelp once. For their expensive service they managed to send, count'em, THREE people to my site in one whole month, With my own SEO service I get over 1,000 visitors per month coming to my Website.

They're are facts about AdWords that everyone needs to know as well. It can be extremely expensive and look at THIS too

I know why people seem to have given up on Google as a way to send traffic to their Website. It ha gotten very difficult to get page 1 rankings on the Google organic search results pages without paying premium fees.

That changes here and now. We recently introduced, for a limited time, what we call "SEO with training wheels". The client selects the number of keywords (1-50) that they would like to be on page 1 of the Google organic search results for and the city they want to be found in.

We rank them on page 1 of the Google organic search results for the most searched for keywords today in their business niche. These are high competition keywords that have a lot of traffic associated with them. Since they are the most searched for keywords, they are more likely to get clicks. We do not chase "low hanging fruit" keywords because these are low competition keywords with little to no traffic.

The cost is $100.00 per keyword per month. If someone has paid $200.00 for 4 to 6 months and has no results, we can put them on Page 1 of the Google organic search results for two keywords in less than 7 days.

We absorb 100% of the risk. Clients pay us NOTHING until 100% of the keywords ordered are on page 1 of the Google organic search results and Google shows them there.

See the results for 10 keywords for our latest customer HERE. (1,368 visitors in the last 30 days)

Get the full story HERE.

Hi Paul,

The best ad product is Facebook by far.

I'd definitely craft a free or Groupon style offer and advertise to people that either work for, or are owners of the types of businesses you are looking to target.

Your service is visual so a video ad right in the news feed should get some attention attention.

That's just one of the many different strategies that you could implement to profitably run ads on FB.

Hope this helps Paul.

Bryan