10 simple ways to market your business

There are more ways to market your business than ever, which is a curse and a blessing. There’s a host of inexpensive marketing channels with potential for huge ROI, but also a paralysing range of options, which can be intimidating, frustrating, and — if not approached correctly — can drain your time and money, leaving you very little to show for it.

For those without marketing expertise, it’s daunting to look at all the choices and try to work out where to start, what to choose, and most importantly, how to do it well, so here are ten simple ways to begin (or improve) your B2B marketing.

Clean up your data

Strictly speaking, this isn’t marketing, but it is the groundwork for everything else on this list. Look at your mailing list and understand fully:

• Who is on it? (level of seniority, type of company, location etc.)
• Is it accurate? Do you have the correct email addresses? Are there any gaps in contact details?
• Is everyone on that list fully opted in and compliant with GDPR?

To send effective marketing messages that you can analyse meaningfully, your data has to be clean and relevant. Poor quality lists full of out-of-date contact details or unlikely prospects will undermine your whole campaign.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

It’s a long-term strategy, not a quick win, but good SEO will boost your visibility, grow your brand, and send you more inbound leads. If you’re not sure where to start, an SEO audit can tell you what you’re doing right, what you’re doing wrong, and how you can improve your performance in search.

Nutcracker can handle your audit for you. Get in touch, and we’ll assess how you’re performing. It’s hello@nutcrackeragency.com or 0203 941 0305.

Write blog posts

Blog writing is another long game, and while the returns aren’t immediate, they are significant. A steady flow of articles that demonstrate your expertise will legitimise your offering and reassure prospects that they’d be in safe hands if they were to work with you. On top of that, your blog will support your SEO, because search engines reward consistent publishing.

One other thing to think about is distribution. Will you promote your blog posts on social media and/or through emails and newsletters? That may dictate your choice of topics and style, because a blog that’s purely for SEO will need to be optimised for that, whereas content for distribution doesn’t necessarily need to be quite as specialised.

Get on social media

If you’re not active on social media, start now. Find out where your customers and prospects are, and start posting there. If you’re wondering what to post, a good rule of thumb is to publish things that will build trust. Typically, the best way to do that is to share valuable insights, just as with your blog.

A crucial part of social media marketing is to engage with others’ posts as well. If you have value to add, then add it. As an expert, you can and should be part of the conversations that are happening in your industry.

Also, don’t forget to listen. Your prospects and your clients will often volunteer incredibly valuable information — their struggles, their frustrations, details about their roles and responsibilities. That’s gold dust for you and your sales and marketing teams, so be sure to spend time reading the posts that others write and building a picture of your audience.

Use your LinkedIn

When it comes to social media, LinkedIn is the key forum for a lot of industries, and it’s particularly powerful to use your personal brand to elevate your company’s brand. Not only do people respond well to seeing the personalities behind a business’s public face, but they’re far more likely to engage meaningfully with a person than with a company.

You can also reach out to your network, including people you’ve not spoken to in a while — those little moments can lead to big opportunities.

Release a whitepaper

One of the best ways to take a deep dive into a topic you know well is to publish a whitepaper on it. If the paper is well researched and solves business challenges, then a strong call to action should send a lot of relevant leads your way.

One consideration is whether to gate the content or not. Gated content requires people to enter their contact details in order to access it, so each download becomes a lead, but the trade-off is that fewer people will read your content. Also, the lead whose details you get before they read your whitepaper is less certain to be relevant than the one who gets in touch after reading.

Advertise online

This one can be a relatively quick win. Things like pay-per-click advertising and paid search can give you a lot of control over your spend, because you can target audiences more precisely, and you’re effectively paying only when a more relevant audience engages with your advert.

Bear in mind the value of your product or service when you’re choosing your channel. High-value products will require a different approach to high volume offerings, so consider and research accordingly. As in the case of paid campaigns one size does not fit all.

Email

Email can generate a 4,200% ROI, which any other channel is going to find impossible to match.

Its performance is very dependent on how well you execute it, and while that’s true of any marketing method, the consequences of bad email marketing can be harsher. You’ve delivered a message directly into somebody’s inbox, which is their territory, not yours. Cluttering an inbox with irrelevant or annoying content could be quite detrimental.

That said, don’t be put off — good email marketing may not be easy, but it is simple. You know your audience, so the guiding principles are clear — speak to them in their terms about things that matter to them, and offer them something of genuine value and know what you want to achieve.

Here are some great examples of email marketing done well.

Start a newsletter

A great way to engage those who have opted into your marketing, and to re-engage those who haven’t received much attention, a newsletter can be relatively low effort for the value it generates.

Whether it’s a text-based message about current trends, or a roundup of your recent content, it keeps your name at the front of people’s minds, and gets more eyes on your brand and thought leadership.

PR

Like email marketing, PR is simple but not easy. Writing press releases that journalists want to read is difficult, but if you have a compelling story that fits a publication’s focus, you’ve won most of the battle.

When it comes to crafting press releases that get published, and creating enough of them to keep your name in the press, you might find it’s easier to find someone to take care of it for you. Nutcracker’s team includes PR specialists and experienced, talented copywriters who get your content read, your band recognised, and your pipeline full.

Get in touch today and find out about how we can market your business through email, social media, PR, and content, and get you more conversations with the businesses you want to reach.

Email hello@nutcrackeragency.com or call 0203 941 0305.