How to find new B2B Customers

How to acquire new B2B customers ? Here’s a list of acquisition channels used to find new customers in B2B.

Find new B2B customers : best practices

Some acquisition methods will only bring you few prospects but highly qualified ones. Some strategies require an upfront financial investment, and some other are totally free but are time consuming. Some acquisition channels can scale more easily than others. Each acquisition channel has its own advantages and disavantages. It’s important to use them all then mix those with best Volume / Quality / Budget / Time Spent ratios.

Cold Calling

Phone prospecting (Cold Calling) is used by many companies. However, this activity is usually time-consuming for a sales team. Despite its downside, it is a very common way to reach directly new B2B prospects and to answer objections directly.

Emailing

Cold Emailing is probably the most efficient strategy to get in touch with a large number of prospects in a smart way (by sending targeted and precise emails). While it can be time-consuming to send cold emails manually, it is very easy to automate.

Trade Fair

Trade fair en exhibition can be a good source of new customers and help you gain visiblity. Your prospects are more or less targeted depending on the trade fair you are going to (the more specific, the better), and requires a financial investment that be counted in ten of thousands of dollars.

There are different ways to participate in a trade fair :

1. You can have a booth
2. You can invited as a speaker (the best combo as it offers the best visibility, plus, it’s sometimes free)
3. You can sponsor the event
4. You can come as a simple visitor and visit each booth

Content Marketing

Marketing Content (or Inbound Marketing) gathers everything you can do to help prospects finding you before you do!

To really have an impact, you need to be visible and create a lot of content on your own website and on others.

Here’s a list of contents that are usually created in a Content Marketing strategy :

1. Having a blog (and publishing at least 2 times a week)
2. Publishins ebooks & case studies
3. Publishing a paperbook
4. Animating webinars
5. Writing articles on blogs, on LinkedIn, on Medium, …
6. Publishing on Slideshare
7. Being active on community websites : forums, Quora, Reddit, etc…/li>
8. Publishing videos on Youtube

Content Marketing is a long-term strategy and will bing a coutinuous flow of new inbound leads.

Online Advertising

Advertising is a way to find new B2B customers that requires an important upfront investement, and is is very scalable up to a certain point. If you do have an interesting acquisition cost, you can easily double your traffic : basically, it’s all about multiplying your budget and optimizing your CTR (click through rate)

Here are some commonly used digital advertising platforms :

1. Google Adwords (or Bing Ads)
2. Facebook Ads: even in B2B
3. Linkedin Ads
4. Twitter Ads
5. Outbrain (to promote blog posts)

Advertising comes in different formats (Display, Pre-roll, search, …) that all have pros and cons. RTB is also interesting with an important budget.

Partnerships

Partnerships enable an exchange of visibility and is totally free. For partnerships to be successfull, you have to select partners target the same Ideal Customer Profile but aren’t in direct competition with you.

For example:

1. An exchange of blog posts
2. An exchange of e-mailing
3. Webinar or events in common
4. A special promotion
5. etc…

Offline Marketing

More tradictional marketing actions can include different strategies :

1. Flyers : distributing flyers at subways’ exits or in crowded places
2. Postal mailing
3. Advertising : TV, radio, cinema, in the subway, on bus shelters, on cars, etc…
4. Street Marketing : Be original to be noticed !
5. Public Relations
6. etc…

Referral

Word of mouth referral can be created with or without (financial) counterpart.

In cases where a counterpart is intended, the referral can take various forms :

1. Sponsorship: giving extra advantages to those referring you (Dropbox gave for exampe extra-space)
2. Affiliate program : you pay your affiliate according to how much leads or conversion they brought you.
3. Business Providers : Pay them according to the sales revenue they generate. It is different from affiliate marketing since a more important commercial action is required from them.

Let us know if you know other ways to find B2B customers.