Looking for ways to increase your edge over competing B2B companies? Sometimes answers can be found where you least expect them.
If too many companies fight for one piece of the market, those that want to get ahead cannot afford to save on customer service and marketing. You know that it’s important to give value to your customers – but if there are many similar agencies then this can only get you halfway.
Without marketing you’re risking that competitors who offer lower prices will dominate over your sales, regardless of whether they give less value than you or not. If customers don’t choose your services, maybe you’re just not selling them right. Here’s a plan to improve that.
1: Scout Social Platforms for Information
You can learn a lot about your industry online if you look closely. To see what sells the most in your niche, you can:
- Look for review websites for B2B services
- Browse Reddit, Quora and Linkedin
- Post question threads on Reddit, Quora and Linkedin (see how you should do Reddit digital marketing)
- Contact commenting customers with private messages
Look for relevant information: what customers appreciate the most, what they like about services like yours, but also what they dislike and why they stop cooperating with companies that offer similar services.
2: Save Your Research and Examine it
When you do research, save the information you find along with links and conclusions. Put it in a spreadsheet, a list or your Evernote – just save it so you have something to work with moving forward.
Examining your research results will inspire you as to what should be your main selling points – or at least give you well-founded ideas to experiment with.
Depending on how much information you’re able to find, this could be a great resource to improve your marketing strategy and sales results.
3: Find Biggest Problems and Address Them in E-mails and on Your Website
Once you know what your customers don’t like about services like yours, then you know what to avoid and what to promote. By acknowledging these problems and offering solutions, your company can come out on top.
But how will customers know that you have real solutions? Include it in your outreach. If you’re sending cold e-mails, then write them with this in mind.
Service companies sometimes lack great communication standards, or experience, or a proper workflow. But if you have those or other things that competitors might not have, include them in your e-mails, like in the example below:
Hi again {first name},
I just wanted to tell you something about our unusual workflow. We always do a full code review during development – thanks to which whatever we deliver to our customers is 100% verified. I’d love to discuss potential benefits from this for {company} – how about a 10 – min Skype call on Monday?
The next place to write about what your team is great at is on your website. Address the pains of your potential customers on your main page, a separate landing page or your FAQ, you could also do it in a blog post.
Show that you can deal with them, and describe your ways of preventing problems during cooperation. Your prices may be higher, but if you’re able to address real customer issues then you can justify costliness by showing that you provide more of what customers care about.
Summary
It’s a short and simple plan: research what customers say in your niche -> save and examine your research for new ideas -> experiment with new ideas in your outreach e-mails and website content.
Worth a try if you’re currently wondering how you could improve performance and see more sales without spending a huge amount of resources.
