Extend Your Online Profile

Your website used to be king. Driving traffic to it was your top priority and appearing high on search engines was essential. All of that is still true to some extent but let’s look at this from a BtoB perspective. More than likely you aren’t actually selling something on line — if you are, it’s probably not your core business. Most BtoB companies sell very high-priced, high-value products and services. They might sell some parts on line but their core business is still about relationships with customers in person, over the phone or through email. In the past, this left their web strategy with some gaps. Sure, you could offer information on line and collect leads but that’s where it ended.

Today, however, there are more than a few ways you can build relationships on line and extend your on line profile. You no longer have to depend solely on your website to build a presence on line. Here are a few ways:

LinkedIn: This is an on line social network for professionals that’s really taken off. The site also has a way to create a company profile. Connecting your employee’s profiles to your companies profile just extends your brand further.  Join, create a company profile and encourage other employees to link to it.  It is another place to connect to people, announce news, and drive traffic to your own site.

YouTube: Traditionally this is the place you go to see kittens running on treadmills. But it has the capability to be a repository for your presentations. You can create a page that is essentially a mini-website for you company. Put up presentations, product demos or executive speeches and embed them on your website and promote the landing page on YouTube itself.

HootSuite: This application lets you tap into blog posts and feed them into a twitter account. What does this mean? It means that you can have more extensive entries from multiple sources go to one place. What does this mean? OK, basically Twitter lets people enter messages that are 146 characters long and was originally used for such scintillating messages like “Eating a pizza at Joe’s” The community has grown, however, and some are using it for business communications. That can be tricky, however, because BtoB tends to be more complicated than 146 characters. But let’s say you had 5 people blogging about different trends and products within your company? You could funnel that information into one or two Twitter accounts with HootSuite. Twitter is a growing community of people that you can tap into for possible partnerships or prospects.  Giving yourself a solid platform within that community helps build relationships and discover opportunities.

There are certainly more resources out there, but these are just a few ways to start.  Remember, you don’t need to just depend on your website and SEO to build relationships 24/7

Resources for BtoB Sales & Marketing During the Recession

Need new ideas?  Inspiration?  Or just an education in new technology or how to market in a down economy?  There’s a bunch of great resources out there that can help.  While some are not specifically geared toward BtoB — they still have great ideas that pertain to any business.

Harvard Publishing Recession Guide

HBR has taken its blog posts that pertain to the recession and put them into one place where you can read opinions, strategies, and news regarding the recession and strategies particularly for BtoB

TED – Not Business As Usual

Technology, Education, Design — this is a conference that has been going on for decades, but now all of its lectures are available on line.  The topics are broad but there are some inspirational ideas here for business.  The above link is for videos on the conference’s theme of Not Business as Usual which seems apt.

FORA.TV

Fora is a collection of video presentations from dozens of groups.  The result is an amazing resource from some of today’s greatest thinkers.  It’s also a great place to find more obscure speakers — unlike TED, it’s not only the heavy-hitters that can get access.  This link is to the economy section of FORA, but there are sections for technology,science, politics, and culture as well.

Also, don’t forget to check out ABI’s own resource on the topic here: Link

Boost B2B Sales: 5 Tips That Work Even During A Recession

Ask any marketing person about what to do during a recession and the first thing they’ll say is “Don’t Cut Marketing!”  That’s all well and good, but how do you actually succeed?  Obviously you can’t expect to do the same old thing and expect the leads to waltz through the door.  ABI has posted 5 tips on their website to get you started…

During a recession BtoB marketing is an investment. You have to do it in the bad times to realize gains in the good times. While many companies only market after a recession is over, the real winners emerging from economic hard times are the ones that do the exact opposite. Aggressively marketing after you’ve won business means that you’re essentially buying into the market after it’s regained value. You may feel good when your numbers return but you’ve actually missed a huge opportunity during the economic recovery.

Here are 5 quick tips to make sure you don’t miss that opportunity during and after this economic crisis.

Read the rest here: Link