It is not that complicated. You have a B2B technology, manufacturing, or industrial company, and you are trying to grow. Who isn’t? For a lot of companies, the largest barrier blocking you from maximizing your B2B potential is a lack of new prospects. So, your first goal is to increase the number of times your potential customers see and hear about you. You’ll want to do this as rapidly, broadly, and affordably as possible. Your messaging is critical! It has to be credible and engaging.
Now you know the recipe for success, let’s dig a little deeper into each of the ingredients that make up the “secret sauce.”
Reaching more customers
Tell me if this sounds like you. You have a really great product, you know your target audience, and you know there is a need for your solution. For lead generation, you’ve tried everything from marketing emails to advertising, and even attempted cold calling, all with little-to-no results.
When it comes to B2B marketing, what worked 5 (even 3) years ago simply does not work as well today. We could get into why that is, but you know it’s true, and now you’re searching for something that will actually deliver B2B growth.
Let’s get straight to the answer… What your prospects want from you is to know that you are the solution to their problems. They want to know that you have a successful track record of solving the same, or similar, problems for other companies in the past. It would be even better if they could see the actual results for themselves. So, how do you make it easy for them to come to that conclusion?
B2B publicity
The answer is a B2B publicity program that puts your success stories directly in the hands of hundreds of thousands of people within your target audience. It starts with having someone like Rankin PR interview your customers about their experience working with you. What problems were they facing? How much was it costing them not to fix that issue? What other options did they consider, and why did they ultimately choose to work with you?
Then we take that interview and create a story that delivers a real-world accounting of what they experienced. One of the greatest parts of this approach is that it’s not self-promoting or you pounding your chest, but instead it is an objective, third-party doing the talking for you. Who better than the trusted voice of your own customers or an industry expert?
Maximizing B2B potential: reaching more for less
Next, it’s time to get those stories in front of as many potential customers as possible. What we do is utilize our connections in the media to get your story published in the trade publications that your target audience is already reading (print and online). In fact, according to research from MarketGrowth, 92% of engineers and B2B decision-makers report regularly reading industry publications, and 97% of those say that what they read there directly impacts purchasing decisions.
By doing this, you can get your stories published on average between 40-60 times per year… Maybe even a cover story or two. By tracking the impressions and reach of these publications, you can get a good metric of how many potential customers you are now connecting with. If you are not reaching hundreds of thousands of people every year with your messaging then you are likely not making a big enough impact to deliver results.
Affordable ways to maximize your B2B potential
With a B2B publicity plan, you can generate those impressions at a much lower overall cost than with just about any other form of marketing or communications. Think about a 4-page story in a major trade publication and compare that to a one-page ad that would cost a minimum of about $6,000-$10,000. Now, which one is going to have a greater impact? Which one is delivering your full value in a relatable story? Which one do people subscribe to these magazines to consume?
Taking it one step further, we can typically secure more than one story per month. So, for about the same cost as a single-page ad that appears one time, in one publication, you can secure several multi-page stories.
So, just compared to advertising alone, you are way better off utilizing the B2B publicity program. However, the benefits don’t stop there.
Helps with SEO
There is also a huge impact on your SEO and digital marketing. B2B publicity is not just about print publications. While industry print magazines are still widely consumed, there are also opportunities for these articles to be published online. This can deliver a huge boost to your SEO.
First, these online articles can contain a backlink to your website. Since industry trade publications are already vetted by Google, they generally have a high domain authority (DA) score that falls between 70-99. There are a lot of SEO companies that are currently charging thousands of dollars each month for DA scores between 15-40.
Not only do those high DA backlinks help your SEO, but those publications often populate the top spot in the search results for many of your keywords. For example, one of our clients sells HDPE cooling towers. Go ahead and search for that, and while everyone’s Google results are slightly different based on location, search history, etc., you are likely to find our client’s website first under the organic results (those that are not paid ads) and then several articles from the top tier trade journals that we were able to get published for them.
In fact, for many people searching for that key term, everything in the top 10 is something about our client – either their website or a B2B publicity article.
Leading to leads
When you are able to create these types of results, at an affordable monthly spend, you will see B2B growth that exceeds your expectations. We have clients that are seeing 200-400% growth in as little as 12-18 months. Now that is not an overnight success by any means, but it is sustainable – which is much more important.
Too many PR-hyped dreams are about appearing in Forbes or TechCrunch and while those are great publications to be in, they are not going to publish a story about you every month. You would be lucky to get one or two stories a year in those publications.
Plus, think about who you are actually reaching in a publication like Forbes where 99.99% of the readers are not within your target audience. Conversely, there are a number of trade publications where the readership is made up of 90-95% of what could be considered your ideal customer.
Maximizing B2B potential exponentially
This is where B2B publicity goes beyond just delivering leads. You are educating your customers with all your selling points, your value proposition, and your differentiators. What tends to happen next is your leads require much less convincing. This, in turn, shortens the time and resources required to close each potential sale.
If that is something that you are looking for, then set up a meeting to see if you qualify for our B2B publicity program. Unfortunately for some, we are very selective about who we work with. We actually turn down about 60% of the people who come to us for help.