When thinking about how you should market your goods and services to clients, it can be hard to know where to start. How do you get across what your company is all about? Where should you look to market your business? How do you stay ahead of the competition?
Hopefully this article can get you moving in the right direction. To get started on your marketing journey, I’ve distilled everything you need to know down to seven key principles.
Editor's note: Job #1 for any business owner looking to promote their goods or services is to get a website. Build one yourself with GoDaddy's easy website builders or trust the GoDaddy pros to build it for you.
1. Understand your target client
It's important that you first consider who you actually want to market to.
Trying to appeal to everyone may sound look a good idea, but focusing on those most likely to buy from you can be more effective.
You should consider:
- The industry your most likely clients are in
- The size of business most in need of your products and services
- Most importantly, the specific needs of those who buy your products/services
Do your research to find out your clients’ pain points and challenges so you can tailor your products, services and marketing messages to solve their problems. This will help spark their interest from the off.
2. Make effective use of social media
It's important to know that you will need to market yourself on the ever-expanding list of social media networks.
That being said, maybe it's worth considering which platforms are most used by your target audience before you start filming your choreographed dance with the finance team or taking part in whichever challenge is currently trending on Tik Tok.
Some businesses will get more success from platforms such as LinkedIn over Facebook, and others will find the most engagement on Instagram rather than X.
The only way to know for sure is to try each and compare response rates.
Once you’ve found the platform for you, use it to:
- Share your industry insights
- Engage with your target clients
- Promote your offerings
Decide on a posting cadence — say, once a week or twice a month — and stick to it. Then tailor your posts to the platform and hopefully you should be building followers and getting those all-important Likes in no time.
Check out this article on the 7 key ways to gain more social media followers for your business.
It covers everything from how to plan social media posts, choose the right imagery and identify influencers to running giveaways and using paid advertising.
3. Use email marketing the right way
Email marketing is incredibly effective when marketing to business clients. It’s an inexpensive way to offer personalised content for business clients and share important updates, relevant content and special offers.
A marketing campaign often relies on strong brand recognition.
This can be hard to pull off for a lot of SMEs, especially when they are just making a name for themselves.
Email advertising, on the other hand, allows you to sneak in some subtle promotion in the guise of helpful tips, how-tos and infographics. This is a great way to build your reputation in front of a new audience.
4. Let your current customers do the talking
A survey conducted by Bright Local found that 77% of customers “always” or “regularly” read testimonials when considering using local businesses.
Testimonials are stories from businesses that have already benefited from your services.
These stories act as case studies, allowing potential clients to see what others are saying about you.
They can help to convince someone who may be “on the fence” that your business sounds like the right one for them to work with.
Once you’ve got testimonials that really show off the product or service your business provides, make sure to give them plenty of coverage.
Case studies can be shared far and wide through sponsored posting with relevant industry partners and social media platforms.
5. Learn search engine optimisation (SEO)
Search engine optimization can help your company’s website rank well in search results, helping it to stand out from all the other B2B providers on the internet.
Researching keywords related to your business can give you an idea of what your clients are searching for online. It’s important to know what words your potential customers might be typing in when searching online for businesses in your line of work.
Keyword research can suggest topics you should be covering on your website and blog.
You’ll want to select a different keyword or phrase for each page of your website, adding it to the:
- Page title
- Page URL
- Header tags
- Meta description
- At least one headline/subhead
- Naturally throughout the text on that page (not forced)
Before you start, check out 11 SEO best practices for your small business website for a primer.
Make friends with trusted websites
When reputable websites link back to yours, search engines will begin to view your website as being similarly reputable, raising it through the search rankings.
More than 54% of clicks go to the first, second and third results on a search results page (not including the sponsored/paid results at the top). So, you want your website to appear on Pg. 1 for your keywords.
So don’t be afraid to ask big names in your industry to link to your website or blog articles. You can even offer to write a free blog post for them in exchange for links back to your site.
Make sure your website loads quickly
A crucial issue for a website’s search ranking can be its loading speed. If a website takes a long time to fully load, search engines will be more hesitant to rank the site favourably.
The reason? Because people don’t like slow-loading sites. In fact, readers will only wait a few seconds for any page to load before clicking away.
Loading speed has a lot to do with your web hosting.
So, if your site is sluggish, contact your web host and ask for help.
Tools like Google Page Speed Insights can also tell you how to improve the speed of your website, along with other core metrics.
Check to see it’s mobile-friendly
Ensuring that your website is mobile-friendly is essential in an era when so many people are using their smartphones to surf the internet. Search engines will always prioritise websites that can be viewed across a range of devices.
An SSL Certificate is a must-have, as Google penalises websites without them by dropping them down in search rankings. SSLs basically encrypt data shared between your business website and clients.
Editor’s note: An SSL Certificate is included free with all GoDaddy website builders and hosting plans (except the Economy plan, which offers a free SSL for the first year).
6. Partnerships and collaborations
Strategic partnerships and collaborations are a great way to expand your reach. After all, we get by with a little help from our friends.
By finding partners and collaborators, you can put your goods and services in front of each other's audiences and networks to find new customers.
This could be as simple as promoting a related business in exchange for them promoting yours to their email list.
This type of exchange works best if you choose a partner whose products or services complement yours. You don’t want to be competing with each other.
7. Stay informed on industry trends
Finally, I’d argue it’s most important to never grow stagnant.
It’s imperative as a business that you repeatedly demonstrate a commitment to staying up to date on industry trends. By sharing your insights on these trends online, you can position yourself as a thought leader who keeps up with the evolving needs of your clients.
Posting thought leadership content drives credibility and trust.
It also makes those prospective clients want to work with you!
Use these tips to promote yourself to business clients
Getting more business clients comes down to:
- Knowing what kind of businesses are most likely to buy from you
- Identifying the person in those businesses who will make the buying decision
- Creating content — social posts, videos, emails — that offers something of value to them
Hopefully you can use the seven ideas presented here to your advantage.
