Marketers and Business owners always have a common challenge. That is, of course, to think of effective strategies to achieve a constant flow of leads. Sure enough, there is really no easy way of doing this. Sometimes, we are unaware that we are practicing negative strategies of B2B marketing.
And that will be our focus for this day. B2B conversions or Business to Business conversions is a key factor of growth for every aspiring marketer and business owner.
For those who are transitioning and adjusting to the modern marketing environment, there might be marketers who are prone to old strategies. But remember that we are transitioning to the modern world.
This means that what has been effect before might no longer be as effective today. For business startups, their advantage is that they can adjust freely to the modern strategies now.
This is because as every strategy develops, our average consumer and business consumer also changes with the time. As a marketer, it will our responsibility to learn the new ways and move on from the old ones.
It is a never ending process of gaining new knowledge, experience, and applying them whenever necessary.
Like I said, the strategies on this list might have worked before. They might still work today in some cases. But as you are looking for new leads, you might notice somewhere in the middle of the process that there is definitely something wrong. Is it your current strategy? It might be your way of nourishing them or your way of converting them to clients.
Negative Strategies of B2B Marketing: Losing Leads
Today, our list will contain old and overused negative strategies of b2b marketing. My goal here is to help those who are transitioning to inbound marketing – which we will talk more about later. In addition, this list can help you steer away from what will supposedly make you lose leads instead.
So it’s not just transitioning from the old to the new. But also to literally avoid annoying your clients and making them think you are not a professional.
Targeting Irrelevant Personas
This is okay because before, the more contacts you can get, the more chance of getting the relevant customers. But technology has already made it so convenient for us. The main ingredient here is the internet as well as your websites and your content marketing.
You see, you will be able to attract the right leads if you know what to do. First, you have to produce relevant content. Then you can collect information by putting out fill up forms on a landing page and etc.
Then once you gather this information, you can consolidate them on a customer relations management tool. But what you can do is to further select and refine your demographic database to look for leads who you only think has a high chance of becoming clients.
So it’s no longer just about gather contact info and just talking to whoever you want. Becuase that’s one of the most negative strategies of B2B Marketing now.
You can target specific Business Personas who can make critical decisions. Although this might lower your leads, what you will left be of are high-quality leads which have a high chance of conversions. As the common saying goes, quality is better than quantity. This is perfect in this scenario.
Intrusive Advertising
If you are losing leads, your initial action would be to check what you are doing wrong. So you might want to look at the tools you use to get leads. With that said, it might be because of your advertising campaign. Generally speaking, it might be because of your intrusive advertisements.
No one wants intrusive advertisements. Although the effective strategy before is to post your brand all over the internet, send out flyers and pay for TV ads. Some of these advertising strategies still work but there is a thin line now. This refers to crossing between intrusive and easy-to-look-at advertisements.
If you are looking for B2B leads, you might want to lessen the clutter and keep it simple. Your website design should be easy to look at, simple and professional in a way that clients can easily navigate it.
You won’t attract any kind of leads for that matter if you keep showing ninja pop-ups or big clickable buttons that ask people to “buy now”.
What you can do is choose a channel you wish to advertise in. Always have a choice to opt out of your advertisements and make them a one-time pop-up only.
Pay Google Adwords to have them match your keywords on search engines, advertise personally to affiliates, and set up business meetings. This is a great way to attract business to business leads and it’s also more cost-efficient.
Advertising too much nowadays will really cost you a lot of money and it’s one of the most negative strategies of B2B marketing now. But there are still lots of ways you can promote and advertise your business without annoying potential clients and still keeping them interested while you nurturing them.
Cold Calling and Email Blasting Campaigns
One of the most negative strategies of B2B marketing is forcing your potential clients. Before, cold calling and email blasting have been the most effective way of getting leads and converting them. But this has been annoying people ever since it’s inception.
Based on experience myself, it really ticks me off when a selling company calls me every day and offers a product. They even send me text messages and emails that offer discounts for food or any merchandise. This is really annoying and it cripples the communication firms in complaints.
So what has been to prevent these complaints is to strain these spam calls and emails. Eventually, our technology today has prevented these sorts of forced communication away from us.
You’ll see that almost all email apps and clients now have the spam folder. And telecoms now have a way to block cold calling from reaching us.
If you really want to do this strategy now, you have to pay a huge amount of capital just to be able to get through to people. What you can do is move on to other tactics like sequenced emails or just don’t do cold calling anymore.
Instead, opt for a more friendly way of reaching out people. Like creating fill out forms for potential clients to give demographic info.
Your website is your greatest tool in this case. Perfect your search engine optimization so people can easily look you up. Or invest your money for Google Ads instead of investing for cold calling. Business people will especially appreciate this strategy more. This will definitely shake you off from negative strategies of B2B marketing.
Great Strategies that Work
Okay, it’s time to move on from those old and obsolete lead generation strategies. Let us get rid ourselves of those negative strategies of B2B marketing and move towards the better. Let’s make our leads and our customers the center of our marketing campaigns and allow them to make decisions for themselves.
WishPond provided a good read with their new B2B lead generation strategies. Based on experience, they really work because we apply some of their strategies too as a business.
You have great strategies there like creating an eBook. This is a good way to expand your reach and get fresh new leads from your relevant industry. eBooks are great to increase brand awareness in a totally in-depth kind of way.
A really great strategy from them is creating Facebook contests. Since facebook houses some 3 billion users every month, you can take advantage of that even if you can only reach a couple of thousands.
Most marketing campaigns now are from modern technological advancements. As a marketer, it will be your responsibility to try and research what will be the best fit for your campaigns.
Explainer Videos
Since we are now talking about modern technology, this will be a great tool that’s totally opposite from negative strategies of B2B marketing. Videos in general, are the most passed on and shared type media around the internet.
But explainer videos are special in particular. Explainer videos are great to increase brand awareness, they are cost-efficient compared to other types of video productions and they significantly boost your conversions with a compelling call to action.
This is perfect to acquire your B2B leads too. Most of your clients would like a formal presentation anyways. So Explainer Videos can help you in that aspect. Also, you can keep them in your smartphones if ever you need to show them to your potential clients while on the go.
What explainer videos really are is that they are one of the most convenient tools for advertising. Share them on social media sites and attract your relevant leads and start from there.
Since explainer video is one to two minutes in duration only, they won’t bore your viewers, thus, attracting more people to watch. This will ultimately result in conversions and more leads. Stop losing leads with negative strategies and use explainer videos.
Moving on to Inbound Marketing
Inbound Marketing is the biggest bubble in the industry today and it’s still expanding. If you are still thinking about b2b marketing negative strategies, then inbound marketing will surely save you. This is the complete opposite of the main strategy before that is to pitch and force leads into buying.
Inbound marketing is all about guiding and nurturing the lead in their buying journey. All leads have a buying journey, whether to avail a product or a service, it’s still the same. So you are no longer forcing people to buy your product. Instead, you are attracting them and you are letting them make their own decision.
This way, they feel the real value of what they purchased and they are confident. With the technology today, inbound marketing has never been easier for marketers. I actually provided a good article that explains inbound marketing in a much more in-depth way.
All marketers should migrate to inbound marketing. Although this is only my personal opinion, but I believe that inbound marketing will be so big in the near future that every marketer out there will need to adjust to it. Stop annoying your potential leads with forced pitched and over advertising.
Do inbound marketing and help your customers along the way. Not only will this be beneficial for your leads, but you will experience some really good benefits as well. Like cost-efficiency and increase in productivity.
You won’t need to work as much in attracting your leads because you only need to attract them and nurture them along their journey.