For B2B leaders, building a marketing program that generates awareness and helps their company stand out from the competition requires planning, resources and relentless determination to succeed. Today there are countless tools and technologies that present exciting opportunities for telling a company’s story to its customers and prospects. And while there are companies across industries that spend large amounts of money promoting their products and services, the good news is that there are impactful strategies that will successfully tell a company’s story while staying within a reasonable budget.
Here are five affordable strategies that can generate awareness, leave a memorable impression and earn valuable returns on investment without breaking the bank.
Design a Memorable First Impression
Websites, visual style and logos often form a company’s visual first impression, which means these highly visible assets carry a lot of weight. Research suggests that logos are viewed as the most recognizable brand identifier, followed by visual style, brand color and unique voice. Whether a prospect lands on your website, sees your print ad or walks through your retail store, that all-important positive first impression can pay dividends that will prove invaluable to your business in the long-term.
Establish a Unique Voice Your Customers Will Hear
Knowing what separates your company from competitors will help determine what you need to communicate in your industry’s crowded marketplace. Once you craft a message that is consistent with your overarching goal and mission, you need to start generating awareness for your business. Buyers connect with content that presents an opportunity, solves a problem or meets a need. Provide clear information on why your products or services are what prospects are looking for.
Create Your Company’s Buyer Persona
Marketing on a budget may mean you cannot cast wide marketing nets like large companies with big budgets. Instead, you need to focus on specific types of customers who are most likely to use your products or services by creating a buyer persona. Understanding what is important to different kinds of buyers will allow you to craft and distribute meaningful messaging and content that gets buyers to respond and engage with you. According ITSMA, more than 80 percent of companies that used buyer personas improved their value proposition to customers.
Create Engaging Content to Leverage Your Expertise!
Whether you are a small family business or a streaming giant like Netflix, creating engaging content is the name of the game in 2022! For B2B companies, this means sharing compelling messaging through blog posting, email marketing, social media posts, videos and podcasts, to name a few effective mediums. Producing a wide variety of relevant and helpful content can provide your company with opportunities to connect with prospects and customers and be considered a thought-leader in your industry. Content will also help your business receive valuable backlinks that positively impact your website authority and search engine optimization (SEO) ranking. According to HubSpot, companies that blog earn 97 percent more backlinks to their website.
Collaborate with Industry Leaders to Showcase Thought Leadership
Connecting with influencers in your industry’s can provide mutually beneficial opportunities for guest blogging, backlinks and guest appearances on podcasts. Backlinks are important because they are veritable seals of approval from one authoritative website to another (i.e. – your site), and they improve your company’s SEO ranking. Collaborating with industry leaders has infinite possibilities in the short and long term for generating impactful awareness for your business.
Effectively marketing your company on a budget is attainable with the right plan of action. There are even many free tactics you can use to make a positive impact, like claiming a hashtag, taking advantage of user-generated content and always communicating your mission and values in internal and external communications.
Consider outsourcing your marketing to save time and resources. Hiring a marketing firm doesn’t have to break the bank. GREENCREST will work within your budget and timeline to meet your company’s goals by providing effective, brilliantly executed marketing results.