Rebecca CaroeI know how to find customers for your business
Bio

A new business development specialist, strategy consultant and energetic cause champion. Working with me you will learn ways to win new clients with persistence, diligence and flashes of inspiration.

Hire me if you need to make sales in B2B markets.

My advice is always practical - real tactics which you can quickly learn and put into practice. If you can send me briefing documents in advance you get the best value for money.


Recent Answers


You have 2 options - learn how to do this yourself or pay someone to do it for you. If you want to learn, go to the bookstore, or Udacity or join Seth Godin's Online Marketing training course. These are medium term strategies.
In the short term, there are some sites and services which you can do yourself or pay a modest sum for someone else do do for you.

You don't say what your business does or how large your business is - answer these in a private message to me and I can improve this answer.

Here is an article I wrote about 8 Marketing Strategies to Grow and Scale a Local Business https://creativeagencysecrets.com/local-marketing-auckland/

- Research directory listing websites in your country (Yelp, Upcity etc) and go and create listing on each one.
- Hire an SEO freelancer (www.upwork.com has many listed) to work for your site setting up the links you desire
- Sign up for Marketing Local platforms who offer local marketing services which include link building https://www.reachlocal.com/us/en
https://www.ownlocal.com/
https://www.brightlocal.com/
- Write blogs which cite other local businesses and can be re-published on local websites, newspapers and local Facebook groups. Getting links from these sites will help to boost your site's SEO (although Facebook doesn't rank because Google hates them).
- Create a customer newsletter which links to your online blogs so your current customers also click through to the site to read the articles - this will boost the visitors to the site and help improve the relevance score.

Best wishes


I support the other answers given here, and add this.

- Go and join the professional trade bodies who represent the industries for your existing clients. Ask your existing clients what these are.
- Once you are a member, you will be able to see a membership list of other organisations who are also members
- Plan outbound marketing to approach these companies and see if they want to also work with you.

Lastly, consider visiting the annual conferences and trade shows which these professional bodies run because you will then meet in person with prospects. Many people find it easier to sell their expertise face to face. You could consider doing a trade show stand as well where you can display your past work and the logos of your clients. This builds trust and can start discussions.,

In summary - you need to learn the process of B2B new business, you need a strategy for your new business development and then you need a regular tactical execution process to deliver the new business programme.

You may choose to hire an external advisor to help write the strategy, you could get an in-house salesperson to deliver the tactical execution as well, depending on the size of your contracts and how many you need to get in order to pay for their salary plus commission to make it worthwhile for the business.
Best wishes.


Why get your banker to advise on the sale of the business? Seems you're using the wrong advisor.
Finding a buyer for any service (or a business) begins with YOU knowing the obvious purchasers....

I sold my business last week (seriously, yes) and I started by researching other firms in the same and adjacent marketplaces. Then I sent them this email.

The owners of XXXX have put the business up for sale. If you would like to find out more with a view to buying it as a going concern, please get in touch before 12 December 2017.

We would count it as a personal favour if you could refrain from sharing this information outside your organisation.

Many thanks.

I got 6 enquiries, got 5 NDAs signed, and proceeded to negotiations with two and sold to one....

I brought the lawyers in late in the day, once we had agreed a heads of terms. I knew the price I wanted and they told me during negotiations what they valued the firm at and we haggled....

And so my advice is to first find possible buyers by approaching them direct. Then bring in advisors. NOT your banker (he's good for banking.... not business sales).

Go for it.


My online retail business generates around 30% of revenues through social media marketing. We get a lot more leads but they are hard to identify because in B2C situations, the customer is anonymous. However in B2B marketing there is a longer sales cycle and the prospect self-identifies more readily.

Get in touch if you want tutoring in how to set this process up for yourself.


Well done - getting started.

Questions:
1 - Do you have a website?
2 - On your website how do you invite subscription?
3 - Have you got social profiles?
4 - On your social profiles, how do you invite subscriptions?

So you've guessed, you need to get people to visit a place on the web which you own (website / social profiles) and then invite them to join your newsletter. Consider what 'offer' you can make which is attractive to them in addition to getting the articles. Sumo.com has a good Wordpress plugin for subscriptions. Also check out Push Notifications as many sites prefer this as subscribers won't share their email address. I wrote this article about Notifications
http://creativeagencysecrets.com/push-notifications/

Things for you to GrowthHack test
1 - Is 10 articles too few / too may / just right?
2 - What offer can you make to subscribers?
3 - How are you monetising your newsletter?
4 - Which brands can you collaborate with to grow your list with theirs in a joint venture arrangement?
5 - what are your key metrics and ideal customer profile?

Good luck and keep up the good work.


Take a close look at Agilecrm.com we are using it for a couple of clients and it has most of the Hubspot features, enables automatic tagging (buyers and sellers) and you can set up automations for your ebook download etc as you detail in your question.

You will be able to get rid of your email automation software as it's included in the tool. And the service pricing is about 80% lower than comparable other services plus has more features. Take a look at this page where they run detailed comparisons to Hubspot and other popular services https://www.agilecrm.com/compare


We are just migrating from Insightly to Agilecrm.com. Take a look - it's fully featured and very good value. We are using it to replace Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor and FeedBlitz for some of our clients.

This is CRM database software - so may not suit your needs. But it's subscription; BUT it's low cost subscription.


Quick answer: Yes it is possible.
Longer answer: But it's a tough sell. You see, the only people who'd work for you this early stage just for equity are people who already know you and trust you and your business.

And so if in your angel investor group you can find someone with marketing knowledge, use them to help you.

In the very short term you can make this work. BUT even in good ole U. S. of A., I fear you'll struggle to get good marketing advisors prepared to meet your terms.
This does not mean you shouldn't try; but have a plan B prepared which should be a smaller budget, longer runway tactic. I can help you develop this.

Results-based payments are 100% effective and as a part-payment they could work well for you. Downside is you need to use open-book accounting and give yourself 100% to the strategies recommended by the agency. Both you and they need skin in the game to make this remuneration work.

Go for it. But have a Plan B.


To monetise anything you need
1 - an audience
2 - a product to sell to the audience

Your question is not clear on either of these points. So first you need to answer these questions:

Are the people in a single industry / areas of interest?
Where do other people who like that industry / interest area hang out?
What brands do they like?
Can you offer the brand access to your audience for a fee?
What add-on or associated services can you combine with your core product?
Consider the customer life-time - from newbie to leaving the brand - what are the stages you go through (CRM)?
What products and services can you offer that align with each stage and how can you help the brand stay relevant to the audience through each of these stages?

Go to work and write up your answers..... then we can give you more tasks.



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