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5 tips to engage new customers

Guest post by: Jeff Ogden

Article Overview: Getting the attention of prospective new customers is the hardest thing to do in business to business marketing today. The author shares five tips to address this problem.

5 tips to engage new customers

How do you attract the attention of a total stranger? That's THE biggest problem for most B2B marketers. B2B lead generation starts with this step. But it is very hard. If they don't know you, they don't trust you. So what do you do to attract those ideal prospective customers?

Here are my five tips to engage new customers:

Understand your buyers REALLY well.

1. Buyer personas are an ideal starting point. The better you know someone, the better you can talk to them. Make sure you understand their problems, whom they trust, where they turn for information, and what they also care about. (e.g I'm a proud graduate of the University of Notre Dame, so for me it is God, Country, Notre Dame.)
2. Create awesome contentSee my blog post on tips from Made to Stick for specific ideas. Humor, thought leadership, videos, narrated Slideshare presentations, etc. Which should you use? Yes!
3. Share that content everywhere.You want it very easy to find. So share it on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Slideshare, YouTube, Digg, Delicious, Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc. The broader you distribute it, the easier it is to find.
4. Search marketingFind a handful of really good keywords and start networking to build links. You want customers who have needs and search online to find you. Remember, search today is based on popularity - inbound links. You don't need a search marketing firm, necessarily. I use Wordtracker and their LinkBuilder tool. And Hubspot offers Websitegrader too.
5. Network like crazy. Find the thought leaders, the industry experts, and the gurus. Get yourself known by helping them.

You should also look for Trigger Events - happenings at their side that put them in, as Craig Elias says, the Window of Discontent. Maybe they just raised capital. Maybe they just hired a new Chief Marketing Officer. Figure out which trigger events are important to you - maybe FDA approval matters (if you sell to pharma companies). That's how you know when to make contact - when they are receptive. OneSource (our client) has a great product for this called iSell.

Do you have any other suggestions for engaging new prospective customers?

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Article Tags: fearless competitor, Find New Customers, lead generation, lead generation companies, lead generation company, lead generation programs, marketing lead generation, sales lead generation



Related Forum Posts
Re: 3 Ways I Used Twitter To Grow My Business This Week - great. Also, I would like to add: * interesting posts that people would like to hear * some news alerts * engage with potential and existing customers. Thanks, Robert
Excited New Member - Greetings everyone! I have stumbled across this web site and am hoping I can engage in some meaningful dialogue with everyone here. I'm very interested in meeting people all over the world, to share internet success stories and engage in discussion about the 'coming' internet commerce environment. Hopefully I will be able to meet some of you through discussions, and I am looking forward to forging new relationships. All the best!
Re: Is Bulk Mailing useful for promotion - Thanks for the tips will try profollow and mailchimp. I have tried with cc, aweber, icontact and interspire. Every software has its own pros and cons. Yes, opt-ins are good to get in touch with customers who are interested to hear from you. But what about the other potential customers who are not opted but they also might be interested in my product and services. Don't the real potential target customer are sitting outside and search for our products? How do we proactively in touch with them? Thanks, Robert
Re: Infographic: 10 Tips On Preparing For The Call - Great tips, thank you. I would add one thing - customers differ from country to country. For example, when I was calling US-based customers I was more successful when I skipped the part of asking if they have 2 minutes. It didn't work - I got hostile responses like: "Why? What do you want? No, but tell me why are you calling?" etc. With Canadians it is better - they are more polite either in b2b or b2c environment. So, pick your battles and try to avoid things that can lead your customer to say No in the first 20 seconds of your call.
Sponsorship $ - Garth - typically small business owners don't engage too much in sponsorship because it usually acts as more of a branding exercise and is hard to tie back to sales. Have you looked at how the groups can increase your exposure to potential customers? Can you have your fliers handed out? Can you or someone from your company sit in on the meetings? Are you linked directly from their website? Small businesses need to stretch their marketing budgets as far as they can and you can't afford to be spending on initiatives that aren't generating results.


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