6 Ways to Generate More Clients for your B2B Business

Attracting new clients as a B2B business owner is one of the toughest aspects to running a business. If you're looking to expand your client base, check out the following 6 ways to generate demand for your business:

1) Sales Outreach

Sales outreach involves pushing your messaging out to clients. Typically done by sales teams or business development reps, this involves cold calling, email outreach, and connecting with potential buyers on social media.

• Pros: Sales outreach is highly targeted as you are directly approaching the person who may be in need of your product. With the right messaging and plan, it can be an effective way to generate immediate revenue.
• Cons: The B2B segment has become saturated with poor quality sales outreach. Breaking through the noise is becoming increasingly difficult as buyers become worn down by spam and interruption. At any given time, only 3 - 10% of prospects are in a position where they are actively ready to buy.
• Tips for Success: Sales outreach requires researching your customer base, writing strong messaging, and knowing the right time to approach a potential custoemr. Prospects will be much more likely to engage with companies they know and trust, therefore sales outreach is best paired alongside other marketing efforts.

2) Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing involves earning the organic (non-paid) interest of potential prospects by pulling them into your website or social channels with engaging and thought-provoking content. Search Engine Optimization (SEO), content marketing, social media management, and email marketing are all key components of an inbound marketing strategy.

• Pros: Inbound marketing passively brings in potential clients for your business. Your content works 24/7 to provide prospects with information on what you can offer them, helping them understand and overcome their challenges. Most customers today prefer to do their own independent research and may passively consume information for months before they choose to engage with you.
• Cons: To attract inbound attention, your content has to be creative and insightful enough to stand out from the crowd. ChatGPT isn't going to cut it, you need to offer unique perspectives. Inbound works best if you have a strong differentiator that separates your business from competitors, such as a novel product or industry niche. Inbound also does not happen overnight. It can take months to years to build your audience.
• Tips for success: Your business has little to lose from establishing inbound marketing fundamentals. While it takes time to get established, having an inbound marketing strategy will help bolster your other marketing initiatives, such as outbound sales and advertising in the meantime.

3) Advertising

Advertising is attracting customers to engage with your business by leveraging paid channels. In essence, you're renting an audience that someone else has built. Traditional advertising consists of radio, print, television, and outdoor media (signs and billboards). Digital advertising includes search ads, display ads, social media advertising, in-app advertising, and video ads. Other forms of advertising include sponsorships, product placement, or the use of influencer/celebrity endorsements.

• Pros: Advertising will quickly put your company on the radar of potential buyers, increasing awareness and driving more prospects to consider purchasing what you have to offer.?
• Cons: Advertising costs money. It can be difficult to choose what type of advertising will be most effective if you don’t have a background or experience in marketing. Success is highly dependent on who you are targeting with your messaging, your chosen advertising channel, the right timing, and the content of your message.?
• Tips for Success: Many B2B companies shy away from advertising but it can be an incredibly effective way to generate demand for your business. To avoid costly mistakes, hire an expert that will be able to align your advertising spend to revenue generated for your business.

4) Incentives and Promotions

Promotions involve capturing the attention of customers through the mechanism of price. This could be in the form of incentives, discoutns, rebates, or special promotions.

• Pros: Generally speaking, you will see more interest from buyers at a lower price than a higher price. This can be an effective way to pull in new business. Companies commonly use this to clear out unwanted inventory, boost end-of-quarter results, or bring in new clients with “special offers”.?
• Cons: Any discounts offered impact your profit margin. If you rely on discounts too often, your customers will come to expect them and will hold out for a better deal. If you go too far down the discount path, it can be very difficult to reverse course.
• Tips for Success: Incentives work best when used sparingly. Have a solid use case for offering an incentive, such as offering a discount in exchange for faster payment, larger order quantity, or a longer contract. Quantify what the discount will cost your business and see how it compares to other forms of client acquisition, such as advertising.

5) Referrals and Partnerships

Growing via partnerships involves building and leveraging your professional network to drive business. Pairing up with complementary businesses can be a great way to grow your client base through referrals. For example, real estate agents often have affliate networks of lawyers, mortgage brokers, and home inspectors, because these services are all needed in parallel to one another when buying a house. Similarly, building a strategy to capture customer referrals and becoming an avid community networker are other related ways to grow your business by word-of-mouth.

• Pros: Partnerships and referrals are a low cost way to grow by leveraging your existing network.
• Cons: You need to establish a network of clients and peers for this approach to work. If you are just starting out, you'll need to invest considerable time into networking, outreach, and building connections.
• Tips for success: When you complete a successful sale, follow up with your client while you are top of mind to see if they know of other businesses that could benefit from your services. You never know who they may introduce you to! Make a commitment to regularly attend industry events and networking opportunities to build out your professional network.

6) Publicity

Publicity involves earning free traffic through channels that are owned by others. Strategies include guestblogging (or podcasting), newsjacking, pitching stories to journalists, guerilla marketing, philanthropy/charity work, presenting at events, and customer sweepstakes. Politicians and activist groups are very well known for using this type of demand generation.

• Pros: Publicity gives you all of the benefits of advertising without having to pay for exposure.
• Cons: Getting "free" coverage requires serious creatvity and can be difficult to execute effectively. You also do not maintain full control over the messaging. Grand tactics to generate buzz can miss or backfire, resulting in negative press coverage that harms your business.
• Tips for success: Find opportunities to generate local buzz over crazy publicity stunts. Consider appearing on a local podcast, running an event in conjunction with a charity or worthy cause, or providing commentary for an industry-specific publication.

Which strategy has your business had the most success with? Let me know in the comments!