Business to business marketing tactics

In today's economy no matter how much your business is spending on marketing, nor what marketing tactics you are using, nothing seems to be working. This is even true of the marketing tactics that you have been using in the past. Nothing seems to be very successful when it comes to marketing tactics because at most the sales for your business are slow. Some businesses are seeing a decline in sales, while others are seeing no sales at all.

The only thing that is soothing to businesses is that you are not alone; most everybody in the business world is having this problem. One of the reasons for this is that other businesses are adopting a wait and see approach when it comes to purchasing products for their business, while others are just simply tuning out any marketing message that they hear. This type of behavior is trickling down and affecting other business, which in turn is affecting business-to-business marketing.

The one thing that you need to know about business to business marketing is that there is not one magical marketing tactic that your business can use to gain back some of your business from other business. The good news is according to a recent study there are three different marketing techniques that have been shown to have positive results. Here is a look at the three business-to-business marketing tactics that you can use to help achieve positive results for your business.

Number one: In-house lists

Many companies rent or purchase lists from other business to use for their marketing campaigns, but currently these same lists are not producing the desired results. If you focus on your in-house list it has been shown that email and postal mail marketing campaigns have been very successful. Knowing that an in-house list is working is great for businesses that have been working on creating their own mailing list because they have the customer database that they need. Even businesses who have not worked on creating an in-house list can benefit if they start creating an in-house list as soon as possible. To get people to sign up for your mailing list you might need to offer them some kind of incentive so that they will register with your business.

Number two: Add PR programs

You will need to add some kind of public relations to your marketing techniques. The good news is that public relations do not have to cost a lot of money because there are numerous forms to choose from. With public relations, you can use printed articles that are placed in specific magazines that target your target market. You can also use cause-related marketing, which if you have not started this now is a great time to start. What you want to do is link your business to a worthy cause so that you can promote the values of your business by showing people that you are committed to doing the right thing. For example, a manufacturing plant focuses on recycling used products in order to start going green to protect the environment.

Number three: Encourage positive word of mouth

When it comes to positive word of mouth advertising, you will be interested to know that 80% of small business owners find that it is either important or very important in helping them make their purchasing decisions. Even more importantly is that 90% of all small business owners surveyed said they ask other small business owners for advice before they buy something from other businesses on a regular basis. What you want to do is concentrate your marketing efforts to things that will help build positive word of mouth for your business, such as providing excellent customer service.