Business to business marketing online Internet style. This is not a new marketing technique. In fact, the design of having two or even more businesses help to endorse one another products and services is a tried and true method that has provided profitable results for most entities involved. Knowledgeable business owners and webmasters recognize the enormous value brought to their company by business-to-business marketing. Marketing online offers another dimension with enormous reach that will allow businesses to continue their networking efforts in the virtual and viral world that the Internet provides.
Lets say for example that a brick and mortar company like a dog grooming business will benefit and gain customers from displaying advertisements at the local veterinarian offices. Dog owners, who trust these veterinarians are more likely to take their pets for a professional grooming to a business recommended by an already trusted establishment, like their local vet. On the other hand, the clients of the dog grooming business will be most likely those who need a veterinarian for their pets, and they will most likely trust the vet suggested by the professional grooming business who already has an reputable relationship with them. The same concept applies to business-to-business marketing; The Internet simply adds a new aspect to this method.
If the local pet grooming business and the veterinarian both have a website it will permit for further business-to-business marketing, Internet style. Since the services provided by the pet grooming business and veterinarian only tangentially overlap, they are not in direct competition with one another, but instead will be able to do business-to-business marketing online in the truest sense of the term.
These businesses could then continue with this business-to-business marketing method with other related businesses. For example the Pet grooming business could establish a relationship with pet magazines, animal shelters and other groups that are not in direct competition with each other.
This form of business-to-business marketing has become commonplace online and savvy webmasters and business owners have been taking advantage of this viral marketing method in many different forms. Website owners will cross promote each other’s products, services and business opportunities to each others subscribers lists in an email marketing campaign. Or just place ads on each other’s websites.
Finding these business-to-business marketing opportunities are not as hard as you would think. Perhaps you are starting a new website promoting your own type of network marketing opportunity and need a professionally designed website. The design company you hire to design your website could benefit from new people you recruit into your new business. Just as you could benefit from people looking for website design that need a business to promote on their new website.
So now you have your new network marketing website designed and need to add content to it. You then hire a ghost writer, establish a relationship and before you know it they are sending you prospects and you in turn send them back to first the website design company and then to the ghost writer. All of related but non-competing businesses start benefiting from the viral nature of business-to-business marketing online. Next you need your site optimized for the search engines, OK, OK, I’ll stop now, but you get the picture right?
These are highly viral and lucrative methods that all involved can benefit from. The next time that you do business with another business remember to look for the business-to-business marketing opportunity.
Archive for April, 2009
How You Can Boost Your Profits With Business-To-Business Marketing Online
Sunday, April 26th, 2009Book Review – the Ultimate Web Marketing Strategy by Ed Rivis
Sunday, April 26th, 2009The phrase has been used before, but if you have a website you really need to read The Ultimate Web Marketing Strategy, by Ed Rivis.
Ed covers 22 important web strategies you need to know for all websites. Equally important, any brick and mortar company can also use these strategies to their advantage in their existing markets, or use them as they move online.
Every year thousands of new websites come online.
Many companies create pretty websites. And six months later the website owner finds out that ‘pretty’ does not sell.
Slow loading graphics are a real turn off for most people. It only takes a few seconds waiting before a person leaves your site. Fancy graphics are actually a tool to drive people to your competitor’s site.
The Ultimate Web Marketing Strategy is a 200 page book. I got the book when it was pre-released in electronic format for comments. I easily read it over a hectic weekend.
This is a useful resource to have on your desk. That’s why I was one of the first in line when the book came out in hard copy. It is the only book that sits on my desk.
Chapters follow a logical progression, but each chapter is stand alone.
If you already have a solid grasp in Front-End Acquisition and a good idea of Integrated Marketing you might consider skipping the first 2 chapters and only reading the second half of the book. But this is probably foolish. There is a lot of solid content in each chapter.
The second half of the book is about Back-End Marketing, Scientifically Optimizing Sales and the conclusion Putting It All Together.
In the very beginning Ed lists the 13 most common reasons for poor web performance.
If you have:
Perfectly targeted traffic
THE PERFECT keywords
A site that is not pushy
A website that radiates trust
Rock solid design that is not too flashy and nor too slow.
Then you may not need this book. Of course your website still needs to meet the other 8 factors before you can say that this book is not for you.
Ed is a strong believer in copywriting, so you will read a fair bit about the importance of content. Remember; no graphic heavy and flashy websites. Content is still king.
Your website is like a growth hormone for your business. Most websites do not take the time to go through a good checklist and get everything right. If you don’t work at improving your website through an expert checklist like Ed’s, you can easily drive prospects away from your products and services.
Ed uses images and graphics very clearly to help visualize parts of his book. The graphics are examples of what Ed recommends you use on your website, just where you really need it. He makes his points very clear.
A sneak peak – Ed has another product coming out soon on statistics.
Now you may be like Ed was a while ago and think that stats are not the most exciting subject.
But this is a huge mistake.
If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it, and since most business owners have no idea how their website is doing they may as well be running advertising in a foreign language. The Ultimate Web Marketing Strategy, a must read for any serious internet marketer.
E-mail Web Marketing Fever
Saturday, April 25th, 2009The Internet is believed to be faster, better, cheaper, and easier to conduct surveys than using more traditional telephone or mail methods. You eliminate the need for extensive paper work and man hours.
No matter how striking your website is, if your website developer doesn’t make the direction-finding system user-friendly, you’ll be undetectable to the search engines. Whether you like it or not your web site will remain virtually invisible to the bulk of the internet online businesses unless you take the appropriate steps to draw interest to it.
If you plan to do serious marketing via e-mail you’ll need to put in some first class tools. Not all people respond well to online surveys and to email web marketing. They see this as a nuisance and if you don’t package it well, they’ll probably just block all your efforts.
E-Mail Client Programs.
The first type of e-mail program you need is a fundamental e-mail client. Settling for the built-in program included with your web browser is not advisable. One of the essentials is the classification of filters that will arrange e-mails by keywords as it comes to your site.
By creating a group, you can send out multiple e-mail messages and files to individuals or just by pasting multiple addresses into the To: field, but it’s a mark for beginners, since each one of the recipients see the e-mail addresses of all the other recipients, which can be awkward to look at, and subjects your links to spamming from others.
When pasted into the Cc: field, it has the same purpose and works the same. But when you put the e-mail addresses into the Bcc: field (which means “blind carbon copy”) nobody can be able to see the addresses of the recipients. If you have little list of contacts to e-mail to, this will be acceptable.
Here are some of the most excellent programs available:
Eudora Pro
Eudora Pro (http://www.eudora.com/) is the father of brilliant e-mail handling programs. Its use of filters and stationery gives you permission to send automated responses to e-mails containing keywords, such as those you set up with forms-to-email systems. For example, one option a customer might choose and include the keyword “birdbath” which would automatically trigger Eudora to send an e-mail reply about your Electronic Birdbath product. Eudora’s filters are very powerful and reliable, but its contact information section is pretty rough, and difficult to put up in a database arrangement that allows you to send personalized e-mail to contacts.
Outlook 98 and 2000
Microsoft Outlook 98/2000 (http://www.microsoft.com/outlook/) is an outstanding e-mail program. Its filters are not as strong and reliable as Eudora’s, but the way it integrates e-mail with contact information, e-mail addresses, categorization, journals, calendaring, etc. make it supreme for people-intensive small businesses. One weakness of Outlook 98 is that not all fields of its contact information can be used in an e-mail combine operation.
Pegasus Mail
Pegasus Mail (http://www.pegasus.usa.com/) by David Harris is a high quality, multi-featured freeware e-mail program adored by users and it’s highly recommended.
Revnet Mail King
Revent’s mail king (http://www.mailking.com/?wmt) is a well program that reads data from MS Access or Excel files (as well as several other familiar formats), and allows you to merge that data into an e-mail message. It has some moderately sophisticated filters to help you select suitable recipients.
Arial Campaign
Arial Software Campaign (http://www.arialsoftware.com/?wmt) has been around for several years. The most recent versions of this software run on Windows 95+ and Windows NT platforms. Campaign provides all the features of Mail King, and works without difficulty with MS Access and other common databases, but also allows scheduling of e-mail messages to go out a certain number of days after a client has taken a certain action.
Mail loop
Mail loop (http://marketingtips.com/mailloop/t.x/15267/) is an extremely flexible program. It works alongside your current e-mail client program to pre-filter e-mail, extract forms-generated data from e-mail messages, strip e-mail addresses from any kind of file, merge your database into personalized e-mail messages, offer auto responder-like responses, host newsletters, and process “remove” requests from those who want you to be detached from any of your lists.
List server Programs
E-mail merge programs run on your desktop, and depend upon the rate of your connection to the Internet. List server programs, on the other hand, reside on web hosting service computers with a direct connection to the Internet, so they can pump out e-mails extremely fast. All include automatic subscribe and unsubscribe features, and allow a variety of lists, one-way mailings such as newsletters, and discussion lists, both moderated and unmoderated.