When you own a business-to-business (B2B) company, promoting it can be hard because you do not have physical products to sell, but rather services to offer.
If you want to gain new clients or fans, here are five winning promotional tactics to help you reach your branding and lead-generation goals.
Video
If your company has several videos in its content wheelhouse, consider creating a YouTube channel for your brand. Upload all the videos and include a relevant keyword in the video title, description, and transcript. Tip: Including a full transcript (up to 5,000 characters) with your video (placed in the description field).
Prewritten Social Media Posts
Prior to the promotional period, say 3-4 weeks in advance, write the social media posts for each platform where you will be sharing. Review hashtag limitations for each platform (Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn about 3, Twitter = 3-5, and Instagram may be up to 30, but limit to around 10 focused terms). If you’re stumped for a series of promotional headlines, use a headline generator like Title Generator, Sumo.com, Portent, or SEOPressor.
Predefine Unique Hashtags
In order to most effectively follow your promotion, create an engaging and unique hashtag to follow. Do this by writing some ideas down and then looking up the hashtag prior to use. Also, include common or relevant hashtags that people may use in relation to the topic. Hashtagify.me is a great tool to help you discover trending hashtags and influencers using them.
Content
In addition to video content, here is a list of additional promotional pieces you might develop to bring more life to your promotion, including:
- Testimonials
- Quotes about the organization
- Stats/infographics
- Throwbacks (some kind of history about the business)
- Q&As
- Behind the scenes photos/video
- Staff spotlights
- #FollowFriday recommendations (influencers or clients in an industry for others to follow)
Influencer Engagement
If your clients or associations you’re affiliated with have popular social media channels, reach out to them and ask them to share your promotional content. In the first email, ask them if they’d like to help. In the follow-up email provide them with sample posts, graphics, and links to share on your behalf. Here are some tips from Entrepreneur to help you formulate the ask.
This quote from Neil Patel sums up the biggest challenge when asking people to share your content, “The harder it is for your audience to take action, the less likely they are to take it.”
Be sure to follow up with them to let them know how successful your campaign was in reaching its goal.
With these winning tactics, you’re bound to gain some traction on your next B2B promotion. Which tactic(s) will you use?
