B2B Strategy – Holiday Style

Graphic: b2b holiday season

Here comes the Santa Clause of your business sector with goodies for your prospects, customers and business associates. While reaching out to your business prospects during this holiday season, there is more than just sending a Merry Christmas card. In fact, this holiday season, your team should utilize a B2B marketing campaign which cuts across multiple channels.

Rejuvenate Social Media

The canvas of social media platforms is flooded this holiday season but there is always a way to be innovative. Bring out all the raving reviews and video testimonials from your customers and business associates and share them proudly. Over the past year, whatever you have accumulated, splurge on your social media pages of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and others. Remember that B2B marketing strategies have faired well with prospects trusting recommendations from peers and other businesses.

Tradition Wins

During the holiday, there is always an underlying current of traditions; your team must play along. In your holiday marketing strategy, make sure to have a theme associated with your business sector and stress the application of traditional values in the festive environment. In all your physical and virtual decorations, engagements and reach-outs, local, geographical and social traditions help reach out to fellow businesses.

Reinvent Traditional Ways

In addition to reaching out through the internet, traditional methods are essential in a B2B marketing strategy as well. Your team needs to have a list of business prospects and current contact persons ready and should reach out in a traditional way such as, calling, visiting (although harder in our current times), or even just sending a postcard. Remember, a miss can cost you money in the coming year through unhappy clients who feel as though you don’t value them.

Personalize Your Approach

There is nothing better than developing personal relations over the festive season. Including business prospects while cementing the already made bonds with customers and business associates. It is a proven fact that there develops an emotional and familiar undercurrent of recognition which subconsciously affects your business deals and business relations.

Dive Into Communities

This festive season your team should break the barriers and share on all relevant platforms. Check out all virtual world sites where you can tap into a wide audience of relevant prospects. With your high values content and a commanding leadership tone, your experts can attract all the prospects who frequent such B2B information hubs, which serve their industry and provide solutions to their problem.

Wishes With Gifts

Your Festive Wishes, when sugarcoated with an offer or two will hit the mark. Your team can churn out different goodies you have been offering over the year and repackage them. Offer them as this limited time offer. Anything like an e-book, an expert advise time slot, a free sample or just an upgrade – all work wonders – depending on your business sector. If your business sector is facing a particular crisis or a hiccup, and you have a product or solution to offer, a very limited time offer of it can do wonders to spread the word.

Activate CRM & Funnel

With a year behind you, the time is right to top the funnel and activate a CRM tool (provided free with an Infofree.com subscription). The CRM will definitely play a major role as you move forward and utilize optimized details from your curated prospect lists. Need more prospects to get your CRM and sales funnel started? Check out FreeSalesLeads (free to use) or Salesflower.com (cheap monthly subscription), where business databases have 95% accuracy.

From Foes to Friends

Overall, just relax and take everything in a holiday spirit. If there was any misunderstanding with any customer this is the time of the year to rebuild a stronger relationship. During this festive season, all is forgotten and forgiven, so take advantage and mend any broken bridges.

Spark Your Audience Engagement

Audience Engagement

All top companies have extensive customer engagement, and most notably, it’s largely customer-driven. Every company strives to have audience engagement. It helps build relationships, community, and loyalty, encourages conversation and participation, and makes your brand stand out among others.

Companies need a long-term engagement strategy as it is vital to their growth. Better customer experience means customers will not only choose your brand over any other they are also willing to pay more for your product or service. The better the experience the more loyal a customer will become and the more engaged they’ll get.

Humanize your brand

As a company you want to be able to play to people’s needs and be someone customers can relate to. Popular consumer brands such as Wendy’s and Under Armor have it easier while brands like banks and B2B companies have to try even harder. Utilizing people within your company that are passionate about your brand, you can work to create a humanized brand. Create content that is relatable, things consumers would interact with, and make your brand stand out as something they want to be a part of.

Consistent communication

Your engaged customers want to hear from you. They want to know they can count on you to inform them of updates to your product/service and company, especially in these unusual times. In gaining audience engagement, you also want them to count on you for supplying them with information within your industry. In gaining engagement, you must be consistent in your newsletters, social media posts, emails, and any other form of communication you use.

Get to know your community

The more you know the easier it is to interact with your audience. Do your research as to why your audience is drawn towards you. Take time to get to know them so you can engage accordingly. Know their interests, wants, needs, and lifestyles. Knowing your audience drives you in the right direction, making sure you don’t strike out when trying to engage. Asking for feedback will also help you get to know your community and gives you ideas of what your audience thinks currently and what they want to see in the future. Most customers are very willing to give their opinions and thus become engaged with your product and brand. You’ll also see engagement levels rise once you start implementing their ideas.

Surprise personalized outreach

Digital marketing allows companies to take personalized engagement even further. The most effective content strategy is to offer something that they wouldn’t expect. Real-time personalized deals are a sure way to get customers to engage with your brand. Making your deals relevant to customers right when they need it makes them feel as though the advertisements were made for them. Be sure to create marketing and advertising campaigns based on location, social platform, and specific products to boost your consumer engagement strategy. However, personalization should be about making the user feel welcomed and known without feeling like you’re digging into their personal data.

Schedule weekly activities

It can be effective to post activities or ask questions the same day each week on social media – promoting things like Sales Tip Tuesdays or Motivational Mondays. After posting your content, ask your followers to join in, sharing their tips and advice, or posting a photo of what motivated them. This encourages followers to not only engage with your post but others in the community as well. Being the source of community engagement ups your brand and encourages users to return to your page to interact each week, growing your engagement.