HN Explorer

Ask HN: How to promote a B2B StartUp?

5 points by sourc3 ↗ HN
If you had a B2B StartUp (Service) what are some of the ways you use to promote your service?

So far I am using conventional methods

- Google Ads - Facebook Ads

I have a couple of other ideas such as conventional print (trade magazines) etc but I want to understand what your experience has been (hopefully one I can learn from)? Please share your experiences. We might be able to ping some ideas back and forth.

Thanks in advance

11 comments

[ 0.25 ms ] story [ 35.9 ms ] thread
michael_dorfman
It depends on what kind of business you are targeting-- what's the niche?

If you have a clear idea of who your target customers are, you can intuit what methods would be most appropriate to use to promote your service to them. For some niches, this could be cold calling. For others, there might be trade shows or publications.

In my previous startup, we had a tiny, very focused niche (where about 25 firms were responsible for more than 75% of the revenue in the industry), so we did no marketing at all, and instead focused on cultivating personal relationships with the decision-makers of the top 10 firms. But that approach would be wildly inappropriate in other situations.

So: it all depends.

sourc3
The niche are 1-2 people service firms that work with clients on a schedule. So this is more of an infrastructure utility for a specific type of company rather than an entire vertical. For cold calling did you use a firm to do this?
michael_dorfman
In your case, cold calling would be very inefficient.

Have you thought about targeting a sub-niche, to try to get some traction, before going broad?

For example, Dentist's offices: if you were to call and visit a few local dentists, see if there are any customizations that would help them specifically (like recurring appointments a year in advance, etc.) and then brainstorm with them to see how they would recommend you advertising to their colleagues.

Once you get some traction in one vertical, you can leverage it to the next one.

sourc3
Honestly, I think that is the best approach. Because the market is so broad, it will be hard to reach out to everyone based on company size. I am currently focusing on 2 segments incidentally one of them is dentists the other is accountants.

Thank you for the links.

rexreed
There's quite a few ways, here are a few that we're using for our new app (www.yobiz.com):

* Affiliate Networks - Affiliates who target your markets can really drive qualified traffic.

* Blog posts - good, high quality blog posts on topics relevant to your business can drive good traffic.

* Email Newsletter - Market either to established email newsletters or generate a list from your existing customers

* Facebook Ads

* B2B Forums - Participate in the discussions but be cautious about self-promotion

* Get featured in an article - Spend time cultivating press relationships in order to get featured in press.

* LinkedIn Posts

* Local meetups - Attend local meetups in relevant industries and network, network, network

* Mobile Apps - Create a mobile app that drives subscriptions.

* Press releases - really good for SEO and not much else.

* SEO - good SEO will really help make your app visible.

* Social bookmarking: Digg, Reddit, delicious, etc. Activity aiming to get website posted onto mass-sharing networks.

* Attend conferences & trade shows

* Tweet - be part of the conversation and generate a following with occasional self-referential tweets.

* Video - Video on relevant topics with good quality can really drive traffic.

Hope that helps!

sourc3
Thanks for the extensive list.

Email newsletter is not really working for me since I only have a handful of customers at the moment. I do not want to go ahead and buy a list and spam people either since I find that rather unethical (I hate spam as much as the guy next door).

One thing I have not yet tried is the Forums. In terms of B2B Forums, is there a starting point that would let me do a more directed path or is Google my best friend in your opinion?

As per the SEO I am seriously considering doing that. Although most small businesses would not directly search for the service (since most of them are not aware of the need) I still think it would help greatly to rank on the first page. So I will definitely consider the Press Release.

Again, thanks for the input, I appreciate it.

rexreed
You're right to avoid email spam -- not only is it frowned upon, but it could fall afoul of the FTC CAN-SPAM rules. I was referring more to getting included in established email newsletters (not dedicated email blasts). For example, your industry might have a weekly newsletter targeting the things you are interested in. See if you can get included in that (for free, optimally), or take out a low-cost text or other ad in the newsletter. They usually go out to already qualified, opt-in audiences and have a better response rate than other forms of advertising.
sourc3
Yep, totally agreed. I will look into different email newsletters. In the mean time like I replied on another comment, the service is not for a specific vertical. It's more of a shared IT kind of service that targets very small businesses (low-cost service).

Do you have any pointers for me to take a look into specific newsletters?

rexreed
For both forums and email newsletters, Google (or Bing if you must) are your friends -- just do search "[industry] newsletter" and "[industry] forum". Yes, it takes some time to do the research, but you'll end up with a good pile of resources that will be helpful.

Subscribe to the newsletters you find and read the forums -- it's another great way of finding out where you should market, hang out, and who to talk to.

petethomas
It likely depends on what kind of B2B service you are promoting, the size of the companies you are targeting, and how deeply your service needs to integrate with the target customers' existing software systems. In my experience marketing to businesses via the same channels that work well for consumer web products is no easy task.

Give serious consideration to making a real effort to discover, meet, interview, get to know, perhaps even partner with a talented salesperson with great personal and/or professional connections in the industry you're trying to reach.

Here are a couple posts that you might find useful:

  http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/09/sean-murphy-on-the-first-1-6-enterprise-customers.html

  http://www.walkersands.com/Comm_Selling_to_CIOs.htm
hess
sourc3, Try www.efactor.com. It is a social network for entrepreneurs, and there are already 800,000+ users. You can connect with the businesses you are trying to target.

Disclaimer: I just got hired there