Profosser
Introduction
Brand Momentum Inc. is a company that sells its services to other business to help them secure a foothold in their respective industries by showing them how to effectively market their products. BMI serves several major clients, though they are seeking to expand their cliental base through marketing. The options available to BMI are much more limited in scope; this is because of the difficulties associated with business-to-business marketing. BMI can directly advertise its services through various media forms, like magazines or newspapers. The company can also employ new media outlets to market the product, such as LinkedIn and Facebook in an effort to capitalize on the technology available. Lastly, BMI can use its business contacts to spread the word to other business contacts, in order to better establish personal relationships with new clients. The best way for BMI to continue is to perform a myriad of all three, as the demands of business-to-business marketing can be aggressively met without truly compromising the personality of the business, provided that BMI is specific in their targeting. In addition, BMI needs to increase its SEO friendliness in order to increase its online presence, which will attract new customers searching for marketing help. By following these respective options, BMI will dramatically increase its marketing potential and returns, influencing its future revenues and helping the company maintain positive relationships with its business clients; all options should be used by BMI, for the reasons provided in this paper.
Business-to-Business Marketing
B2B International describes the huge value chain that is the result of raw materials turning into finished products after being passed along through several businesses (Hague, Hague, & Harrison, 2016). Business-to-business marketing helps businesses in this regard, because it helps them advertise their services to other clients to perform the finishing touches on this chain. The key to B2B marketing is understanding that everyone is a consumer, even other businesses (Kleinschmit, 2016). Through specific targeting, businesses can capitalize on achieving their selective goals. This specific targeting requires a segmentation of the market, dividing each business BMI will seek to engage with into a separate category to better organize their business approaches.
BMI must segment their expected markets in determining the best way to approach these businesses. B2B segmentation can be tricky, as each individual company is different in their goals and personalities, meaning their business culture can vary significantly. BMI should segment based upon firmographics, or shared demographics of the users (ReachForce, 2015). Then, they will segment based upon tiering, or determining whether or not each business meets the needs of their customers. After that, they will segment based off of the customer’s needs. The three options available to BMI reflect all of these key segmentations; this is because BMI should use all three options in order to maximize their marketing ability.
Traditional Methods of Advertising
The first option BMI should use is advertising through common media forms, such as newspapers and magazines. However, this does not mean that BMI should actively seek out and pay for these advertisements. Recent studies show that newspapers are the most effective method of advertising for businesses (Levine, 2013). BMI should not pay for these advertisements, except for magazines that are specifically targeted towards their client. BMI will generate the most effective return by being successful. BMI should deliver top level performance and increase their income; there are plenty of top level newspaper companies which regularly write about top up and coming companies. This is a very successful form of advertising because it provides a significant level of legitimacy to the business. The best way to market to other businesses is to simply have business newspapers and magazines write about them. Thus, success will provide BMI with the most effective way of marketing towards their segment. It should be considered that this is often an expensive method of advertising, depending on the company BMI pays to host advertisements with. Careful consideration should be performed when determining payoffs of advertising with a specific company.
Social Media Marketing: the Future
We are assuming that BMI wishes to market to a wide variety of businesses and does not wish to remain tied to a specific industry. A broad marketing segment can prove to be difficult, but new media forms help increase the ability of BMI to market. Social media is a wonderful way to reach otherwise inaccessible customers, separated by industry, segmentation groups, or even borders. BMI should start by operating a Facebook and a Twitter page to better reach these targeted businesses. Keith Ferazzi, a very famous CEO, believes social media is an outstanding way to reach potential clients, as top level executives read through their news feed to gather information about their business world. Essentially, top level CEOs use these websites to interact and expand their knowledge; BMI would be foolish to not take advantage of this.
Social media marketing assumes the basic concept that every opportunity to increase brand recognition is important. Social media marketing increases brand awareness, and it allows people to choose to follow specific brands that interest them. Thus, brand names have a reason to use social media because it allows for easy market segmentation. This also, as proxy, ensures brand loyalty (DeMers, 2014).
Some social media campaigns are only worried about raising click awareness, which means generating snappy headlines or posts that draw the reader in. B2B marketing campaigns must focus on much more, such as generating a loyal following and genuine interest, not just “clickbait”. Social media marketing also provides consumer with a continuous stream of uninterrupted views, building repetition as the users are exposed to the same information again and again (Lytle, 2014). In the marketing world, familiarity does not breed contempt; indeed, certain brands have become commonplace, and their logos are recognized every day. Social media has helped this development occur, and BMI must take advantage of it to retain its competitive edge. In the marketing world, the early bird gets the worm, and it is crucial that BMI maintain an online presence to keep up and beat back the competition. The only disadvantage of social media is that it can be incredibly time consuming, as it takes effort to maintain a large social presence and to reach every audience.
Word of Mouth: Reliability and Relationships
We have already established that the first two options available to BMI should be vigorously followed. BMI should also use word of mouth to identify potential clients because this builds stronger relationships with clients. Word of mouth provides the strongest form of authenticity and legitimacy a business can offer. Word of mouth was the original way of marketing, long before the advent of modern advertising techniques caught on. A huge majority of marketing professionals consider word of mouth the most effective marketing strategy a business can pursue (Neely, 2015). Word of mouth marketing relies extensively on the concept of neurolinguistics programming, as the business must be very careful to avoid coming off as pushy with its clients. Coming off too strong can damage an existing relationship with a client; thus, BMI should be very careful when approaching its current clients. Simply asking if the client knows anyone else they can help is a great way to approach getting referrals. BMI could also say, “If you felt like we provided a good service, please tell your friends!” Something like this would go a long way towards making the customer feel valued without coming off too strong to get referrals.
Connecting with customers and potential clients is far more important than just collecting them (Whitler, 2014). The marketing department at BMI needs to focus on the three E’s described in Whiter’s article: engage, equip, and empower. By working with customers directly and providing them with a method of providing feedback, businesses can easily help increase their reliability in the eyes of the consumer and follow the first E’s. Giving them a reason to talk by providing an excellent service is a great way to ensure that they will. As word of mouth marketing is extremely important, BMI must use it and rely on it for a substantial bulk of its marketing returns. The biggest issue with this form of marketing is that it takes a considerable amount of time to build up relationships with clients in order to receive referrals; thus while this is the surest way to build loyalty, it is also the most time consuming.
Search Engine Optimization
A fourth method does exist that BMI should use to ensure they are reaching maximum marketing potential: search engine optimization, or SEO. By improving their search engine rankings, BMI will increase the level of traffic they receive on their websites. This works in conjunction with using social media, as an increased social media presence will help increase the ability of BMI to have a strong SEO presence, depending on the specific search engine’s algorithms (DeMers, 2014). To increase the level of SEO at BMI, the company needs to ensure it is releasing top quality information on its web sites and social media sites, which will generate links that other sites will use (Robinson, 2015). This increases the amount of readers the website will have, and though it may not use segmentation to specifically address potential business, increasing SEO will help ensure that BMI’s name is out there in the public eye.
Conclusion
Thus, BMI should follow all of the possible options. BMI must maintain an online present to remain competitive on the market, as all serious companies are pushing online campaigns to breed familiarity. BMI also should have advertisements in the newspapers and magazines geared towards their target audience in an effort to raise awareness; this method is especially effective when the advertisements are free, meaning the select newspaper is writing about BMI. In addition, BMI must use SEO to efficiently ensure its online presence reaches its highest level of viewers online. Working in tandem with these three methods of marketing is the oldest trick in the book, word of mouth marketing, which is the most important tool in the marketer’s handbook. In today’s era, marketers must rely on an online presence and a social presence to help facilitate word of mouth marketing, as customers want to be able to research the company and know who to contact in order to use their referral. By utilizing all three of these methods, BMI can ensure they are reaching their target audience and that they will receive many more future clients.
References:
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Ferrazzi, K., & Raz, T. (2005). Never eat alone and other secrets to success, one relationship at a time. New York: Currency/Doubleday.
Hague, P., Hague, N., & Harrison, M. (2016). B2B marketing: What makes it special? Retrieved August 20, 2016, from B2B International, https://www.b2binternational.com/publications/b2b-marketing/
Kleinschmit, M. (2016, February 26). 3 examples of successful B2B marketing campaigns. Retrieved August 21, 2016, from Vision Critical, https://www.visioncritical.com/3-examples-successful-b2b-marketing-campaigns/
Levine, B. (2013, April 16). Nielsen study: Newspapers hold edge in engagement, ad effectiveness. Retrieved August 21, 2016, from CMS Wire, http://www.cmswire.com/cms/customer-experience/nielsen-study-newspapers-hold-edge-in-engagement-ad-effectiveness-020497.php
Lytle, J. (2014, January 15). B2B social media marketing approaches. Retrieved August 21, 2016, from Social Media, http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2014/01/planning-b2b-marketing-approach-social-media/
Neely, P. (2015, April 28). Why word of mouth should be a B2B marketer’s top priority - act-on marketing action Blog. Retrieved August 21, 2016, from Advocacy & Loyalty, https://www.act-on.com/blog/2015/04/why-word-of-mouth-should-be-a-b2b-marketers-top-priority/
ReachForce. (2015, September 21). The 3 most popular methods of segmentation for B2B Retrieved from http://www.reachforce.com/blog/the-3-most-popular-methods-of-segmentation-for-b2b/
Robinson, D. (2015). What is SEO? Here’s A simple plain English answer, SEO in a nutshell. Retrieved August 21, 2016, from Redevolution, https://www.redevolution.com/what-is-seo
Whitler, K. A. (2014, July 17). Why word of mouth marketing is the most important social media.Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/kimberlywhitler/2014/07/17/why-word-of-mouth-marketing-is-the-most-important-social-media/#373412b07a77
