Business to Business Internet Marketing

Have you ever felt you may have targeted the wrong audience with your advertising and marketing efforts? Chances are your revenue model could increase sales conversion dramatically as a result of adding a few qualifying benchmarks to assess your target audience. Life is cyclical and at the root of all transactions are three fundamental characteristics that determine the extent of a relationship.

The first characteristic: How strong is the need for the product or service? They say necessity is the mother of all invention, likewise, necessity is also the one of the main reasons why millions of consumers use search engines to begin with (to find tangible solutions).

The second characteristic: Is the purchase based on impulse / desire or is the need for your product or service genuine? Depending on how urgent the circumstances are determines the purchasing cycle, the type of keywords used to find you and the type of audience you will attract. Pay particular attention to your analytics to find diamonds in the ruff. Finding keywords that can yield a high conversion exist if you sift through server logs or analytics to find distinct patterns that you can leverage for new landing pages.

Last but not least: the final consideration for transactional analysis that usually determines when the transaction is completed is, the what’s in it for me, value proposition. This, by far is the most important and usually entails benefits, packaging and presentation. The good news, even if you have targeted the wrong audience, SEO can provide a tangible solution for each of these dilemmas (but more on that later).

If you appeal to the wrong audience at the wrong time of the sales cycle with the wrong product, something horrible happens….nothing. Yet, if you appeal to the right audience, with the right message and the right proposition at the right time when they are in the mindset to purchase, then on the contrary, conversion occurs.

However, aside from illustrating a genuine benefit or piquing the interest of a prospect, selling ice cubes to Eskimos is just not that practical. Similarly, not everyone you are targeting (if your focus is too broad) can appreciate your offer, so, discretion in targeting the right types of consumers is imperative for building your online business.

This is where business to consumer (B2C) marketing can be tricky. Is your product or service better served by thinking from a tiered approach and adding another step back to provide more value? such as through business to business sales (B2B) or business to business internet marketing?

The gist is simple, find a need, propose a solution, whether that solution requires you to optimize, consolidate, automate or otherwise it must be appealing to pique their interest. We also know that value based incentives go a long way.

It doesn’t matter what that incentive is, just the fact that there is a reward for conducting some feat, such as filling out a contact form, referring a friend, picking up the phone to receive a chance to win something. Let’s face it, people love to receive free stuff or gifts.

Although the idea of getting a rubber ducky may not appeal to some, for a woman who just had a baby, it’s the perfect gift for toddlers. On the contrary while some may balk at the idea of referring a bank business for $50, to others, who are more value conscious, this is a great proposition. The takeaway here is to know your audience and understand their needs.

Then, you can carefully craft appealing offers that are not so much of an intrusion as they are a real value. The worst thing that can happen is that they decline, but if you do not ask or at least position your content or proposition with action items, action words or a strong call to action or conversion objective then do not be surprised if nothing occurs.

Selecting the ideal customer that is likely to consume products or services you offer is not always as evident as it should be. This is why so many businesses spend countless amounts trying to zero in on the ideal target demographic and perfect customer, but what if you target the wrong audience?

If you are offering SEO for example “easy enough to use our own business model hypothetically”. Does trying to sell SEO to individuals and small businesses with business to consumer (B2C) tactics the best way to go? Or would a more vertical approach, such as partnering with a website hosting company who has hundreds of ready-made prospects chomping at the bit more likely for sales conversion?

Since it is about optimizing websites, hosting companies have more websites and customers than your passive broad or nebulous marketing attempts may reach otherwise. So, the value of positioning your products through business to business sales or internet marketing has immense value. Naturally, finding the same type of synergy in your own business is up to you and your imagination, but possibilities exist if you can think outside the box.

Think as Your Consumer Does and You Will Prosper

By understanding the psycho-graphic profile of your readers (their mindset and purchasing patterns), you have concrete data in which to base your analysis. For example, once you do target the right audience, you can further augment your position with SEO by using zip code, geographic location, keyword choice and other granular methods to increase sales conversion for the said item.

Just as you must choose your words wisely when searching for something online. The same applies to how you optimize your website (are your pages curt and refined or nebulous and broad?). Although it is one metric, content is the bridge and is the second most important facet on success for your online business, the first is getting the right people to engage your offer (which means getting them there to begin with).

This is When SEO Comes In Handy

As a basic optimization principle, each page should be optimized for 3-5 variations of your keywords to hedge your odds at funneling the right type of traffic. The keywords can be juxtaposed in any array and should essentially return a similar position if (a) enough continuity exists on the page using latent semantic structures (b) if enough links are deep linked to that page and (c) if your internal links clearly delineate continuity and have a conclusive target page for each unique keyword variation.

For example, you can find our rates page in the top 5 results of Google for SEO rates, SEO pricing, search engine optimization pricing, or any array of those keywords based on the optimization structure.

Just like you can find our page for a free website analysis, free SEO proposal or SEO quote all pointing at another page to produce the same type of top 5 status. What you will not find is one of those pages appearing for the others keywords, or vice versa, this is due to proper internal linking and external reference from back links.

If you can find a page in your website for over 5 strong searches (for competitive keywords) then it means your site is budding with authority. At this juncture it would be wise to assign a particular range of keywords to each unique landing page and match the content on the page with the keyword data that most resembles continuity.

Beyond the keyword you select, it is more important to know why someone would use them and what sense of urgency they may have when they do. Think about actionable items, incorporate a strong call to action, but make sure it is targeting the right group who can truly benefit from your proposition.

The more specialized the offer the better, for example, if I approached a hosting company and tried to sell them 20,000 worth of SEO services and they were not interested I would not be surprised (if it was not their intention).

On the contrary, if I approached that same hosting company with a proposal on how they could prosper through a co-branded joint-venture by targeting their existing clients with a value proposition for SEO; and offered a revenue share on those who engaged the offer, you can see how the win / win business to business model can produce unlimited returns when replicated across multiple industries.

This is a great way to put the internet in marketing instead of the other way around. The only limit is the inability to gauge how effective your target audience is capable of seeing what you have to offer as an asset to their business model. So, be honest with yourself, are you really targeting the most lucrative marketing channel for your business (B2C) when your real calling may in fact be business to business?

It may be time to test the waters, I am sure you will be surprised to see just how eager those who can truly afford your services are interested in real value. Particularly when they can pass that value to their clients which is a pure win / win scenario for all.