5 Budget B2B Strategies for Driving Sales

Are you having trouble balancing shrinking marketing budgets with demand for higher revenues?

Budget cuts are realities that many B2B marketers have to contend with.

You would think with lower budgets the marketing approach would be more conservative, but no.

KPIs remain high, as does the expectation to generate more income.

Overall, it calls for re-adjustment of plans and the exploration of cost-effective lead generation and sales producing digital marketing strategies.

If you’re looking for budget-friendly ways to connect with and engage potential customers while drumming up sales, here are some options.

1. Make Cold Calls

Today’s cold calling technique focuses on “what’s in it for the customer” rather than “how can I drive more conversions.”

This approach allows you to look at the prospect’s problems as your own and come up with befitting solutions. Once you figure this out, your job is halfway done.

Here are valuable tips to help you maximize cold calls

Narrow down your prospects. Not every business on your list qualifies for your solutions. If you don’t eliminate bad fits, you’ll be wasting precious dollars calling them up. Set up criteria for which businesses qualify as good or bad fits.
Be a student and learn the prospect’s pain points. Businesses are always on the lookout for vendors who understand their needs and offer a measurable remedy. So do your homework before making the call and check how well you can solve their problems.
With the homework done, craft your opening line. We recommend sharing a success story that captures a major pain point and how your solutions made all the difference.
Speak the prospect’s language. Use simple language to explain technical jargon or you might lose your prospect somewhere along the way. Learn some of the words they use in their industry so you can come across as an informed partner.
Provide options. Have “good,” “better,” and “best” options to ensure your solutions can meet the prospect’s needs and budget adequately.

2. Tell Your Brand Story

Your brand story is the complete picture of who you are, what you stand for, and what makes you unique. It’s your heart and soul.

Telling your brand story helps you forge emotional connections with the businesses you’re targeting.

It narrates your reason or motivation for starting the business and what you get up to do every morning. More importantly, it tells customers—existing and potential why they can trust you.

An effective brand story humanizes your company, makes you appear relational, and increases your appeal as a solutions provider.

How do you develop an effective brand story?

Keep the story simple. Have a beginning, a middle, and an ending. Talk about why you started, the struggles you faced, how you overcame, and how you’re now helping other businesses do the same. The ending is not an ending per se, rather a progression since you’re still in business.
Let your brand personality shine through. Be authentic, be unique, be you. Consistency builds trust.
Communicate your higher purpose. What social change do you want to bring about? What legacy do you want to leave behind? Communicate this purpose to establish trust and a connection.

3. Organize Email Marketing Campaigns

Like cold calling, B2B email marketing is a direct and effective strategy for communicating with existing and potential customers.

Email marketing goes beyond getting messages into people’s inboxes.

It’s a potent and persuasive tool for promoting products/services, upselling, developing relationships, sharing content, and industry trends.

The first thing you need to think about is your reason for creating the campaign.

For most of us, the reasons range from revenue generation to growing subscriber lists, or increasing engagement.

So the question becomes, “Why should brands sign up or engage in conversations with you?”

What’s in your content that catches their attention? Does it inspire trust, demonstrate authority or make you likable?

Once you have your “why,” you can then create content that’s both relevant and useful to your audiences. Be careful not to bombard them with emails otherwise, they may unsubscribe.

As you write, keep the email design simple, easy to navigate on mobile and desktop, and easy to read as well.

Finally, consider automating emails based on your visitors’ actions. You can create autoresponders for sign-ups, purchases, abandoned carts, and subscriptions.

4. Leverage Social Media Marketing

Research shows that up to 66 percent of marketers generate leads from social media.

The social space is a low-cost hub for increasing awareness, showcasing your capability, and nurturing leads.

But before you get to that point, you’ll need a strategy. A strategy that considers:

Where does your ideal customer hang out? t’s likely that potential customers don’t know you exist, so you want to go where they hang out and gain a presence there. Their social engagements may happen on big social networks or niche sites.
Your social channels are your brand embassy, so optimize your profiles to ensure they attract the right leads. Use keywords in your bio, add your company’s logo, and a link back to your official site.
Create highly relevant content. Your audiences are interested in their aspirations, problems, and ways to deal with them. What useful information can you provide?
Build reach by following existing and potential clients. Further, your followers have followers you can follow and connect with. Show interest in what they do and share useful content rather than bombard them with your offerings.
Check if your strategy is on track. Analyze metrics such as the number of visits coming from social channels, number of leads generated, and how many turned into customers. Look at the level of engagement your posts receive, number of clicks, and shareability.

5. Ask for Referrals

Asking for referrals is among the oldest and budget-friendly ways of acquiring new business opportunities.

According to B2B referral stats, up to 83 percent of customers will refer another business to you upon successful purchase.

With your happy customers laying the groundwork for you, the social proof is already there. You only need to go in and prove them right.

How?

Provide an exceptional all-round customer experience from the products/services you offer to the phone calls and all other forms of engagement.
Be tactical in your approach. There are customers whom you can be direct with when asking for referrals and others that require a little more creativity. Use your better judgment to ensure you don’t offend the customer.
People like helping people, so frame your intentions as requests. Something on the lines of “I was hoping you could help me with….” is likely to inspire conversations that lead to connections.
Focus your attention on customers with whom you share a deeper working bond. They make better brand advocates and are more likely to send you referrals.
Consider offering incentives to sweeten and compel customers to refer others. From discounts to attractive coupons and gift cards, incentives just might help you get speedy results.
Return the favor. Look through your network and connect businesses that can benefit from working together—even without them asking. It will come back to you, positively.