5 VALIDATED USER ACQUISITION

STRATEGIES FOR YOUR B2B STARTUP

Shivankit Aroramarketingmasala.com

INTRODUCTIONCustomer acquisition is loved by every business, be it a giant like Salesforce or a startup like ZoomCharts.

The question is HOW to generate qualified B2B leads?

CONTENTHere are 5 proven customer acquisition strategies that work for different types of B2B businesses:• LinkedIn lead generation• Blog marketing• Guest blogging on other websites• Freemium model• Email marketing & automation

LINKEDIN LEAD GENERATIONBest suited for: B2B organizations selling products or services to another companies whose executives are active on LinkedIn.Ease of implementation: Easy to ModerateResults can be seen in: Less than a week if implemented in the right way

LINKEDIN LEAD GENERATIONHere’s how to do LinkedIn Lead Generation the right way:• Create a customer persona to define your target audience.• Narrow down to the size of company, geography, seniority of executives

or job roles you want to target.• Head over to LinkedIn, premium account is recommended, and start

searching using search bar of LinkedIn.• For example, JOB ROLE at COMPANY NAME or JOB ROLE in CITY/COUNTRY

Here is an example how to search for MARKETING DIRECTORS in UNITED KINGDOM:

Once you find people to target in the search list, follow these steps:

1. Send them connect request2. When they accept your request, send a message to introduce

yourself on 3rd day3. Send them a pitch on 7th day about your product/service in a

conversational tone4. Follow them up on 10th day, if needed.

Record everything in a process sheet like this:

BLOG MARKETINGBest suited for: B2B organizations selling products or services which is solving problems that are being searched by people on the internet.Ease of implementation: Easy to ModerateResults can be seen in: At least 3 months if it’s starting from the scratch. But results are extremely powerful and stays for life.

BLOGGING THE NEIL PATEL WAY

Neil Patel is a growth hacker and digital marketing mogul who founded marketing analytics software Crazy Egg & KISSMetrics.

He writes posts on QuickSprout to help digital marketers around the globe.

Writing posts for marketers not only helps him generate leads but also increases his blog’s ranking in search engines.

Neil Patel’s strong blog presence ranks him in the top 10 results in Google and that builds more brand awareness.

HOW TO MAKE YOUR COMPANY BLOG WORK FOR YOU?Here are the ways that can be followed for any kind of product or service:• Understand the core problem you’re solving and who are you

solving it for. For example, you’re a website developing firm.• Understand the person you want to reach out with your blog. Your

target audience is local business owners.• What does this person search for on the internet when he thinks

about building a site for his business? • For example, a search could be “why to build a website for your

local business”.

Head over to adwords.google.com and open Google Keyword Planner. Add all these queries there and see how many people are actually searching for it

Using the Google Keyword Planner, you’ve got the list of topics you can write about.The next step is to build links to get your blog posts rank higher. For this, you can do the following things:• Comment on other similar blogs with genuine answers and a link

to your post• Start answering questions on Quora & Yahoo with your post’s

link• Approach other bloggers who write similar posts and pitch them

to include a link to your post in their relevant post.

GUEST BLOGGING ON OTHER SITESBest suited for: B2B organizations selling products or services where their target is looking for a solution on the internet.Ease of implementation: Easy to ModerateResults can be seen in: At least a couple of months if it’s started from the scratch.What is a Guest Post?Guest post is nothing but writing a post relevant to your topics for someone else’s blog which publishes similar posts. It contains a link to your post and information about your business.

WRITING GUEST POST FOR B2B BUSINESSES• To begin with, find a topic local businesses might be searching for

when setting up a website. Think of 2-3 similar ideas related to their problems.

• Find a blog that will be enriched by your content.• Reach out to the blog owner via email provided on their website or

their twitter handle.

Here’s an example of reaching out to the owner of a blog who writes about SEOSubject : Hi Andrew! Loved your post on “how to do local SEO”Hi Andrew,Hope you are doing great.My name is Shivankit and I just wanted to thank you for the amazing post on Local SEO that you wrote last week.I have been an avid reader of your blog and love going through it a couple of times every week.I also blog at XXX about how local businesses can design great websites and earn more business. I was wondering if you’d be interested in getting a post published by me about “How great website design can mean more business for local businesses”I’d love to entertain any other ideas you have as well.Keep up the good work!

Shivankit AroraMarketing HeadXXX

Local SEO Guide is Andrew Shotland's blog on local search optimization, small business marketing & search engine optimization strategy.

HOW DOES GUEST BLOGGING HELP?• It gets links back to your site from this credible blog that you

pitched to. • More guest posts equals more backlinks and more backlinks equal

higher rankings in the search engines.• More visibility. You are seen as a much more credible person in

your domain• Plus your visibility increases as the readers of this new blog that

you posted on also get to know about you.

FREEMIUM MODEL OF YOUR PRODUCTBest suited for: B2B companies selling a product that will cost the client a recurring fee. Ease of implementation: Easy to ModerateResults can be seen in: At least a couple of months if starting from scratch.What is Freemium?It is just a version/part of your product that you give away for free for a limited or unlimited duration.

WHY TO CHOOSE FREEMIUM?The answer is simple, to BUILD TRUST.When you are selling a B2B product and you know that it does all those beautiful things for your client, you need to understand that the client needs to take a demo for themselves in order to gain some hands on experience and trust on your product.

EXAMPLES OF FREEMIUM BUSINESS MODELSBuffer is a social media scheduling service. You can connect your social profiles and schedule content.• Free model allows you to

connect 3 social media channels at a time and schedule 10 posts per network.

• A person can easily upgrade to a higher version (for just $10 per month) and connect more accounts and schedule more posts.

EXAMPLES OF FREEMIUM BUSINESS MODELSKISSmetrics is a marketing analytics tool that analyzes how customers and users are interacting with your website.Kissmetric’s free trial allows you to see and build trust with the product first before you want to make a decision to buy or not buy it.

EMAIL MARKETING AND AUTOMATIONBest suited for: B2B companies where the decision maker (from client side) is not active any where else(other than mail) including LinkedIn.Ease of implementation: Moderate to DifficultResults can be seen in: At least a couple of weeks if starting from scratch.

MAILCHIMP - THE EMAIL CHAMPIONMailchimp allows you to send marketing emails, automated messages, and targeted campaigns.You can fetch detailed reports of your campaigns and monitor which email is working best for your business.

HOW TO USE MAILCHIMP TO GENERATE MORE LEADS• Use LinkedIn/company websites to scrape email ID’s of executives

who are my potential leads.• Decide on a workflow. For example, a software development

company that builds software for investment banks. Now to approach the technology heads of such companies, follow these steps:a) Day 1: Short email about my services and asking for a callb) Day 3: Follow-up if they didn’t open the mailc) Day 5: Follow-up if they opened but did not reply

• All these steps can be performed using an email automation tool like Mailchimp.

What are your marketing hacks to get more clients?

I would love to hear your thoughts! Drop me a mail at shivankit[at]marketingmasala[dot]com

You can also connect with me on twitter at @marketingmasala