There’s a lot of good growth going on in small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) across the US and around the world. Long seen as the driver of economic growth, firms in this segment offer substantial commercial potential for businesses of all sizes:
Sales and marketing professionals have long expressed frustration about the difficulty they face when trying to identify and reach decision-makers in SMB companies, regardless of the industry. This is easy to understand due to the size and opaqueness of this sector (the US Small Business Administration estimates that 99.7% – 28.8 million – of US companies are SMB’s). In the shift to Account-Based Marketing (ABM) programs, targeting SMBs cost-effectively and at scale is a huge challenge.
The key to marketing and selling successfully to the SMB sector lies in shaping the right approach. There are several elements to consider:
Using content marketing to attract SMB decision-makers will bring prospects to you. We are strong advocates of content marketing, but as part of an integrated campaign, not the sole method to connect with an important audience. Content marketing requires longer lead times, and you’ll need to factor-in the challenges posed by creating content that attracts the right SMB prospects, the incentives you’ll need to offer in exchange for the prospect’s contact details and the time and resources required to keep content fresh, and in front of an always-on audience.
In theory building a list means that you get what you want, however unless you’re looking at a very small, tightly defined segment and have access to specialist sources, like trade organizations or professional associations, this is a huge, time-consuming activity, and not necessarily one that will return the best results. Small businesses are difficult to track online and rarely show up in online lead databases. Building a list of SMB companies from social media sources, like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, takes time, before you even factor in how to find names of decision-makers and their contact details.
The quality of SMB lead vendors varies enormously. There are many websites offering leads for a few cents each. We say, “Buyer beware.” When purchasing data, here are our suggestions for things to check for:
We do not see value in cheap B2B lead data, and recommend that you only try it if you have time and money to waste! A poorly-generated, “cheap and cheerful” list only causes problems. It can adversely impact email sender scores, waste your time sending you calling down blind-alleys, increase the number of duplicate contacts in your CRM, and end-up irritating the very people you’re trying to attract.
The bottom line – it is really important to know how a prospective SMB lead data vendor compiles their data (both the people data and the firmographic data) and understand how they update it. In our experience, the best approach comes from a vendor who sources and integrates multiple best-in-class providers and delivers you composited lead data that can truly claim to be the best available. Better to get one “golden” record from a skilled data integrator rather trying to make sense of multiple, “less golden” records in your CRM and Marketing Automation platforms!
Identifying the right companies and the right decision-makers is only the beginning of what’s needed to successfully market and sell to the SMB sector. The most important element that you’ll need is insight that helps you open doors, understand the customer’s needs and buying process, and personalize your communications. Insight helps you create messages that resonate with your target prospects and you’ll speak directly to their concerns and challenges in your emails, phone conversations and meetings. This intelligence is not available from most conventional sales lead vendors. As 84% of most B2B buyers start the purchase process with a referral, relationships are key to building credibility and establishing trust with SMB decision-makers. Relationships run on smart intelligence, and this is where RelPro excels.
As a team who has established relationship-building programs for major global businesses, we built RelPro to address the shortcomings we experienced. RelPro delivers unrivalled quality and coverage of SMB decision-makers for B2B Marketing, Sales and Business Development. We integrate best-in-class intelligence on 150+ million business decision-makers and deep firmographic intelligence on 7+ million companies worldwide. Our Artificial Intelligence platform enriches this data with timely news and social media content. We help our clients know the right time to be in touch with customers and give them the intelligence they need to start productive conversations through automated research and weekly alerts. Why not see RelPro for yourself and sign up for a demo?
One of the world’s largest Commercial Banks selected RelPro to source intelligence for a new business development initiative targeting financial decision-makers at 4,000 mid-market firms. We helped them:
To read more about this valuable deployment of RelPro, read the case study here.
Talk to us to see how we can help deliver excellent results from your next SMB campaign.
About RelPro
To learn more about RelPro, visit our website – www.relpro.com, give us a call – (888) 561 7890 or send us an email – info@relpro.com, or sign up for a demo. To learn what our customers are saying about RelPro, read the reviews on G2 Crowd.