Trade Marketing tips
You asked us about Trade Marketing. This is when you sell something to another business and they sell it to the ultimate customer. Fundamentally it’s just selling but because it’s restricted to selling within a single industry or “trade” it gets another name…. the key thing for you to know is that the principles of B2B marketing still hold true.
Trade marketing is a sub-type of B2B
What I love about any B2B is that the audience is individually identifiable. You can get or build a list of actual individuals who you can sell to. The best way to start that is through identifying these things
- industry type
- sub-type of industry
- job title of decision makers and decision-influencers
Then you are within reach of a clearly identified audience. List broker will sell you lists, you can research and build your own too. If you choose the latter, please start with the trade association or professional body for the industry. That’s a great way to short-cut list building.
After the list, how to approach
Getting a list is only the beginning. You need to brand build with specific campaigns so that prospects recognise your business name or your product name (or both). Trade shows can be useful here because people who are interested are all gathered into a single location on a single day and you can meet many face to face.
Getting your strategy aligned with the prospect’s need is critical. Because it’s so easy to mess up an approach and build bad feeling against your brand. For this reason we always create a hypothesis and we test this out before a general launch.
Today a mailing list of 100 names is being tested for a client. When we see how it’s received [Good so far, thanks for asking 54% open rate 4% click through] then we can make decisions about whether to adapt / improve or just to roll it out to the rest of the prospect list.
Top 10 tips for trade marketing
- Automate follow ups – have a pre-set process for capturing and following up
- Time is always short – but don’t cut short conversations on the stand. Invest in the people who do come to build relationships
- Connect on LinkedIn to everyone you meet if possible
- Be very clear about what you are promising to prospects
- Have a “cute” offer [fidget spinners are popular now]
- If you use scrolling video at a trade show, always sub-title it so people get the message from afar
- Put on your best smile. It’s my biggest business success tool – people remember my warm smile
- Make eye contact and be the first to break contact after smiling and saying hello. This is un-threatening
- Have a ‘golden question‘ or two ready for your prospect discovery questions
- Turn up every year – as long as the show brings in prospects, plan to be there. Consistency pays off
Creative Agency Secrets is expert in B2B marketing. We understand how to research trade buyers, how to build a list of possible buyers, how to present your product or service to them and how to get them to buy from you over and over again.
If you want to learn more, read this article about Trade Show Marketing. And this case study about your business location
