While there are many different ways to conduct new sales activities in corporate companies, many companies may have a hard time with BtoB new business sales. In fact, many companies in the web industry are trying to acquire customers through a huge number of telemarketing and e-mail sales activities.
However, those of us in the web marketing business often wonder, ” Why do they keep wasting money on new sales? ” I often wonder.
- I am wondering how I should go about new business sales and branding when entering the Japanese market.
- I need a way to attract customers after opening a new business or website.
- I want to break away from a sales style that only consumes time and manpower through tele-appointments.
For those who are facing challenges in their current new business activities, we will introduce effective ways to attract new customers through the Web.
Types of New Business Sales｜Is it difficult to acquire new customers?
New customer acquisition is important for a company to increase sales and operating profit, but there are several ways to acquire new customers.
Many salespeople often search for potential customers on the Internet, make a list of potential customers, and approach them one by one by phone or e-mail, which is a so-called “push type” of new customer acquisition.
Types of New Business Development Sales｜Push type and Pull type
New business development sales methods can be classified into two types: push type and pull type.
- Bush type: Sales activities are conducted mainly by the company side, and include mail, phone calls, direct mail (DM), and sales dives.
- Pull-type: Sales in which users come to the company and learn about the company through advertising, SEO, SEM, etc.
Push-type new business development requires manpower and can be done with relatively little preparation and skill.
On the other hand, pull-type new business development sales include web advertising, search engine optimization (SEO), and customer acquisition from social networking services (SEM), while introductions from existing clients and solicitations from seminars and exhibitions are also pull-type sales methods.
Is the push type of new business development old fashioned? ｜Is tele-appointment wrong?
In addition to listing ads, SNS ads and YouTube video ads are becoming more and more common in terms of advertising demand in Japan, while there are a large number of companies in the web industry that make proposals through tele-appointments and e-mail sales.
Some of you may have experienced the frustration of receiving uninteresting tele-appointments and sales e-mails. The push type of sales approach, in which sales are conducted in numbers anyway, is considered old-fashioned in terms of the way of doing things.
And the push type is not only old-fashioned, but also has the disadvantage of being inefficient. For example, in the case of tele-appointments, if you make 100 calls and get 1~2 appointments, it is still a good result, and if you visit the customer from there and the closing rate is 10~20% at most,
- If you visit the customer from there and the closing rate is 10~20% at best, you would call 500 customers, get 5~10 appointments, and close 1~2 deals.
It is a fine line, so it is not so easy to get 1 deal…. It’s not easy.
However, it does not mean that all sales methods should be taken by digital advertising and SEO, and in some cases, it is effective to combine push and pull type sales to develop new business.
SEO, advertising, and e-mail are effective in new business sales and web customer attraction!
Basically, in new business development sales, advertising and SEO (search engine optimization), which mainly focus on Web-based customer acquisition, are more efficient and recommended than tele-appointments and dive sales methods.
The following is a summary of key points about each sales method.
SEO (search engine optimization) is the best way to attract customers on the Web in the medium to long term!
Please refer to the following page for an easy-to-understand explanation of the basics of SEO, even for beginners.
▶︎ Related article: What should I do to improve SEO? | SEO measures that can be taken right away
The advantage of SEO is that by ranking high for keywords related to your new business, users will come to your site without any marketing efforts on your part. However, SEO measures take time to show results, so they are not suitable for short-term new business development.
Still, as a pull-type sales approach, it is attractive in that it can acquire potential customers over the medium to long term, so many companies focus on SEO measures by preparing a website and enriching its contents with new business development.
Listing and SNS ads produce results in new business development in the short term!
Listings and SNS ads are also effective in attracting web customers, and the following web ads are in demand in the current Japanese market.
- Listing Ads｜Text ads displayed in Google and Yahoo search results
- Display network ads: Banner ads displayed on websites
- Social media (SNS) advertisements｜Advertisements displayed on twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.
- YouTube video ads: Ads that appear in videos distributed on YouTube
Web ads are suitable for short-term customer acquisition because they can be posted to targeted user segments as soon as they are placed. While it is valuable for acquiring new customers, it has disadvantages such as advertising costs and the need for knowledge of Web advertising.
Sales e-mails require ingenuity in the way they are written!
It is also a good idea to incorporate an e-mail approach in push-based new customer acquisition sales. However, without ingenuity, e-mail sales e-mails will end up in the trash or spam folder without being read, so you need to take measures to make people think, “I ‘d like to talk to you! You need to take measures to make people think, “I want to talk to you!
When I work for an advertising agency, I receive dozens of sales e-mails to my company e-mail address every day, but only 10~20% of them I read the body, and the rest I delete after reading only the subject line. And only a small percentage of the sales e-mails I skim read and respond to are inquiries or replies.
However, the emails that I felt like replying to had a few things in common,
- The subject line of the email makes a specific suggestion or contains an interesting document
- The body of the email is concise and offers specific benefits
- The proposal is based on a sound investigation and assumption of the issues we are facing.
Sales e-mails with these key points are more likely to be opened and responded to, and are more likely to get appointments. Conversely, most companies have a lot of boring sales e-mails that are copied from templates, so why don’t you spend more time on how to communicate in e-mails first, rather than acquiring a list of customers?
The PDCA cycle is also important in new business sales!
As explained above, pull-type sales, which mainly focuses on attracting Web customers, is preferable to push-type sales such as telemarketing in terms of efficient sales methods, but it is also important to thoroughly implement the PDCA cycle in Web advertising and SEO measures.
Many companies are able to implement the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle on their own in new business development, but surprisingly few are able to review the results (Check-Act) to see if they are really going well.
What are the reasons for not implementing the PDCA cycle even if you know it?
The PDCA cycle is a basic measure in today’s business model, but companies that fail to implement the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle tend to have the following problems.
- Employees have limited time to work, so there is no time to consider evaluation and improvement.
- The company continues to develop new business while the axis of evaluation is unclear to begin with.
- Not knowing what improvements to make in SEO and web advertising
There is a lack of knowledge within the company, and there is a lack of personnel and time to spend on new business development sales, aren’t there? There are ways to improve the situation, such as hiring experienced staff or hiring a marketing consultant, but both of these options are expensive and many companies may hesitate to do so.
We offer inexpensive SEO advice and consulting services!
On the other hand, SEO-in-Japan’s SEO consulting services are inexpensive enough to be used by small companies that cannot raise a lot of money for new business development.
If you have any issues with SEO that you are implementing in-house, or if you are having problems attracting customers to your website in general, please feel free to contact us for a free consultation.
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