This article was originally published in the Elevate Your Marketing newsletter and has been repurposed and republished here with the author’s permission. Here is the link to the original article. 

A lot of the queries I am getting at Skalegrow are from B2B businesses in a niche space. They often face the challenge of generic marketing techniques not working as much as they do in other businesses.

Hence, I decided to put together an article that discusses in detail 7 marketing strategies that will work for niche businesses.

Before we start with niche B2B marketing

The peculiarity of niche businesses is that a technique that works for one business might not necessarily work for another. This makes it a little difficult to generalize the marketing strategies for them. What we do at Skalegrow with all our clients is come up with a custom marketing plan by understanding the uniqueness of each business.

You need to treat the content of this article in a similar fashion. Make sure all the 7 strategies I discuss apply to your business context.

That said, let’s get started.

7 unique B2B marketing strategies to grow your niche business

Here are the 7 techniques we will discuss today:

1. Partnerships
2. Industry events
3. Online/offline magazines and news websites
4. Industry alliances
5. Investor marketing
6. Offline advertising
7. Influencer marketing

1. Partnerships as niche B2B marketing strategy

In the context of niche marketing, partnerships can take one or more of the following forms:

• Go-to-market partners – Go-to-market partners are helpful when you are targeting a region that you don’t have a reach in. These can be agencies or vendors that will help you get access to a market that you otherwise find difficult to do. An example of this is Network In Motion which helps businesses establish a presence in the Japanese market with a wide variety of services including business development, crisis management, training, etc.
• Distribution or reselling partners – Distribution and reselling partners help you distribute or resell your products and services in a specific market. This is very popular in the SaaS world. An example of a company that does this is Success Stars Consulting.
• B2C partnerships – This kind of partnership helps if the customers of the B2C company you partner with are likely to be your potential buyers. This depends a lot on the niche you are in. It works even better if the partner has a B2B side to their business. An example of such an engagement is a manufacturing company partnering with an F&B (Food and Beverages) company that will potentially give the manufacturer visibility among other F&B companies (this is still a less explored path, and make sure to choose your partners wisely).
• Businesses with complementing products – As the term suggests, here you partner with companies that offer products or services that can be sold alongside yours. This might as well help you build new capabilities that give better appeal to your offerings.

2. Industry events

Whatever niche you are in, there are plenty of industry events happening globally that give access to potential customers, partners, vendors, and even hires. A great example of this in the SaaS world is events conducted by SaaStr.

Look for similar events in your niche. They are great opportunities for you to network and create business opportunities.

To help you make the most out of these events, check out the below edition of The Skalegrow Newsletter where we have shared a couple of growth hacks exclusively for in-person events.

1+1 growth hacks exclusively for in-person events

In addition to in-person events, you can also check out online events that give you similar opportunities.

3. Online/offline magazines and news websites

Online and offline magazines are an excellent way to reach a niche audience.

For example, imagine that you are a company offering embedded hardware services to robotics companies. A news website like The Robot Report could be a great place to publish your content.

Similarly, if you are into the automation space, the Association for Advancing Automation is an example of an online magazine and news website on which you can consider promoting your products or services.

A lot of these media companies have print magazines as well, which might sound outdated. But they still find a place in niche industries.

Depending on the suite of services these companies offer, you might as well be able to run campaigns such as:

• Newsletter campaigns
• Whitepaper/ebook promotions
• Banner/video ads
• Guest posting
• Sponsored webinars

4. Industry alliances

Industry alliances are kind of similar to online and offline magazines. These are alliances that offer various kinds of services to member companies of a particular niche. The Edge AI and Vision Alliance is a good example of such an industry group that does this in the embedded space. They offer a suite of services including member subscriptions, ads, events, guest posts, vendor/partner introductions, sponsored webinars, and more.

5. Investor marketing

This is a technique that works only if your target companies are backed by investors (either VCs or institutional investors). This involves targeting investors by understanding the nature of their portfolio companies.

For example, imagine you are selling software product(s) to medical device companies. In addition to targeting them directly, why not target a private equity firm that has a large enough portfolio in the medical devices industry?

The following are the benefits of doing it this way:

• This gives you access to someone who has a network in multiple companies in your target segment.
• This method is easily scalable since there won’t be too many investors (at least institutional ones) focused on a particular industry.
• This becomes a perfect case for trying out account based marketing since the number of companies you need to reach is limited.

So, this is worth giving a shot.

6. Offline advertising

This sounds counterintuitive. But it has been tried before in the B2B space, not in a niche domain though.

You might have heard about Zoho running ads in the San Jose airport. That’s a classic example of offline advertising in B2B.

The key here is to be in a place where a large number of your target audience hangs out. In the case of Zoho’s airport advertising, the company was targeting people coming to an event in the city which potentially had a lot of their ideal customers.

Similarly, think about a location where your ideal customers are likely to hang out. These ads can also be associated with specific events (like in the case of Zoho) where you run them only during the period for which the event is happening.

Related article: Using Paid Ads For B2B Demand Generation – Doing It The Counterintuitive Way

7. B2B influencer marketing

This doesn’t need an explanation. You can read more about this tactic in one of my articles on micro-influencer marketing.

But here are a few things to keep in mind while leveraging B2B influencer marketing to promote your niche business:

• Don’t pick influencers purely based on the number of followers or the amount of reach they have. Make sure they have an audience in your niche and represent the identity of your brand.
• Make sure the quality of the content they create meets the necessary standards you expect.
• Don’t make your influencer marketing campaigns conversion-focused alone. They can be used for improving your brand awareness too.

 

Final words about niche B2B marketing

The objective of this article was to give you a few unique ideas. You need to develop them further and plan how to execute them. Also, depending on the industry you are in, the way you approach each of these strategies might differ. As I always say, a ‘one size fits all’ approach never works.

If you need more details and help implementing these strategies, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at info@skalegrow.com.

About the author

Naseef KPO is the Founder and CEO of Skalegrow. He comes with rich experience across multiple areas of B2B marketing including content marketing, demand generation, SEO, account-based marketing, marketing analytics, revenue attribution, marketing technology, etc. He writes thought-provoking and relevant articles on The Skalegrow Blog and his weekly LinkedIn newsletter Elevate Your Marketing.

Prior to starting Skalegrow, Naseef led large marketing teams in multi-million dollar B2B organizations where he made significant contributions to the topline growth of the business. He has also appeared on numerous podcasts where he shared his thoughts on trending marketing topics such as the application of AI in marketing, startup marketing, ABM, and B2B content marketing, just to name a few. Being the founder of Skalegrow, he is currently focusing on helping its clients stay ahead of their competition by using innovative yet practical marketing tactics.

You can connect with Naseef KPO on LinkedIn.