How to Pre-launch a B2B Start-up

"I have been toying with a B2B concept for a while. I think it has great potential. How do I take it forward?"

As an entrepreneur, I often get this question from budding entrepreneurs.

First off, a B2B Service is one of the most challenging segments to penetrate. Consider these steps to pre-launch a B2B start-up:

1. Conducting a Pilot – If you have a good job, do not jump ship. Instead, take some time off and try out a pilot "live." If your concept/invention pertains to the same industry you are currently employed, have an attorney review your employment contract for "conflict of interest" and "no compete" clauses. Since start-ups do not qualify for SBA loans, hire a qualified consultant to review your financials (both business and household), type of business formation (S, LLC, C, etc.), liability insurance, etc.  

2. Implementing Marketing Plan – Make sure you implement your marketing plan (from the actual business plan) to promote the pilot (as if it were the real launch!). It's better to have an average concept backed by a super-duper marketing plan (recipe for success) than a super-duper concept supported by an average marketing plan. Therefore, a significant amount of time and effort must be paid to developing the marketing plan. Ideally, it should also be reviewed by a marketing expert or a social media consultant, thus ensuring that the bases are amply covered.

3. In the Case of Local Service – If it is a local service, some meaning networking is critically coupled with several live campaigns (with real money) to get a good reaction for the future clients' actual outcome. When campaigns are launched or conducted without real money, they could lack the kind of intensity that is generally needed to get the right feel for the market. For instance, if the product or service relates to the real estate valuation market, it is critical to network with the local appraisers, assessors, realtors, social media consultants, etc.

4. In Case of National Service – If it is a national service, it's essential to mobilize the marketing Rolodex (LinkedIn, FB, Instagram, etc.), with an announcement that you are open for business. Before promoting national service, it's essential to understand the industry trend, especially any emerging trend. It's good to visit one or two seminars or conferences where national vendors display their products at the exhibit hall. While attending such conferences could be expensive and time-consuming, the resulting rewards generally far exceed the associated costs.  

5. Campaigning on Twitter – Campaigning on Twitter is more specialized than other social vehicles, so it's crucial to simultaneously implement the marketing campaigns. The campaigns need to fine-tune, and rerun (or re-implemented) based on Twitter Analytic, which could often be an iterative process to optimize the marketing plan, and short-cut could lead to an inefficient strategy. It might be a good idea to even consult with a well-known Twitter expert to iron out any hidden inconsistencies. The point is, the marketing plan must virtually back the product or service being promoted.

6. Advice from the like-minded – Seek advice from the like-minded B2B entrepreneurs – both successful and struggling – to avoid reinventing the wheel. It will save you many trips to the ER, so to say. Locally, it complements networking and, nationally, it saves a ton by not having to attend some vital industry seminars. As long as the product or service is not directly complete with theirs, most would welcome and satisfy your curiosity by sharing their road to success, critical in developing self-confidence.

7. Publishing the Underlying Concept – If you have already written a book highlighting the invention's underlying concept, it might be a good idea to join the Amazon Marketing Service to beef up its sale, bolstering "indirect" marketing before the actual pre-launch. The Kindle version alone is not enough; the Paperback is equally essential. Additionally, Twitter and other social campaigns need to be developed with direct links to the book. Ideally, the book's publication should coincide with the pre-launch of the actual product or service to intensify the marketing efforts without having to split the advertising and marketing costs.

8. Business IT Concept – If it is a Business IT concept, it's imperative to copyright it, leading to patenting; otherwise, the market protection would be virtually absent. While it's costly to patent it in a host of other countries at the outset, it is prudent to start the process here, gradually followed by the nations as they would be penetrated. The filing of the US copyright and provisional patenting will, at least, prevent the foreign companies from doing business here from directly infringing on yours. The provisional patent application will buy you 12 months to prepare for and submit the actual application (during which time "patent pending" could be added).

9. Analyze the Pilot Results – Analyze the results from the pilot as they come in, preferably in direct collaboration with a well-known marketing consultant, and seeking analytical help from a consulting data scientist could make sense as well. If you find that the results far exceeded your (and your consultant's) expectations, work on initiating a much larger pilot with the updated service coupled with a vastly upgraded marketing plan, adequately factoring in the initial pilot's inputs. If the follow-up growth curve is exponential (at this point, linear growth is not good enough!), you are "on to something."  

As indicated above, a pre-launch is a critical interim stage that must not be ignored. Far too many budding entrepreneurs make the mistake of launching the product/service without a meaningful pilot, thereby depriving them of the market knowledge, a priori, to face the competition.

-Sid Som, MBA, MIM

homequant@gmail.com

Link to the Book

Post Pandemic, Exciting Low-Cost Businesses for Stay-at-home Moms

The term stay-at-home moms generally refers to the parents who choose to stay home and take care of their growing kids. Thus, whether a parent is a mom or dad is immaterial. Conversely, the folks working "remote" for their employers are excluded from this chapter's purview. 

According to Pew Research, "Stay-at-home moms and dads account for about one-in-five U.S. parents."

Of course, most of those parents are either professionally self-employed or are running some home-based businesses. Still, post pandemic, those who are planning to take the plunge may explore the following options as well.

1. E-book Creation for 3rd Party Writers – Due to the fast-growing popularity of self-publishing platforms like Amazon's KDP, Barnes & Noble Press, Lulu, etc., E-books has skyrocketed in recent years. Of course, the idea of "creating" the E-book forces many writers on to the sideline, meaning they could use technical help in going live. Stay-at-home moms exploring new business opportunities should seriously evaluate this technical option – connecting future writers to the hosting platform – as part of their overall mix of alternatives. All one needs to get started is a simple landing page (e.g., Word Press website), which could be easily marketed via social media.     

2. E-book Marketing Service – One of the fundamental differences between the traditional book publication and E-book publication is marketing and promotion. Publishers take full responsibility to market and promote traditional books, while self-publishing comes with self-marketing. While the E-book writers possess the domain knowledge or technical expertise to write their books, they are not necessarily experts in marketing and promoting their books, making them stand out and narrow down the competition. The stay-at-home moms with good knowledge and understanding of social/marketing may explore this home-based opportunity. Specialized 3rd party marketing tools are available for subscription. Some platforms have built-in marketing and promotion tools like affiliates, cross-selling, referrals, mailing lists, special discounts, coupons, etc., which can be a standalone service or can efficiently be run add-on to # 1 above.

3. E-Book Writing and Editing Service – Many people have brilliant ideas but do not have the necessary time or professional writing skills to take them to the finish line. The stay-at-home moms with good writing skills may step in and fill in that economic void. Those with minimal time may consider the "Editing" service. On the other hand, those with backgrounds in fine arts or visual arts may seek out the prospective writers needing such skills, including designing children's books and science fiction. As the business grows, other similarly-qualified stay-at-home moms or local students majoring in those areas could be trained as sub-contractors. All an entrepreneurial mind needs to get started is a landing page coupled with targeted social marketing. Later, this service could be vertically integrated with the # 1 and # 2, as described above.

4. Conducting Online Surveys for Research Outfits and Political Parties – Market research houses and political parties need constant help with online surveys. Those who have backgrounds in market surveys, polling, and conducting online interviews can explore this business opportunity. Alternatively, some stay-at-home moms can do the survey/polling on their own and then package and sell the services to various institutions or political parties in need of such survey results. This business may have a more extended gestation period, but it could be enriching with proper social marketing and networking over some time. Of course, sound technical knowledge regarding online sampling, survey methodologies, polling techniques, etc. is imperative. From local to state to national, political elections have become extremely poll-driven, so the parties have been learning to evaluate a myriad of external poll results to challenge their internal results. Again, excelling in local political polling would require significant interactions with the grassroots (could be time-taking!).    

5. Online Property Tax Appeal Filing – Property tax assessment is one of the most controversial services local governments are generally tasked with. In larger jurisdictions, almost every other property assessment is frowned upon, leading to sizeable appeals. Unfortunately, many homeowners are either unaware of or are too afraid to challenge their values. While the old-fashioned consultants are still hanging on to their antiquated solutions, a new generation of problem solvers is on the horizon, posing an existential threat to the antiques. The stay-at-home moms with the local residential market's basic knowledge can quickly get into this online business and claim a forward-looking pie. All it requires is a comparable sales (comps) program and access to the home sales database (they generally come bundled together from the data vendor). This is a marketing-oriented business, but rewards are significant, considering the tax savings are usually evenly split. Stay-at-home moms with Data Science/Quantitative background can easily take the solution to the next level, potentially doing away with the old-fashioned competition altogether.

6. Owning and Marketing Niche Job Sites – Nowadays, ready-made job sites can be purchased or licensed for as little as $99/year from a whole host of well-known developers. Of course, as purchased or licensed, those sites are empty shells without any jobs to offer. The easiest way to get started is to become a licensee (generally free) of a significant site operator like Indeed, CareerBuilder, SimplyHired, ZipRecruiter, etc. which allows the licensee's site to be instantly populated with tens of thousands of current jobs from the parent site. Since the jobs are already available and are updated continuously, the stay-at-home moms can concentrate on targeting candidates. When a redirected candidate (from licensee site to parent site) is hired from the parent site, the fee is shared. Ideally, instead of running the site as a generic site like the parent's, it would be prudent to run it as a very specialized site (preferably in line with the stay-at-home mom's area of specialty) with highly targeted jobs and candidates, e.g., travel nursing, airline crew, new STEM, appraisers, etc., to avoid having to compete with the major players from the get-go. While streaming in the jobs, filters can be set up complementing the niche. The sites can be hosted by well-known US-based companies like GoDaddy, Bluehost, etc. for under $15/mo.

Nowadays, there are numerous online business opportunities for stay-at-home moms, aligning very well with their strengths. The marketing-oriented options (surveys/polling) will take longer to yield results than their counterparts requiring much lesser marketing efforts (E-book creation). Similarly, high-ticket-value opportunities (job sites) will require more creative marketing than those requiring straight forward marketing (blog marketing).

-Sid Som, MBA, MIM
homequant@gmail.com

Link to the Book

Turning LinkedIn into an Effective B2B Marketing Tool

LinkedIn is the most influential business social today, undoubtedly rising head and shoulder above the competition. Whether one is seeking a new job opportunity or is looking to connect with other industry professionals or business leaders, one needs to have a decent presence on LinkedIn. Given the fast-changing marketing landscape, LinkedIn could be a handy B2B marketing tool as well. So, how does one turn it into a useful marketing tool? Here are the considerations:

1. Choosing Contacts – You must evaluate and select the LinkedIn contacts very carefully (no room for family and friends here), especially zeroing in on the decision-makers. For example, if you are currently offering services to banks and other financial institutions, learn to constrain your research and the resulting search to the decision-making vertical, i.e., VP-SVP-EVP, etc., leaving out the non-decision making universe as they would not be much help in your endeavor.

2. Limited Success at the Beginning – Expect minimal effectiveness at the beginning, say 20-30%. Of course, it could be higher or lower, depending on mutual interest and compatibility. Regardless, try to align with the decision-makers, remembering quality is better than quantity here. In other words, 20% effectiveness from the universe of decision-makers would be far better than 50% effectiveness from random bankers.

3. Content is King – Content is king, so do not waste time on unrelated issues or themes; instead, stick to your area of expertise, business, or the competition. For instance, instead of sharing or re-publishing news or articles from various news agencies, place your pieces and commentaries, so your offering or business stands out. The originality is greatly rewarded. The frequency is also critical in maintaining proper visibility, so try to contribute frequently, preferably daily.

4. Avoid Direct Marketing – Unless specifically requested by your contacts, it's better to avoid direct marketing. It would be harikari to spam contacts with un-solicited literature. It's a severe turn-off to the busy business people. All such marketing must be indirect via meaningful posts and articles, allowing contacts to be self-enticed to reach out to you. When they reach out to you, it's already half-sold. The adage – goods well-bought are already half-sold – applies quite well here.

5. Target Population – Define the target population you would like to achieve within a specified timeframe. A high-water mark is critical. Again, quality is more important than quantity; for instance, 1,000 vertical-level decision-makers (quality) are more valuable than 2,000 random bankers (just quantity), mostly non-decision makers. Set a timeframe, say within six months, to achieve this goal. Spend an hour each night – religiously – reviewing candidate profiles and sending out invites.

6. Increased Marketing – As liquidity increases, you need to intensify your marketing efforts. It's a numbers game: 1 to 2% effectiveness becomes significant when the underlying population is large and impactful. In other words, if you have a contact population of 3,000 decision-makers, a 1% response rate (or 30 leads per day) is quite significant – at least initially. As the population increases, you will get increasingly more requests to join your network, boosting your population faster.

7. Automated Campaign – Considering it's a 100% targeted platform, the use of mechanical or impersonal campaigns must be minimized. For instance, instead of placing a marketing flyer in front of your contacts, write a meaningful introductory piece, followed by a set of links pointing to your flyers. It's good to understand that the business leaders can smell automated campaigns (a.k.a., bots) from far away, so all costs must avoid them. Of course, when the leads are self-enticed (after having read your piece), they are far more result-oriented.   

8. Keep the Base Growing – Just the way you would grow your own business, keep your LinkedIn base growing. The growth pattern must be collinear, meaning they must grow in tandem (as they complement each other). As the base grows, your percentage of success will grow at a much faster rate as the mutual interest grows. Similarly, you will receive a much higher volume of requests. Remember, it's your business, so do not unnecessarily relax your acceptance rules. On the contrary, now that your base is liquid, try to tighten it a bit. For example, roll up your original VP-SVP-EVP vertical to SVP-EVP-FVP now.

9. Some Exceptions Worth Considering – Lastly, here is an optional consideration – an exception (to the stringent acceptance rule) that many follow. For example, now and then, when I receive requests from certain rule-breaking yet deserving candidates like the mothers trying to return to work, veterans entering the labor force, new STEM graduates looking for jobs, etc., I wholeheartedly welcome them into the network.

At any rate, LinkedIn has grown into a business social powerhouse, so it must be used as a marketing platform to complement other marketing efforts. B2B professionals should use it as one of the primary marketing tools, but building a good deck is the key to such success.

-Sid Som, MBA, MIM
homequant@gmail.com

Link to the Book

Turning LinkedIn into an Effective B2B Marketing Tool

LinkedIn is the most influential business social today, undoubtedly rising head and shoulder above the competition. Whether one is seeking a new job opportunity or is looking to connect with other industry professionals or business leaders, one needs to have a decent presence on LinkedIn. Given the fast-changing marketing landscape, LinkedIn could be a handy B2B marketing tool as well. So, how does one turn it into a useful marketing tool? Here are the considerations:

1. Choosing Contacts – You must evaluate and select the LinkedIn contacts very carefully (no room for family and friends here), especially zeroing in on the decision-makers. For example, if you are currently offering services to banks and other financial institutions, learn to constrain your research and the resulting search to the decision-making vertical, i.e., VP-SVP-EVP, etc., leaving out the non-decision making universe as they would not be much help in your endeavor.

2. Limited Success at the Beginning – Expect minimal effectiveness at the beginning, say 20-30%. Of course, it could be higher or lower, depending on mutual interest and compatibility. Regardless, try to align with the decision-makers, remembering quality is better than quantity here. In other words, 20% effectiveness from the universe of decision-makers would be far better than 50% effectiveness from random bankers.

3. Content is King – Content is king, so do not waste time on unrelated issues or themes; instead, stick to your area of expertise, business, or the competition. For instance, instead of sharing or re-publishing news or articles from various news agencies, place your pieces and commentaries, so your offering or business stands out. The originality is greatly rewarded. The frequency is also critical in maintaining proper visibility, so try to contribute frequently, preferably daily.

4. Avoid Direct Marketing – Unless specifically requested by your contacts, it's better to avoid direct marketing. It would be harikari to spam contacts with un-solicited literature. It's a severe turn-off to the busy business people. All such marketing must be indirect via meaningful posts and articles, allowing contacts to be self-enticed to reach out to you. When they reach out to you, it's already half-sold. The adage – goods well-bought are already half-sold – applies quite well here.

5. Target Population – Define the target population you would like to achieve within a specified timeframe. A high-water mark is critical. Again, quality is more important than quantity; for instance, 1,000 vertical-level decision-makers (quality) are more valuable than 2,000 random bankers (just quantity), mostly non-decision makers. Set a timeframe, say within six months, to achieve this goal. Spend an hour each night – religiously – reviewing candidate profiles and sending out invites.

6. Increased Marketing – As liquidity increases, you need to intensify your marketing efforts. It's a numbers game: 1 to 2% effectiveness becomes significant when the underlying population is large and impactful. In other words, if you have a contact population of 3,000 decision-makers, a 1% response rate (or 30 leads per day) is quite significant – at least initially. As the population increases, you will get increasingly more requests to join your network, boosting your population faster.

7. Automated Campaign – Considering it's a 100% targeted platform, the use of mechanical or impersonal campaigns must be minimized. For instance, instead of placing a marketing flyer in front of your contacts, write a meaningful introductory piece, followed by a set of links pointing to your flyers. It's good to understand that the business leaders can smell automated campaigns (a.k.a., bots) from far away, so all costs must avoid them. Of course, when the leads are self-enticed (after having read your piece), they are far more result-oriented.   

8. Keep the Base Growing – Just the way you would grow your own business, keep your LinkedIn base growing. The growth pattern must be collinear, meaning they must grow in tandem (as they complement each other). As the base grows, your percentage of success will grow at a much faster rate as the mutual interest grows. Similarly, you will receive a much higher volume of requests. Remember, it's your business, so do not unnecessarily relax your acceptance rules. On the contrary, now that your base is liquid, try to tighten it a bit. For example, roll up your original VP-SVP-EVP vertical to SVP-EVP-FVP now.

9. Some Exceptions Worth Considering – Lastly, here is an optional consideration – an exception (to the stringent acceptance rule) that many follow. For example, now and then, when I receive requests from certain rule-breaking yet deserving candidates like the mothers trying to return to work, veterans entering the labor force, new STEM graduates looking for jobs, etc., I wholeheartedly welcome them into the network.

At any rate, LinkedIn has grown into a business social powerhouse, so it must be used as a marketing platform to complement other marketing efforts. B2B professionals should use it as one of the primary marketing tools, but building a good deck is the key to such success.

-Sid Som, MBA, MIM
homequant@gmail.com

Link to the Book