Local store (B2B) that produces high quality prints for photographers: are we adopting the right strategy?

[Cesare.Marchetti]

Hi,

I'd like to know your opinion on the following case and gather new ideas on how to optimise our strategy:

Starting situation: local store (B2B) in a bigger city in Europe that produces high quality prints mainly for photographers on paper (or other materials like canvas, aluminium, etc. ). They really take care of your images (e.g. Color Management) and produce printouts that look how they really should look like.

Target audience: photographers (pros), museum, exhibitions and hotel people that would like to produce high quality prints of their images. Almost never the ambitioned private photographers (until now).

**Actual situation: **its really a local business (people around 30 km). competition: big online stores where you can upload your pictures and get your prints sent home (quality: not bad, but not exceptional, no special requests; more for private customers)

Already done (with relatively little results):

• _AdWords: _very "tight" keyword combinations, not broad at all, targeting area around business location. results: small traffic, small costs: not a lot of conversions.

• _SEO: _for organic search we now achieve very good positions for tight" keyword combinations, not broad ones. results: little traffic: not a lot of conversions

• LinkedIn-Ads targeting the above target group: results: little traffic: not a lot of conversions

• Facebook Remarketing (targeting his newsletter mail-list: results: little traffic: not a lot of conversions

• Optimized the landingpage (in my opinion far more to the point than before)

PROBLEM: Basically we now get to the right people but traffic is really (too) small. At least we don't waste money at all but we don't gain a lot either... If we broaden the "keywords" the private customers will come in and waste our advertising money.

Do you ever had a similar situation? What did you do? Any suggestions? Other target groups? Alternative channels?

Thanks for your input.

Cheers,

Cesare

[Roman-Delcarmen]

Always is pleasure to help : )

[Cesare.Marchetti]

thanks for your input.

[Roman-Delcarmen]

Hi Cesare Marchetti

Continuing our conversation these are some of my advice

Make a list of these persons/business in your area

• Wedding Organizers
• Hotels with Event Rooms
• Purchasing Managers
• Photographers

Pick up the phone and call them, take their email address send to them your company's info, brochures, presentation or whatever you want

Of course, create a list, (here is when your email campaign and your remarketing makes sense)

Prepare a unique value proposition. I mean if you are in this community you are not a newbie on SEO, PPC or SMM (Probably you are not a Guru) but you can help them.

Create a list of blogs and website related to your business in your local area and reach them to make collaborations.

You can hire someone to create 20 articles related to your business and their business (I'm not a copywriter so prefer to hire someone else 10$ per article) the idea behind of that is not the link building (Great if you can) is help them and create a trust relation.

If you offer an outstanding service the price is not a relevant factor, right. Before that, you need to build that trust, the best way to do that giving them something useful for them.

The costs
$20 - A basic CRM $20
$200 - 20 Articles
? - Email Templates
? - Brochures (Printed)

Hope will help you, my friend

[Cesare.Marchetti]

Hi Roman,

Thanks really a lot for your input.It helps me to see the things with other eyes and to get new inspirations.

I also like the ideas of the allies. How would you try to get them?

Cheers,

Cesare

[Roman-Delcarmen]

Hi Cesare, I will give you my personal opinion about your case I hope will be useful for you

At this point, you have to figure out many problems. But you are in a good position because you are reaching your audience. You have been facing the typical problem that everyone has to face on a local campaign.

On your case, you have been applying a B2C strategy for a B2B business.(This is just my opinion you know the business better than me). In a B2C strategy, Facebook or any other Social is crucial to reach as many people as you can in your funnel. So you need cheap prices, a lot of traffic and lot of funnels.

But in your case, you are offering an outstanding print service in your local area, if there are 1000 photographers probably your target will be 100 or 200 of them. Or if you sell your service to a museum, Linkedin, Facebook will not close the deal. You need to build relations with those clients and then use Remarketing, AdWords and So on.

An Outreach campaign will help you to create a database of your future clients, establish relationships with them, make collaboration with them and finally close deals.

Probably a museum manager will produce you more money in a single sale that all your campaigns of PPC, Social, Email, and SEO together.

Another idea that came to my head is, you need to found allies. In my case in regular print I will not spend too much money on a regular photo, that will be placed in my living room because is not important. But at my wedding, the equation will change so a good idea is found those wedding photographers, catering services provider, hotels or any kind of people who can recommend your business and build relations with them.