Affordable B2B Promotional Concepts for software company?

March 15, 2007 1:33 PM

Where can I find B2B concepts/ideas/thought/inspiration for low/no budget promotional, marketing activities for a software company?

We are trying to do some promotion for a software company and have basically no budget. There seem to be a lot of places on the web for B2C promotion, but can't seem to find much for B2B. We certainly can't afford to place ads in trade magazines or anything like that. Most B2B searches pull up links to service companies that will do that word for you...which is not what we are looking for.

posted by UMDirector to work & money (5 comments total)

Get a copy of Guerilla Marketing. It's full of ideas for free or low cost marketing.

However, why doesn't the company value marketing enough to pay for it?
posted by acoutu at 3:44 PM on March 15, 2007

B2B marketing is tricky and them some. I work in marketing for a fortune 10 company though not directly with our B2B campaigns. I am amazed and the amount of money we pump in for the results we get from various marketing campaigns.

One thing I can tell you though is a few days cold calling and the word of mouth once you get going is worth millions in marketing dollars.
posted by Octoparrot at 4:43 PM on March 15, 2007 [1 favorite]

I have read Guerilla Marketing and it seems hopelessly out of date...no mention of email or web or anything.

Part of the problem with cold calls is our product is not for Fortune 500 businesses or anything. We are dealing with hundreds and even thousands of owner/operator small businesses.
posted by UMDirector at 8:32 AM on March 16, 2007

UMDirector, try Guerilla Marketing Online or one of the more recent books in the series. Most of them cover online marketing.
posted by acoutu at 5:50 PM on March 16, 2007

Let other people worry about marketing your product right now - use an Affiliate program like oneNetworkDirect.

I'm not a developer, but I once looked into being an affliate for them, they looked ok. But you should look around at other programs too.
posted by bigmusic at 11:54 PM on March 16, 2007