Ask HN: How to promote a B2B StartUp?

Re:Ask HN: How to promote a B2B StartUp? by rexreed on Thursday September 30, 2010 @04:11PM (#1744638)

There's quite a few ways, here are a few that we're using for our new app (www.yobiz.com):

* Affiliate Networks - Affiliates who target your markets can really drive qualified traffic.

* Blog posts - good, high quality blog posts on topics relevant to your business can drive good traffic.

* Email Newsletter - Market either to established email newsletters or generate a list from your existing customers

* Facebook Ads

* B2B Forums - Participate in the discussions but be cautious about self-promotion

* Get featured in an article - Spend time cultivating press relationships in order to get featured in press.

* LinkedIn Posts

* Local meetups - Attend local meetups in relevant industries and network, network, network

* Mobile Apps - Create a mobile app that drives subscriptions.

* Press releases - really good for SEO and not much else.

* SEO - good SEO will really help make your app visible.

* Social bookmarking: Digg, Reddit, delicious, etc. Activity aiming to get website posted onto mass-sharing networks.

* Attend conferences & trade shows

* Tweet - be part of the conversation and generate a following with occasional self-referential tweets.

* Video - Video on relevant topics with good quality can really drive traffic.

Hope that helps!

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Re:Ask HN: How to promote a B2B StartUp? by sourc3 on Thursday September 30, 2010 @04:31PM (#1744715)

Thanks for the extensive list.

Email newsletter is not really working for me since I only have a handful of customers at the moment. I do not want to go ahead and buy a list and spam people either since I find that rather unethical (I hate spam as much as the guy next door).

One thing I have not yet tried is the Forums. In terms of B2B Forums, is there a starting point that would let me do a more directed path or is Google my best friend in your opinion?

As per the SEO I am seriously considering doing that. Although most small businesses would not directly search for the service (since most of them are not aware of the need) I still think it would help greatly to rank on the first page. So I will definitely consider the Press Release.

Again, thanks for the input, I appreciate it.

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Re:Ask HN: How to promote a B2B StartUp? by rexreed on Thursday September 30, 2010 @04:34PM (#1744725)

You're right to avoid email spam -- not only is it frowned upon, but it could fall afoul of the FTC CAN-SPAM rules. I was referring more to getting included in established email newsletters (not dedicated email blasts). For example, your industry might have a weekly newsletter targeting the things you are interested in. See if you can get included in that (for free, optimally), or take out a low-cost text or other ad in the newsletter. They usually go out to already qualified, opt-in audiences and have a better response rate than other forms of advertising.

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Re:Ask HN: How to promote a B2B StartUp? by sourc3 on Thursday September 30, 2010 @04:40PM (#1744744)

Yep, totally agreed. I will look into different email newsletters. In the mean time like I replied on another comment, the service is not for a specific vertical. It's more of a shared IT kind of service that targets very small businesses (low-cost service).

Do you have any pointers for me to take a look into specific newsletters?

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Re:Ask HN: How to promote a B2B StartUp? by rexreed on Thursday September 30, 2010 @04:46PM (#1744776)

For both forums and email newsletters, Google (or Bing if you must) are your friends -- just do search "[industry] newsletter" and "[industry] forum". Yes, it takes some time to do the research, but you'll end up with a good pile of resources that will be helpful.

Subscribe to the newsletters you find and read the forums -- it's another great way of finding out where you should market, hang out, and who to talk to.

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