Marketing Low-ticket B2B Products - Winning Strategies and Tactics
Naseef KPO
Founder & CEO, Skalegrow - B2B Marketing Agency | IIM Bangalore | Speaker | Mentor | Helping 20+ B2B Marketing Leaders & CEOs Do Marketing Right | Building India's Largest B2B Marketing Community | 📅 Book a meeting now
Low-ticket products are one of the most difficult to market in the B2B world. In B2C, a low-ticket item usually has mass appeal and has a significantly large market size. This makes it possible to invest in paid marketing efforts like ads and influencer marketing. On the other hand, when it comes to B2B, low-ticket products and solutions pose the following challenges:
Owing to these challenges, low-priced B2B products pose a serious challenge to even the most experienced marketers. In this edition of the Elevate Your Marketing newsletter, we look at a few practical ways of dealing with this problem by exploring a few low-cost marketing tactics.
What is a low-ticket B2B product?
It's hard to define boundaries for what is 'low-ticket'. It depends heavily on your industry, target market, region of operation, etc. What is low-ticket in one region might be high-value in another. For example, consider a machine component worth $500 in the US. It might be considered low-ticket by many. However, in a country like India, this is a decent buy.
Similarly, a learning management system worth £10 per month might be low-ticket in the UK but a good deal for the seller in a country like Thailand. In essence, it depends entirely on your business environment. But you get the point here. In general, we are referring to a price range that is considered significantly lower than an average purchase value in the respective market.
The foundation of marketing a low-ticket B2B product
To justify the ROI of your marketing expenses for a low-priced product or solution, you need volume. At the same time, you cannot lavishly spend on paid marketing campaigns (at least until you reach a certain scale). In addition, we cannot rely on channels that can scale only by investing more money. This means that you need to adopt lean marketing techniques that have high scalability.
One key thing you need to keep in mind is that when you resort to lean marketing methods, quality as well as quantity matter. While you create great content, you also need to show up in as many places as possible. Hence, you need to take an omnichannel approach to marketing.
With that in mind, let us explore some key strategies and tactics that will help you market your low-ticket B2B product while still justifying your investments in marketing.
Lean marketing tactics for low-ticket B2B products
Here, we will look at the best possible lean marketing tactics suitable for B2B businesses that sell low-priced items.
1. SEO
SEO stands out as a marketing tactic in terms of its scalability. It takes time to work. But once it starts picking up, it can deliver positive results unlike any other channel.
Though SEO is a lean marketing technique, as many say, it is not free. There is a cost that comes with it. Firstly, you need to have an SEO specialist and a content writer to be able to optimize your website for SEO. An alternative is to hire an SEO content writer who can create SEO-optimized blog posts and landing pages for you. The cost for an SEO content writer will vary depending on your region. But the yearly salary can start somewhere around $10K. You could also consider hiring freelancers since in some cases they can be cheaper than having an internal resource managing SEO.
Next, you need an SEO tool that can be used for keyword research, content gap analysis, backlink gap analysis, etc. You will find SEO tools in the market starting from $10 per month. For example, Ubersuggest has lifetime access plans starting at $120.
2. Content marketing
Content marketing is broad. But here, I am referring to website content other than indexed items. They include downloadable marketing assets such as ebooks, whitepapers, and case studies.
The question is, as a lean team, how do you create them?
There are two approaches:
Now, why is it so important to have gated assets on your website?
Firstly, it helps generate leads. You can also use techniques like exit intent popups (or simple popups) to accelerate your lead generation process. But there is a bigger advantage that many don't see, which is the ability to nurture the leads you generate using the marketing assets. You can add them to your email list and consistently stay top of mind by sending campaigns like newsletters. This way, you increase your probability of converting leads to paying customers.
3. LinkedIn organic marketing
Organic marketing on LinkedIn can be done with literally no money, except for the people's cost. You don't need any tools. For design, you can use the free version of Canva or Microsoft Designer. You can use ChatGPT for research and as an aid in your writing process. All that is needed is your time and effort.
Since you already have a content writer for SEO-led content, the same person can be used for writing LinkedIn posts. For design, you can adopt a simplistic approach by designing using Canva or outsourcing it. If the volume of design work to be done is high consistently, consider hiring a full-time graphic designer.
Here is an article that talks in-depth about how to create content for LinkedIn:
4. Video marketing
Video marketing requires a little more patience, and more importantly consistent efforts. Establishing a presence on YouTube can take several months. However, one key advantage that many fail to see when it comes to YouTube marketing is that you can post the same videos on other platforms like LinkedIn and X. Sounds simple but not many do this redistribution effectively.
And as many think, video marketing need not put a dent in your budget. If you want to produce high-quality videos, a professional video setup can be used. But that is not needed when you get started, especially when you have limited resources. You can shoot videos with your mobile phone camera, a simple microphone, and a basic lighting setup. That's why video marketing is perfect for promoting a low-priced B2B product. Everything depends on how affordably you execute it.
To learn how to do video marketing on a budget, check out the below article.
5. Community marketing
As they say, attention is the new oil. We are living in a world where brands spend tens of thousands of dollars just to be consistently in front of their target audience. This is when you realize how powerful community marketing is. It is one of the ways of staying top-of-mind of your ideal customers. And you can do this without spending a penny.
By using free community platforms like Nas IO, you can build a thriving community of your ideal customers completely free of cost. You will be charged only if you make any sales through the platform.
You need not use a community platform either. A community can run on a simple whatsapp group or Slack. The choice is yours. The objective should be to make the community experience memorable for the members so that they value your efforts in bringing them together.
For example, Skalegrow's community for B2B marketers called The B2B Marketing Tribe has 300+ members with many key initiatives including a newsletter, events, co-creation activities for the members, exclusive content, and much more. All that is driven by consistent efforts by the Skalegrow team with very little dollar investment. Hence, building a community is a great way to create a loyal audience to whom you can sell your low-ticket solution without spending a lot.
6. Email marketing
Email marketing is a great way to reach your customers and prospects directly. It doesn't cost you much to set up a simple email marketing infrastructure. Let's break it down:
If you want to scale your cold emailing efforts, additional investment might be required to buy multiple domains. Otherwise, having a solid email marketing engine in place is not very expensive. This makes email marketing well-suited for low-ticket B2B products.
7. Event marketing
Going to events is a great way to get started with your networking activities. Events are extremely effective if you are selling a product that has mass appeal. For example, if you are selling employee records software for small businesses, going to a founders' meetup can help. You can choose a mix of free and paid events depending on the options available in your region. If you have the budget, consider going to international events since the quality of the audience there tends to be higher.
8. Webinar marketing
Do you use Teams or Zoom for your daily business communication and calls? You can use the same tools for hosting a webinar. Leverage LinkedIn Live and YouTube Live to conduct webinars on topics relevant to your target audience. The more you do it, the better. Please read the below article to learn everything you need to know about webinar marketing:
A few hacks for promoting low-ticket B2B products
Lean marketing is not just about the channels you use. It's more of a mindset where you are always on the quest to do more with less. You need to think about how to maximize the effectiveness of your marketing efforts so that you can meet your sales and revenue goals with a low-ticket product. In this section, let us briefly discuss a few techniques and hacks that will help you keep the marketing spend low while still ensuring you get the desired results.
1. Content repurposing
Content repurposing allows you to do more with less. You only need to create the foundational content a few times. You can then repurpose that content to create multiple pieces from it.
Check out the below video to learn the right way of doing content repurposing.
2. Building a lean marketing team
In line with the various channels we discussed, your marketing team can be structured in a way that you only have the most necessary roles. They include:
Understanding why this is the right combination requires further reading on the topic. Also, you might not need all the above roles depending on your business context. Check out the below article to learn in detail how to build a lean B2B marketing team.
3. Personal branding of key leaders
This is an extremely useful tactic, especially for early-stage businesses selling low-ticket products. LinkedIn is a great platform to get started since the barrier to entry is much lower compared to something like YouTube. Written content is much easier to create compared to videos. You can start with writing and then slowly move to visual content once you get into the zone of content creation.
4. Agency and freelance ecosystem
In the initial days of setting up a marketing team, you will definitely need external help. This is where agencies and freelancers can help. Freelancers tend to be cheaper than agencies. However, agencies are a better choice if you are looking for help across multiple areas in marketing. You can also consider hiring consultants or fractional CMOs. But in that case, you will still need internal resources or freelancers to execute things on the ground.
Instead of talking to only 1 freelancer or agency, build relationships with many so that you have multiple options to pick from when a need arises. For instance, today you might need an agency or freelancer for content writing. If tomorrow, you have design requirements, you should be able to swiftly find one that fits your needs and budget. So, it's a good idea to be 'in touch' with more than one freelancer or agency early in your marketing journey.
Cutting costs wherever possible
The lean marketing techniques we discussed will help you optimize your spending. In addition, read the below article to explore a few more tactics that will help you reduce marketing costs.
Final words
Selling a low-ticket B2B product is not easy. You need to focus on generating demand organically for the product initially. There isn't a magic formula that will get you there. What I would recommend you do is go through all the techniques we discussed in the article and list only those you can work on today. Let that be your priority list.
Start from there. Observe the results and scale as you go. Patience and consistency are key here. Give it a good six months before you arrive at any conclusion. Building a solid marketing engine that predictably generates leads requires anywhere between 6 months to 1 year.
Looking to take your B2B marketing efforts to the next level? Try Skalegrow
Are you looking for a 'no-nonsense' B2B marketing agency? Give Skalegrow a try. No false promises. No 'we will change the world' narratives. We focus on simple marketing tactics that work. Moreover, we spend the time to understand your industry, however niche it is.
Visit our website to learn more about what we bring to the table. You could also write to us at info@skalegrow.com.
More learning resources
Skalegrow has a blog that has more than 60 articles on various topics in B2B marketing. We discuss content, ABM, demand gen, martech, LinkedIn marketing, and much more there. Check it out here.
Also don't forget to subscribe to Skalegrow's newsletter where we share 1 B2B growth hack every week. In addition, we publish useful content on our YouTube channel. Check it out here.
SEO truly pays off in the long run. Once it kicks in, the organic traffic can be a game-changer, especially for low-ticket B2B products.
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3moInformative read! Community marketing is a powerful yet underrated tool for B2B. An engaged community builds brand loyalty and creates a trusted audience to sell to, with minimal investment!
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