3 Creative Marketing Promotions for B2B Companies

Creative Marketing Promotions To Try Today

With the abundance of new online marketing tactics, it is easy to forget the tried and true tactics. I am writing about marketing promotions. Think: free giveaways, contests, and the like. So why would someone geeked out on content marketing and influencer marketing care about marketing promotions? The truth is, so many B2B companies are in a trap to broadly appeal to a mass market with its pricing structure. As a result, some companies turn to creative marketing tactics to make the process fun and turn tire kickers into buyers. 

We recently researched hundreds of B2B companies for examples of the best marketing promotions and found that three stood out in the crowded software space:  New Relic, Tableau Software, and Atlassian.

New Relic, Free Trials, and Free T’s

All marketers know that using free trials is a great call to action to push website visitors through the funnel. New Relic proudly displays its free trial offer in a banner on its homepage. It is important to know your target market and what trials and giveaways will be compelling for them. In the case of New Relic, a company that develops Web application performance management software, which sells to the IT community, T shirts are a big hit. And there is a bonus too — instant free marketing from your evangelists!

Key Takeaway: New Relic is crystal clear with its promotional offering. It is clearly present and dominant on the homepage. It doesn’t crowd its website with numerous CTAs — only the important one.

Atlassian and Cause Marketing

Transparency in a company’s pricing model commonly is a win with its target audience. In fact, our Research and Analytics group just confirmed this in regards to one of our portfolio companies. Atlassian does a fantastic job of displaying its pricing in a simple grid. It also clearly states that it offers the full $10 it receives for its entry-level license to a charity called Room to Read.

Key Takeaway:  By clearly showing the value of each pricing tier and using tactics like cause marketing, businesses can make their promotional offers much more attractive to their target audiences.

Tableau Software and Gamification

Tableau Software hosts three contests annually that offers both individual and enterprise customers the chance to win a trip to San Diego for its user contest and a cash prize of $2,000 by downloading the software and creating a public visualization. The contest does a great job of driving up the number of free trial downloads, generate leads, increase product awareness, in addition to showcasing the power of the software tool.

Key Takeaway: Contests can be a great tactic to motivate potential buyers. Take your audience into consideration, offer a reward they will value, and experiment with interesting contest formats such as games or competitions to keep your entrants engaged.

Last week we released a brand spanking new report highlighting 10 examples of B2B companies executing some killer marketing ideas. The report highlights different promotions, online tools, assessments, content marketing, and of course, social media programs from companies including Marketo, Zendesk, Tableau Software, Salesforce.com, Atlassian, RightScale, VMWare, Hubspot, Eloqua, and New Relic.