B2B Customer Acquisition Examples: 10 Campaigns to Learn From

Unicorns like Uber, Airbnb, and Etsy have one key lesson that marketers in the B2B space can (and should) pick up. These tech brands have managed to adeptly pivot and scale their customer acquisition efforts as their business evolved.

For these three companies, winning their first 1,000 customers was vastly different from growing their customer base to 1,000,000 paying users. As their customer count expanded, their growth goals and challenges shifted, which required a corresponding change in their customer acquisition strategies.

In today’s post, we’ll take a deep dive into 10 real-world examples of B2B customer acquisition campaigns that produced proven results in terms of deals won and revenues generated.

The examples cover a wide range of B2B scenarios — from SMBs to enterprises, single-channel to multi-channel strategies, and digital to traditional marketing. Anyway, let’s get started.

The Ideal B2B Customer Acquisition Process

Before we dissect these ten customer acquisition examples, let’s first answer the question: what does an effective B2B customer acquisition strategy look like? Four key ingredients need to be present to create a solid customer acquisition program:

1. Relevant: Buyers make a purchase based on how a brand fits their needs at the moment.
2. Diversified: Customers come from different sources and respond to different tactics.
3. Persistent: Customer acquisition is a continuous process, not just a single campaign.
4. Scalable: The process for generating new business must be able to keep up with growth.
5. Flexible: Customer acquisition also needs to evolve with how potential customers buy.

We’ll now see how each of these characteristics translates into actual customer acquisition processes.

B2B Customer Acquisition Examples

When writing this post, I came across numerous case studies and whitepapers on real-world B2B customer acquisition programs.

But I chose the ones that really stood out in terms of sales results and new business acquired.

1. Intronis (multi-channel direct mail marketing)

Challenge

Cloud-based data security provider Intronis has more than 50,000 customers. It primarily sells to a network of MSPs that offer Intronis-branded backup, security, and data protection solutions.

The company wants to focus on acquiring small- to medium-sized MSPs partners and generate at least a majority of new accounts from this segment.

The main target prospects for this effort are owners and IT directors, which Intronis says are typically difficult to reach via traditional channels.

Solution/Strategy

Intronis decided to use a unique strategy which they had never tried out before: a multi-channel campaign centered around direct mail. The marketing team’s research indicated that the usual tactics probably wouldn’t be very effective with the target prospects. So they chose a whole new path:

• Send out two direct mail pieces to target prospects in order to land a 30-minute meeting
• Follow up via email after each piece
• Include a classic Atari video game replicator and other gaming consoles to incentivize response

Results

• 35% conversion rate
• 700% ROI
• 11 new customers

2. Optum (integrated marketing strategy)

Challenge

Optum is a $37-billion healthcare tech company that provides healthcare analytics, healthcare management, revenue cycle management, and compliance solutions.

To promote a newly-launched product line, Optum carried out demand generation and thought leadership initiatives. But this required tying the different activities together into a coherent customer acquisition process.

Solution/Strategy

Achieving this goal meant the company needed to plan and execute an integrated marketing campaign. The strategy they came up with combined:

• Advertorials
• Display ads
• Email
• Direct mail
• Campaign website

Results

• 5,100% ROI
• $52 million in new business

3. PR Newswire (accelerated sales cycle)

Challenge

PR Newswire is one of the world’s leading news distribution, audience targeting, and content marketing service providers. Having already been in business for more than 60 years, the company is starting to notice the huge shift in how potential customers buy their solutions.

Customers now have greater control of the buying process, so PR Newswire understands that they need to move past product-centric messaging and focus on what buyers care about.

But to deliver the right message at the right time to the right person in a crowd of 25,000 prospects and customers, the company’s approach at acquiring new business also needs to scale.

Solution/Strategy

PR Newswire rolled out a customer acquisition program that enabled the company to engage prospects with relevant content:

• Automating touches as much as possible
• Targeting and segmenting prospects using granular data
• Providing what prospects expect at each stage of the sales cycle
• Engaging prospects through multiple channels

Results

• 8% growth in SQLs handed to sales
• 7% increase in number of won deals
• 30% shorter sales cycle

4. RewardMe (startup winning its first high-value account)

Challenge

RewardMe is a customer loyalty platform for restaurants and retailers. During its early days, the company pursued its first big deal with one of the largest franchises in the United States.

Jun Loayza, RewardMe’s co-founder, was introduced to a key person in the franchise by a mutual acquaintance. The main challenge was to leverage the referral and turn it into a very favorable business outcome.

Solution/Strategy

According to Jun Loayza, his approach at winning the high-value deal consisted of:

• Scheduling a discovery call to ask crucial preliminary questions
• Personalizing the solution to match the client
• Finding out how RewardMe stacks up against the competition
• Preparing a 30-minute presentation (20 minutes for the pitch and 10 minutes for Q&A)
• Never sounding too eager or too desperate to close the deal
• Setting a definite deadline for the prospect to make a decision

Results

Just two days after their face-to-face meeting, RewardMe locked in a 12-month contract with the large franchise. RewardMe continues to apply the strategy to close other large deals, which has so far produced consistent results.

Read the full version of this article at the Callbox — The Savvy Marketer.