Growing Your B2B Audience

Advertising is the biggest way to drive revenue within your Best Of, so you constantly need to be growing your audience of businesses you can target for advertising.  Creating content to draw in prospective businesses and putting that content behind a form is the KEY to growing that list.

With all of this amazing content you create, you’ll need a Business Resource Page, or a ballot landing page that is a one-stop-shop that contains your content, resources, rules, and more for your Best Of. It will serve as the main hub for all opportunities within your ballot.

Your Business Resource Page

Along with your mission statement​, FAQs​, rules​, past winners​, a category list​, and category definitions, you’ll want to include the below audience drivers:

Email Sign-Up Widget

This is where businesses can sign up for general information and updates about your Best Of, and also where you’ll be collecting information of interested businesses.

Media Kit

This is essentially your pitch deck for your Best Of that includes:

• Your mission statement
• Audience stats
• Dates
• Sales packages
• Ad placement examples
• Special section and online directory examples

This is something your sales staff can use when approaching businesses about opportunities within your ballot. It’s also content you can place behind a form on your business resource page to collect leads.

Promotional Graphics

These are free graphics created by your team for businesses participating within your ballot to promote themselves to their own audience, while utilizing your Best Of branding. This allows you to spread the reach of your Best Of to those potentially outside of your current audience.

Be sure to include your ballot logo, call to action text (Nominate Us or Vote for Us), and a QR code within your graphics and curate different size options for different social media types. And remember, put these behind a form to capture leads!

Marketing Tips

Include an explanation of how to use your promotional graphics, examples of social media and email scrips, and – we’ll say it again – place all of this behind a form to capture your leads.

Sales Opportunities

Include a teaser of each of your sales packages to provide enough information for businesses to gain an understanding of what each offer. But (say it with us!) place pricing and other information behind a form so a sales rep can be looped in to facilitate the sale. Also include your Advertiser Best Of opt-in (see email signup widget above) so businesses can opt-in to receive ballot updates as well.

All of these features allow you to increase the value and price of your sales packages and provide trackable and deliverable metrics to your advertisers.

B2B Email Marketing Campaign

Now that you’ve created multiple avenues of collecting leads for your Best Of, you can now curate a marketing campaign to target those leads and drive sales. You can craft email campaigns specific to each phase within your ballot to drive sales throughout the entire promotion.

The Announcement Phase

This email is to be sent about 3 months prior to the start of your nomination phase. Use a subject line like ‘Best Of is coming soon!’ and include important dates and a link to your business resource page.

The Pre-Nomination Phase

These emails will be sent to businesses before the launch of your nomination phase. Use strong language like ‘claim’ or ‘defend’ your title and a subject line like ‘Are you ready to win?’. Include a link to your business resource page and follow the below schedule:

• 1 month before launch
• 7 days before launch
• 2 days before launch

The Pre-Voting Phase

Send emails to businesses who have made it into your voting phase and promote your voting phase packages. Include phrases like ‘Claim your title!’ and again, include a link to your business rescue page. Follow the below cadence:

• As soon as you’ve confirmed all nominees moving to the voting phase
• 1 week before voting starts
• 2 days before voting starts

The Pre-Winners’ Phase

Send emails to businesses who have been chosen as winners/finalists promoting your winners’ sales packages and include phrases like ‘Thank your supporters!’. The cadence of these emails should be determined by how much time there will be between the end of the voting round and when you plan to announce winners. However, send one email as soon as you’ve confirmed your winners/finalists, and send at least 2 further emails prior to your winners announcement.

Growing Your B2C Audience

Your Best Of is the top way to reach people outside of your current audience, so we are constantly creating more ways for you to engage with and grow that audience. Use these features to drive more audience within your Best Of:

• Requiring minimum participation (for a sweepstakes prize!)
• Voting reminder emails
• Flexible and editable email templates
• Different ballot gallery layouts (wide scroll, category drawers, category pages, and narrow scroll)

Your B2C Campaign

This is the marketing campaign you will run to get the word out about your Best Of. There are 4 different tools of communication you should be using: Digital, Core Media, Social Media, and Email.

Digital

Always utilize your digital assets to promote your Best Of. Many within your audience now only interact with you digitally, so use that to your advantage! Think of these ad slots when creating your digital campaign:

• Run of site ads
• Promotional videos
• Homepage takeover
• Unsold digital inventory like pop ups, rich media, or pencil pushdowns

Core Media

Remember to include your biggest asset within your promotional campaign- your core media! This is your bread and butter and one of the best ways for you to promote.

• Print ads, articles, or on-air talent promoting each phase of the ballot
• Create a QR code for viewers/readers to easily access the ballot

Social Media

If you have a social media presence (and if you don’t, start now!), promote your Best Of there. Make sure to create a post for at least each phase – we’d suggest following the email schedule below!

Email

Email is still the #1 way to reach your audience. Create a campaign for each phase of your ballot and also include your Best Of within any daily/weekly/etc newsletters you typically send out. Here are the sending schedules we’d suggest for each phase:

The Nomination Phase

• The day the nomination phase launches
• 1 week before nominations close
• The last day of the nomination phase

The Voting Phase

• The day the voting phase launches
• ½ way into the voting phase
• 1 week before voting closes

The Winners’ Phase

• Send a winner’s announcement email when ready (this could be when your special section launches, the day after your event, etc.)