Business Development Practices to Keep in Mind

For anyone who is considering starting their own business, the issue of business development is crucial. Any good entrepreneur aims for long-term and productive business so it’s important to understand the core of business development before hopping on to “Best Practices Guide”.

In our article we’ll see both the components of business development and best practices to deploy in order to nourish your business.

What is business development?

According to Greg Bernart (Sony Corp), “business development is like the fusion of the suits and the ponytails”, meaning it combines both creativity to stand out but at the same time relies heavily on one’s business skills.

Some people don’t see the whole picture and say that business development is sales only while others claim that it’s purely marketing or analysis. In reality, business development consists of all these components and produces long-term value for the business owner. By long-term value, we mean continuous opportunities for business growth.

So when you get down to business development, think about your client, market, relationships, sales and analysis. Together, all these components create a powerful strategy for your business to grow and bring profit.

When mentioning client and market, we imply the following questions: does your client need your product and why? What can you do to make it useful? Do you consider regional peculiarities?

Speaking about sales, think what are the most efficient ways to sell your product? As you see, business development is lots of work and it’s a much more complex subject than many people think. Now after the meaning and core of business development is clear let’s have a look at the best practices that you can try.

Marketing Automation

The primary goal of marketing automation is to automate the repetitive processes such as emailing so that employees can focus on tasks that are more complex.

Marketing automation allows companies to increase the performance and overall working efficiency as it’s more time-saving and eliminates the possibility of human errors.

If we have a look at report by Adestra, we’ll see that 74% of marketers claim that marketing automation significantly saves their time and 68% of them say that it helps to increase customer engagement.

Automation is used for:

· Sending welcome emails

· Follow-ups

· Bringing customers back

· Wishing with holidays

· Managing social media and etc.

There are many marketing automation tools that you can try and see what works best for you or you can try develop your own custom solution to meet your specific goals. Considering the fast-paced business environment, this practice can help you outrun your competition and consistently provide timely feedback to your clients, thus strengthening your relationship with them.

LinkedIn as a reach tool

LinkedIn has already positioned itself as a successful business platform so no wonder businesses are shifting their marketing towards this social network.

Social outreach means using social network for promoting your brand, product or business. With over 450 million people in LinkedIn user base, imagine how many potential clients can one reach there.

So what makes LinkedIn so popular among B2B marketers? The reason is - they can share business-related content and at the same time increase awareness and sales.

According to numbers provided by Content Marketing Institute, 63% of marketers say they saw improvement in their sales when using LinkedIn and the overall number of marketers using LinkedIn is 94%.

The use of LinkedIn shows company’s expertise in its spheres and persuades users to interact with the company, at the same time increasing clients’ trust towards it.

You can use LinkedIn when launching new product, remind of existing product and improve your conversions. The infographic by Octopost shows that LinkedIn is the most efficient social platform for B2B with 80% of leads generated by it in comparison to Facebook, Twitter or other platforms.

Retargeting

Marketers love retargeting and there is a reason for it. It is a cookie-based technology that “follows” your users on the Web and serves the ad at the right time, thus capturing the users’ attention and brings them back.

It sounds simple yet it’s very effective. Retargeting can immensely increase the conversion rate (600% and higher!) at the same time cutting down the cost-per-conversion rate.

And of course, since retargeting aims for the users who previously visited your website, it means that there is bigger chance they would be interested in your product than new users. Simple as that.

Conclusion

These practices are the most common today among B2B marketers but there are more of them. The first thing to do is to define your business goals, target audience and development strategy and only then choose tools that will help you achieve set goals. As well don’t forget about business consultant who can analyze your business and give you useful advice on its development.

But since we are all tech-savvy people, we must also mention other modern ways of connecting with the client. These are all sorts of mobile applications (remember the boom of smartphone usage?), integration of client software with anything they want and much more. Because the world today is driven by technology, marketers keep an eye on latest innovations and actively deploy them in their work. Personalization is the modern key to winning the hearts of your clients and such technologies as Internet of Things, AI and Big Data processing help a lot in gaining competitive advantage.

Middle East, being one of the fast developing region economically, has already started using the cutting-edge trends, steadily turning Dubai into the first smart city in the world. The UAE region is already making the most use out of modern digitalization and the future of the region’s industries seems very promising. But it’s worth saying that this is also possible due to the contribution of great number of foreign developers who have come to the Emirates seeking the expansion of the client base and new opportunities for enlarging their business.

Amyway if you think it’s time for you to level-up the game and boost your business development, you may want to pay attention to custom software development - to make your business run more effective, cut operating costs, and get marketing advantages through adding more comunication channels with your customers or marketing automation.