Marketing to the B2B Masses: Winning the Race to the Customer

When last we weighed in on the subject of marketing, one of the most pressing questions evolved around the trend toward outsourcing and the argument in favor of building a department in house. What we didn’t quite take into account was the movement toward dealers doing both, farming out the more menial tasks while freeing up the internal marketing staff to handle more high-value projects.

This, of course, also smacks of artificial intelligence, though AI is but one tool dealers can leverage when devising a marketing strategy that complements what sales is trying to accomplish. But while AI-addled data engines have helped dealers focus on leads that most closely align with their offerings, it’s becoming more of a race to the buyer. ZoomInfo has leveled the playing field. And some of the more time-honored methods of connecting with prospects have grown stagnant as the customer acquisition stakes have been raised.

For this month’s State of the Industry report on marketing, we have a half-dozen examples of dealership marketing platforms, the tools they employ and some of their more successful campaigns to identify the prime prospects and drive lead generation. We’ve captured insights from dealers large and small to help readers better identify with similarly sized contemporaries.

Effective Avenues

You don’t need to sell Dan Strull on the value of marketing. The CEO and founder of GoodSuite in Woodland Hills, California, was a marketing major at USC, and he’s constantly honing his dealership’s approach to help spur increased leads. Strull’s tried his hand at different methods with varying degrees of success, and he knows when it’s time to move on from an ineffective initiative.

GoodSuite has four internal marketing professionals and three outsourced telemarketers to help generate leads. Strull farms out work to third-party firms that assist with ecommerce, SEO, Google Ads and the like. His major focus is ensuring sales reps don’t have to make cold calls, and the 9–10 weekly leads the telemarketers secure are vetted to maximize sales reps’ time and minimize the degree of rep turnover.

“I’d go to peer group meetings and hear all the talk about hiring, training, recruiting and the little revolving door,” Strull noted. “I knew there had to be a better way, so we built up the marketing department. Salespeople now seem to appreciate the quality of life they get from not having to do the grind a lot of reps endure.”

GoodSuite invested in an AI drip campaign, an email-driven tool that delivered 50,000 emails per week. Despite the saturation, the dealer went months without securing a lead, all the while making sure its website domain didn’t get blacklisted. What has proven to be much more effective is intent data—identifying prospects who are looking for products and services that your company offers—courtesy of ZoomInfo (via Google). This allows Strull to sic his telemarketers on these candidates and/or target them with nurture campaign ads.

I’d go to peer group meetings and hear all the talk about hiring, training, recruiting and the little revolving door. I knew there had to be a better way, so we built up the marketing department.

– Dan Strull, GoodSuite

“It’s hard to track, but it’s pretty sophisticated and we’re getting tons of leads,” Strull noted.

Strull also continues to elevate the marketing value of his website. Blog content is outsourced and has drawn significant traffic, though the site’s conversion rate is somewhat low. In the past, GoodSuite directed clients to the website in order to pay invoices or log service calls. Now, back-office business is being diverted to the dealer’s ecommerce site with the aim of giving the website a greater revenue-generating purpose.

On the campaign front, GoodSuite uses ZoomInfo data to create the ideal customer profile—the characteristics of the dealer’s best clients—with similar prospects. Using that list, GoodSuite instigates a multi-touch campaign that begins with a LinkedIn connection. Telemarketers reach out next. The third touch point is a one-off email which comes from the sales rep and references one of the dealer’s current clients within the same field. GoodSuite then builds ads and landing pages specific to that vertical. White papers the dealer has written for various markets (manufacturing, health care, professional services) can also be included, all with the intent of warming up the prospect and closing the deal.

Best Leads

When a dealer features marketing among its menu of managed services, as is the case for Impact Networking, potential clients are naturally curious to see how the provider’s own marketing has evolved. Stefanie Dunlap, executive director of marketing strategy for the Lake Forest, Illinois-based dealership’s internal marketing team, can attest to the many changes she’s witnessed in less than six years with the firm. Its marketing team has more than doubled from 9 to 23 members. And one of the more important changes was the hiring of digital channel owners who have particular experience in SEO, social media, email and paid media, among others. That paves the way to constructing effective, integrated multi-channel marketing campaigns.

The dealer’s preferred marketing automation platform (MAP) is HubSpot, which enables it to orchestrate a majority of its marketing initiatives such as email and social media, according to Dunlap. Its marketing team coordinates with digital, operations, content, admin and design teams. Sales and marketing alignment is also a must-have.

“It’s crucial that our MAP speaks to our sales customer relationship management platform—Microsoft Dynamics— and allows us to tie marketing initiatives to first appointments, opened opportunities and closed deals,” she noted.

Impact is renowned for its industry thought leadership and frequent webinars, covering subjects including security and managed IT. The webinars tend to yield the most leads. Even still, Dunlap points out that the highest-quality leads emanate from paid search, direct and organic website traffic. If she had her choice, Dunlap would opt to focus her budget on paid media and website optimizations.

You obviously have to consider team bandwidth as well. It’s better to do one or two campaigns well than spread your team too thin.

– Stefanie Dunlap, Impact Networking

When it comes to balancing tactics, Dunlap feels it’s important to establish marketing goals that dovetail with the overall company goals. “You obviously have to consider team bandwidth as well,” she said. “It’s better to do one or two campaigns well than spread your team too thin. I’d also recommend relying on agencies for work that your team can’t handle. For example, we brought on a search engine marketing (SEM) agency to get our paid search campaigns up and running to show the value to leadership so we could eventually hire in-house talent.”

Of all the marketing initiatives Impact embarked on in 2024, Dunlap felt the service-specific paid search campaigns were the most successful. They encompassed extensive keyword research in the IT services space and identifying those that indicate commercial and/or transactional intent. She points out that even if search volume is low, it’s important to target these key terms, as they indicated users are already in acquisition mode for a service Impact offers.

“These campaigns blew us out of the water and surpassed our expectations,” Dunlap said. “We were able to increase our monthly marketing qualified lead (MQL) average from paid search by 65% from these campaigns.”

Zone Blitz

It’s been nearly a year since Nauticon Office Solutions of Gaithersburg, Maryland, turned to the Quantum Business Solutions integration package of HubSpot, ConnectAndSell and ZoomInfo to set the stage for more effective prospecting and client management. Nauticon President Carter Hertzberg equates marketing with information (inbound and outbound) flow management and having the tools to ensure reps are making the most of their prospecting efforts.

ConnectAndSell is all about calling velocity and efficiency in being able to make 10 calls per minute instead of one every few minutes. ZoomInfo enables users to stratify the marketplace by revenue, number of employees, etc. The process becomes more effective when Nauticon’s reps marry the Quantum tools with a “disciplined, personal outbound approach” of calling on clients either by phone or in person.

It’s the quality and accuracy of “information in, information out” that these tools help curate. Hertzberg cautions that given the investment level required, dealers should be operating in geographic markets that will justify the expense.

With these tools, you need to have a large, addressable market to make it worth the investment.

– Carter Hertzberg, Nauticon Office Solutions

“You have to have some scale,” he said. “With these tools, you need to have a large, addressable market to make it worth the investment. Ours has 10 million people between Baltimore and D.C., and down to Richmond [Virginia]. These are huge population centers with all kinds of diverse businesses. Without it, [the investment] doesn’t make sense.”

Nauticon added a director of marketing position last year to devise a plan for 2025. This will take the dealer into unchartered waters in terms of in-person events.

“We do the standard account reviews, the quarterly check-ins with customers,” he noted. “This will be our first time creating buzz around a new product launch or hosting a customer appreciation event.”

One of the more effective marketing initiatives Nauticon embarked on isn’t a campaign per se, but rather a territory field blitz. This multi-touch endeavor starts with obtaining a business card or contact information on the first visit, followed by a digital, automated contact. That prospect is then added to a regular call sequence until a meeting has been booked. The process has yielded a 33% hit rate for meetings.

“That hit rate is really good, and that makes it a warmer call,” Hertzberg noted. “It started with that one little piece of information inflow—that contact or business card—that helped kick-start the process.”

Multiple Touches

There are a number of tools employed by Advanced Imaging Solutions (AIS) of Las Vegas that help streamline and enhance its marketing efforts. HubSpot is the go-to for bulk emails such as newsletters, webinar announcements and customer communications. As for outbound prospecting, AIS employs Outreach.io, which integrates well with the company’s AgentDealer CRM, notes Keven Ellison, vice president of marketing.

Artificial intelligence has grown its influence within AIS’ approach, powering everything from content brainstorming and creation to calendaring and production. “Recently, we’ve added a workflow and automation platform to our tech stack,” Ellison said. “This tool integrates with our existing systems to dramatically increase productivity, turning what used to take hours or days into high-quality work delivered in minutes.”

AIS’ approach closely follows the preferences of its prospects. The dealer’s robust multi-channel strategy incorporates articles, videos and social media with outbound prospecting by its sales team. Ellison notes that 2025’s plans include increasing in-person meetings and webinars to augment its brand and educate prospects.

Display advertising that targets a niche segment on the copier side has provided a boon for AIS’ business as well. Ecommerce has added a DIY twist for clients, with a store boasting more than 200,000 business technology products.

One of AIS’ best-received campaigns in recent years was an advertising program for Kyocera Unlimited Printing. According to Ellison, the dealer had a break-even goal when it began testing 18 months ago but has exceeded expectations, garnered profitability and bolstered brand awareness in AIS’ markets.

Recently, we’ve added a workflow and automation platform to our tech stack. This tool integrates with our existing systems to dramatically increase productivity, turning what used to take hours or days into high-quality work delivered in minutes.

– Keven Ellison, Advanced Imaging Solutions (AIS)

“This campaign has created cross-selling opportunities for our other products and services thanks to our inside sales team and outside reps,” Ellison noted. “It’s a perfect case study of how persistence and optimization can turn a modest start into a sustainable success.”

Ground Floor

When she was vice president for the corporate marketing group at Kyocera Document Solutions America, Danielle Wolowitz was blessed to have a manufacturer-level marketing budget to help grow the brand and build revenue. But when Wolowitz and her husband, Chris, purchased Shore Business Solutions in Wall, New Jersey, they assumed a dealership that hadn’t done any measurable marketing to that point.

These days, the executive vice president and owner has needed to devise campaigns and initiatives that are short on funding and long on creativity. As the previous administration’s lone community outreach was sponsoring golf outings and local fundraisers, Wolowitz saw a great opportunity to build the dealership’s brand. That’s maximized the limited investments and helped bolster visibility for the $5 million performer.

“We get a better return because I can build the brand with more in-person events and sponsorships than spending a ton of money on traditional advertising methods right now,” Wolowitz said. “The plan is to add more true marketing and advertising into the mix in the next year or two, but for now, my focus has been brand awareness and brand marketing. A lot of that has been grassroots—joining local chambers of commerce, sponsoring all the events and showing up at them.”

Even the most simple of embellishments have aided the brand cause, such as providing logoed apparel for service techs and adding wraps/logos to service vehicles. But there are hosted events on the agenda for 2025: a ribbon-cutting grand opening for its new facility that will double as a technology open house for clients and prospects in the spring, with a themed event slated for the fall. Sponsoring and speaking at chamber meetings can be hit and miss as Wolowitz and other local speakers will be at the mercy of whomever that organization invites. She does her best to tailor the message depending on the audience and has seen some success to date.

Wolowitz hired a full-time marketing coordinator in the second half of 2024. The plan is to have that position focus on building the company’s website materials (blogs, videos, etc.) and devising an in-bound strategy.

The plan is to add more true marketing and advertising into the mix in the next year or two, but for now, my focus has been brand awareness and brand marketing.

– Danielle Wolowitz, Shore Business Solutions

While the dealer has yet to do any drip/traditional campaigns, it’s done a handful centered on trade show/conference events the dealer was attending. One success story was a lead-up email campaign for the League of Municipalities show. Shore had a booth at the event, attended by many of the dealer’s government accounts.

“We did a pretty significant email campaign for a solid month prior to the show, which provided good open and conversion rates,” Wolowitz said. “A lot of people who came to the booth remembered getting the emails. That was exciting to hear, because it was really the first campaign we had done to a targeted prospect list versus existing clients where we could see real-time results.”

Name Dropper

At Levifi of Charleston, South Carolina, direct sales is considered by far the most important and impactful marketing activity, the culmination of efforts designed to support and supplement its sales force. One year ago, the company rebranded from DocuGraphics to conjure a brand that isn’t linked to any particular location, product or industry. The bee and hive logo represents the world’s first organized work structure and it stands for the dealer’s mission, vision and values.

Because 80% of the company’s employees work remotely, in-person events aren’t practical. According to CEO Thomas Fimian, the dealer’s website is its key brand platform, with email campaigns, social media posts and blogs designed to drive traffic.

“This benefits our SEO as we leverage content on our website and drive traffic from our e-mail and social campaigns to it,” he said. “In-depth industry and business-specific content is created by our team and not by AI tools such as ChatGPT or Microsoft’s CoPilot.”

One area where Levifi has derived considerable success is with its Google review campaign. It’s weaved into the dealer’s customer contact process; all customer-facing team members such as techs and sales consultants ask clients to share their experiences with them via Google. During in-person transactions, Levifi team members provide clients with a postcard that has a QR code directing them to the given branch’s Google review page. Links are sent to customers in online transactions.

These reviews are priceless and are helping Levifi to be a credible source for awesome workplace technology.

– Thomas Fimian, Levifi

Fimian points out that since the campaign’s launch several years ago, Levifi’s nine branches have logged more than 700 reviews—most of which are specific and effectively illustrate the customer experience. “These reviews are priceless and are helping Levifi to be a credible source for awesome workplace technology,” he added. “An in-depth review provides instant credibility, and our sales team shares these reviews with potential customers.”