Many industries – especially b2b – the potential number of customers is fairly small.

In this situation everyone should be known to everyone – and your first task is to make sure every potential customer knows you.

In fact this is a continuous task, because the people your target organisations will change and those who leave often take with them a lot of corporate memory. Even those who stay can forget quickly, especially if you are not a current supplier.

So you should systematically retell your story to your market. Because it is (at least mostly) known, you can do this directly and more personally, based on your database of everyone in your industry.

Because you know who they are, you can use e-newsletters and direct mail, both low-cost tools when the targets are known.

You can use information downloads and e-newsletter responses to indicate an approaching buy cycle and trigger a direct sales response.

There's a second benefit to building industry databases. Our experience is that no matter how well someone believes they know their market, once they start tracking everyone in it, they learn more and that knowledge is valuable.

Glide has long experience in building, maintaining and using databases to automate ongoing marketing: call us for advice on your needs.