However, this distinction doesn’t always translate well to direct mail, and the lines between these two target audiences may blur sometimes.Ĭreating an effective, impactful direct mail offer for a consumer or a business takes skill and knowledge about your target audience. Your methods pay off, and your ability to provide value continues to grow.If you’re a financial institution, you already have a clear understanding of the different needs that a business-to-business customer has compared to a business-to-consumer client. Hey, who said bloody isn’t fun? What’s really fun is that you’re mining the entire direct marketing tool kit - the databases, the targeted communications, the offers, the measurements - and applying them wherever across the complex business sales process it makes sense. Plus, in a multichannel environment, you are in the thick of channel conflict. Your efforts are only part of a larger process, and each participant rightly claims credit. The upshot of this complexity is that B2B direct marketing results can be difficult to measure. You analyze data, segment markets, and provide market intelligence. You operate call centers, run catalog businesses via telesales and ecommerce, and you manage customer databases. You track the closed leads, then analyze and refine your campaigns. You generate leads, qualify them and hand them off to the sales force for closure. They complement each other, and they must work in tandem to be successful.ī2B direct marketing has one foot in sales and one foot in marketing. (The key exception is the B2B mail-order world, like Quill and New Pig, that operates end-to-end sales channels.) In B2B, marketing is the flip side of sales. Direct marketing in business is part of a larger system of customer communication. Business marketers rely on focus groups, surveys, and data modeling to refine their campaigns as much as possible before going out into the marketplace.įinally, B2B is fun because it is multichannel. Think about it: When you have high-potential prospects, rapidly changing products, small universes, and just one chance to reach them, pretesting is critically important. With economics like this, it pays.įor general marketers who may have been wondering at the dearth of market research in the direct marketing industry, here’s hope. So, B2B direct marketers will invest heavily in data hygiene, such as calling all their accounts twice a year to update their records. But each contact might be worth millions. Business data is said to degrade at the rate of 4-6 percent per month. Furthermore, these folks are always changing their titles, their phone numbers, their mail stops. Within each business, there may be multiple players who need to be contacted (the gatekeepers, influencers, and specifiers mentioned above). Consider this statistic: There are approximately 32 million businesses. That’s why agencies, once they get the hang of it, tend to fall in love with B2B. So, there is rarely such a thing as a “control” in this sector of the industry. Products tend to change regularly, with new models, features, pricing, and terms. So, campaign volumes are low, cost per thousand is high, and direct marketing campaigns tend to be about leads versus immediate sales. And the universe of targeted prospects tends to be small. Business purchases tend to be large, high-ticket, and high value. A white paper, for example, or a downloadable with tips on how to solve the prospect’s business problem can be positioned as free incentive offers while concurrently supporting the sales cycle. Mugs and T-shirts are popular in B2B, but better is an offer of information that drives the buying process forward. An incentive offer, therefore, should have business value. They will be looking for proof points, for documentation-if only to cover their you-know-whats. Business buyers need to justify the purchase, to be sure they have done the right thing by the business. Self-interest is there (they are human, after all), but business need will be a stronger driver than, say, offer. This means that your messages need to be tailored, customized, and targeted to a level unheard of in the consumer world.Įven more fun is the motivation of these parties. The parties have their own interests and needs for information about the product, its features, and its benefits to them. There are influencers, specifiers, gatekeepers, purchasing agents, and the ultimate decision-makers. The business buying process is likely to be long and slow and involve multiple parties. So, as marketers, if you intend to influence these buyers, you have a complex situation to work with. Naturally, it’s more fun.įirst, business buyers do not make decisions on their own. Why? It’s more complex, it’s richer, it’s broader, and it’s more difficult. After about seven years into my career, I migrated from consumer direct marketing to B2B marketing, and immediately concluded that B2B is more fun.
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