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With so many channels, what is the most effective method to reach B2B prospects today (phone, Focus, Facebook, Twitter, etc.)?
Best Answer
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- Ted Siska
Permission Based Marketing strategies is the best way to meet B2B prospects now. This means largely abandoning the Interruption Based marketing strategies used in the past, such as: cold calls, email blasts (Constant Contact), direct mail, etc.
This is upsetting to many traditional marketing/communications professionals that haven't learned more about Permission Based tactics, but they're here to stay.
So companies need to demonstrate real value and show their true colors to prospects to entice them to follow their blogs, podcasts, webinars and more. Then, their prospects can invite them to do business. Time to start is today.
Hi Steven,
With such a range of options it can be confusing. From my perspective there is one simple rule.
You have to be where your customers/target customers are.
If your customers or target customers are on Facebook, you need to be active on Facebook, if not, then invest your efforts in another more appropiate channel. The real challenge comes when you have selected the channels and you need to allocate your time/resources between the chosen channels. Lead tracking from source through to revenue generation can help to calculate the ROI on the different channels.
Don't forget that in the web 2.0 environment, customers find you more often than you find them, so you need to invest the the things that will make you easy to find, and attractive as a potential vendor when you are found.
Good luck with you efforts
Pat
Great advice, Pat. It’s really about having a clear understanding of the journey your target customers make to find you. You need to be accessible and available. Great reminder for B2B marketers to stay on track in their campaigns.
Steven,
When I mention Facebook as an example it is just that an example. If you sell widgets then you need to be where your customer and prospective customers look for information about widgets, i.e. their professional needs, not their personal Facebook habits. Sources may be different depending at what stage of the buying process they are at. If Facebook is one of the sources then you need to be on Facebook, both to provide information and to listen to what your prospective customers are saying. Have your competitors Facebook company page? If so, why not review them to see what they are posting, check out who "likes" the pages. If your customers and perspective customers like your competitors then clearly they value the info/offers, etc they get on Facebook re widgets, so maybe you need a Facebook company page. Likewise for Twitter. Are your customers on Twitter? Who are they following? What type of info are they getting from the posts of the people thay are following?
From a sales organisation perspective, social media allows sales executives to listen to what their customers are saying about their business needs, their views on different brands, etc. This kind of intellegence can be very valuable in targeting prospects. Invest your time in the social media that gives you the best intellegence.
I think your comment about search and referral is very true and producing good content (whitepapers, case studies, etc.) is the primary responsibility of Marketing and it underpins the need for integrated approach from sales and marketing, so that salespersons can do what they are good at, i.e. closing sales and managing accounts.
Steven, Good question. Also I think you may have mistaken Pat's response. You do have to hang out where youra customer's hang out---but that's where they hang out for information about products and services you sell. So while many of us have FB accounts, that may not be the right channel for us, it may be LinkedIn, Blogs, email, telephone or even the old school face to face meetings.
I think the other thing we are learning is that customers (at least B2B) are using multi channel approaches to learning and researching solutions--so our approach has to be multi-channel.
So our challenges are "which sets of channels do we leverage to effectively engage our customers," "how do we allocate resources/investments across those channels," "how do we manage the engagement/buying process across those channel?"
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I'll try to answer this from another perspective.
I've been in several executive positions for different companies where I bought product/services/solutions from B2B companies. With respect to everyone who answered in this thread, I never once looked for information on LinkedIn, Facebook, twitter, Focus etc. I also never subscribed to newsletters, blogs etc.
Instead I found companies the old fashioned way, through my contact network and word of mouth. I worked for large multi-nationals, so it may be different if you're after small caps and startups. In large corporations, decision making executives tend to have large networks that they leverage for advice, jobs, products, etc.
Please note that there is a BIG difference between using social network sites (LinkedIn, FB, twitter, etc) to contact people you already know and trust for advice / information, and using the same sites for reaching prospects.
My opinion on the most effective way to reach prospects would be to find out who the decision makers are in companies that I want to do business with, then get acquainted with their "real inner network" as opposed to the "secondary satellite network" on FB, LinkedIn, twitter, etc.
Hope this made sense.