I was going to start this blog entry with a lyrical reminder of the way things used to be in b2b marketing, but the problems faced by all of us b2b marketers today aren’t going to be solved by reinventing the past (who learns from history anyway? 
).
The reason for the potentially nostalgic opener was that the subject giving me cause to put virtual pen to virtual paper is photography and imagery in modern b2b communications.
I have extremely fond memories of visiting and organising stands on behalf of customers in the early part of my career, when budgets meant that creativity was to the fore and on stand hospitality was hugely alcoholic in nature.
Those heady days are long gone (mostly!) and for the last twenty years there seems to have been a steady decline in both the size and number of b2b exhibitions.
The exhibition industry has done its best, with the addition of conferences and seminars to attract specific visitor groups, but my informal research amongst exhibitors suggests that certainly in the area of attracting new customers these events can rarely be justified in terms of ROI.
Most of us have come to terms with living under the huge all pervading shadow of Google and its complex algorithms that decide how easily a web site can be found against various search terms.
However, I’ve noticed more and more sites at the top of page 1 (certainly in Omnisity’s chosen space) that have two common attributes:
Firstly, a confusing and ‘down market’ design (Yes I know it’s a huge value judgement, but I thought it sounded better than ‘cheap looking’) with too many words on the home page to be inviting to read.
This charming and very direct exposition ( the title of this blog entry ) on how to make web and direct business communications successful was first given to me by a client working in telecommunications. I only found out later that most of his money had been made in online porn, which may explain how he came to this particular viewpoint.
The point, though, was that I had never heard something that summed up so neatly the needs of b2b marketing generally.
What do you do when you’re not allowed to undertake proactive, direct methods to sell to a target audience. Direct Mail, email and telemarketing are our standard stock in trade when wanting to generate leads and sales opportunities.
This came up recently for a customer of ours wanting to sell into the NHS.
Now I wish I could say that I came up with the solution myself but on this occasion the client came up with the solution (my only excuse is the solution was found before I knew the problem existed so no, I am not losing my touch!)
Oh for those heady days when I was doing my marketing degree, learning and practising all those research techniques and advanced statistical analyses.
From the outset I quickly discovered that generic bought in reports were as far as most organisations were prepared to go as there were always ‘more important things’ to spend budgets on.
These days, we find only one in ten clients is prepared to undertake anything other than ‘quick and dirty’ informal research. The perennial problem of getting budget has been exacerbated by the real concern that because markets change so fast, anything that delays market entry is to be avoided like the plague.
Over recent years most of us in b2b marketing have needed to buy data from external sources of one kind or another. I suppose it depends on your expectations, but generally I’ve been disappointed with the results. Nobody seems to have the exact data with the right job functions that I want. So the first compromise is made because I rarely have the budget to buy multiple lists and combine them and the list I end up buying is the best I can find.
© 2002 - 2011 Omnisity Ltd | 1 Newton House, LCP Pensnett Estate, West Midlands, DY6 7YE