Total Marketing Solutions

Its time for the B2B community to wake up and smell the pheromones – the web is THE sales and business development channel of the moment! 

In recent times there have been numerous articles written on this subject in many different business publications and as a result it is almost impossible to avoid hearing about how the web is supposed to change the way we all do business.  

Unfortunately it is apparent to me, as a marketing consultant working with many different SMEs in the B2B arena that most organisations have not yet begun to realise the potential of the web as an active business development channel and sales tool.  

Hearing about something is one thing, believing it and actually doing something about it is apparently another! 

The point of writing this piece is that if, like most small business owners, you want to grow your business then the web could be critical to helping you to achieve this objective.  This view point is based upon practical experience. We work with a number of different B2B organisations who have realised the potential of the web and almost without exception the web is the engine driving their sales growth.  Some simple facts & figures to illustrate this point: 

·        In the last 12 months the web has delivered over 800 new business enquiries resulting in over £200K of new business for a Plymouth-based manufacturing company.
·        A West-Devon based business services company has secured over 20 new clients in the last year including 2 new key accounts delivering annualised sales of over £150K each – this on a base turnover of only £450K.
·        A lifestyle training company based in Torbay is taking on additional sales staff to deal with the 100’s of new sales enquiries it has generated in just 6 months. 

The title of this piece is very deliberately chosen; pheromones are all about attracting fellow members of the species and in business that is what we are about as well except for most of us it’s about attracting customers rather than a mate.  

If used effectively the web is an incredibly powerful and proactive tool for attracting and winning potential new customers. 

This article is not all about websites nor is it a thinly disguised attempt to sell website development - this is not a part of our business. 

It is about recognising that having a website is only the beginning. 

Most B2B companies have realised that having a website is a good idea but, except for those actively engaged in e-commerce, most B2B websites are little more than electronic brochures.  There is little point having a website if nobody can find it - no matter how beautifully designed it is or how clever it is technically. It’s like having a new sports car and never taking it out of the garage – an exercise in pointlessness.  

Driving targeted visitors to your site is the key 

Whilst having a website that is well-designed and customer focused is important for converting traffic to enquiries and ultimately to business, the most important thing is to get targeted traffic to the site in the first place. There are several methods you can use to do this; here are those that I believe are the most important: 

1.    Optimise your site for Search Engines – make sure that Google, Yahoo, MSN et al. can find your site, understand what the content is about and rank its importance.
2.    Pay Per Click Advertising – paid for advertising on the major search engines.
3.    Offline advertising – make sure that your web address is on everything you print - from your corporate stationery to all your sales and marketing support materials. 

Each of these 3 methods deserves an article on its own – particularly search engine optimisation (SEO) which is something of a Holy Grail for those seeking traffic on the web – but that is for another day. Suffice to say that if you want to drive traffic to your site you need to be familiar with and practicing all of these – they are not mutually exclusive. 

Why does all this matter? 

The purpose of this article is not to provide a ‘how to’ solution for driving traffic to your website, it is to illustrate the fact that the web is THE sales and business development channel of the moment. There is a window of opportunity for many B2B organisations that recognise this before their competitors to make hay whilst the sun shines, eventually everybody will wake up and smell the pheromones and this opportunity will be gone – so make your move now!

There have been many attempts to produce the definitive list of the ‘best’ TV ads and to identify the ‘best’ ad of all time and there are undoubtedly many worthy contenders for this coveted title - for what it is worth this is my favourite: The Carling Dambusters Ad

Its my favourite because not only is it very funny but beneath the humour it also a great piece of brand marketing. Sit back, click the link and enjoy!

A common trap that many SMEs fall into is getting ’stuck into’ doing stuff (in this case marketing activity) before they are really ready, before they have a clear plan of what they want to achieve and why. It is the nature of entrepreneurs to want to get on with it as it - provides a sense of progress and achievement - experience tells us that you have to get ready before you ‘engage’ with your market if you don’t want to be disappointed with the results.

Unfortunatley we find that the majority of marketing agencies do not support this process of getting ready before you go to market particularly well. There are honorable exceptions of course and as usual it is dangerorous to generalise but more often than not the planning element of most traditional marketing agencies has a tendancy to be focused on the execution elements of marketing communications; be it advertising, PR, design, telemarketing, DM or print – in our view this is the easy bit! The difficult bit is getting your thinking sharp and clear about your whole marketing and customer proposition before you get into execution mode.

 Our experience of working with SMEs from all walks of industry tells us that better business results will always be delivered if you take a step back, develop a clear, well thought-through marketing strategy and then support this strategy with a robust and rigorously executed activity plan.
 

Preparation before engagement goes along way to delivering success in marketing as it does in rugby.