| The marketing tools | | CREATING THE INITIAL INTEREST AND FILLING THE LEAD PIPELINE | Remember, most companies do not proceed to lead qualification; lead nurturing; lead management; or customer retention.
They simply hand over unqualified leads to their sales force - the result is disappointment all round, and a poor ROI.
So, please don’t stop reading my article after this first section on lead generation – there are four more essential steps! | |  THE MARKETING TOOLS AVAILABLE | The B2B marketer has a wide range of marketing tools available; here is a quick summary of them:
- eMail marketing
- Online advertising
- Telemarketing
- Event marketing
- Printed direct mail
- Magazine advertising & PR
- TV/poster advertising
| | | WHICH MARKETING TOOLS SHOULD YOU CHOOSE? | So where do you start? Which marketing tools should you choose – which will give you the best results, and the best ROI?
So much has changed in the last few years – marketing budgets have been squeezed; company directors have come to expect a better ROI on marketing budgets; marketing technologies have moved on; and some of the more traditional marketing tools are not as cost-effective as they used to be.
My experience is that it’s best to focus on today’s technology-led marketing tools: eMail marketing; online advertising; multilingual telemarketing; event marketing and printed, personalised direct mail.
The more traditional marketing tools of magazine advertising and PR are not particularly cost-effective at generating B2B leads - they are best used for brand and corporate awareness. (However, B2C markets are different).
Likewise, TV/poster advertising only really becomes cost-effective for lead generation in high-volume B2C markets.
However, if magazine/poster/TV advertising and PR are part of your B2B marketing mix, then any leads from these activities can still of course be fed into the lead qualification and lead nurturing programmes described later in this article.
Put simply, lead generation is most effectively accomplished using an integrated campaign ie a combination of the many online and offline marketing tools available. Technology-led direct marketing is a very cost-effective way of generating leads.
At this point, you may be thinking that some of the technology-led marketing tools have passed their ‘sell-by date’ – after all, spam eMails are giving the technology a bad name, and statistics show that eMail open-rates & click-through rates are declining.
On the other hand, the same statistics also show that professionally-presented eMails & eNewsletters are getting read and more and more orders are coming directly from this medium.
Unpersonalised, ‘one eMail fits all’ type of eMails no longer work.
What you need to do first of all is to build up your database with personalised data, so that state-of-the-art eMail marketing systems (like our ePartner) can use information like product preferences, to assemble & broadcast personalised eMails in real-time. The copy and images are then relevant to that particular prospect.
Using the services of a leading edge agency will enable you to take this high-tech approach much further. The eMail marketing system can alert the telemarketer to ring the prospect after the eMail is opened, resulting in a very timely phone call, whilst the memory of the eMail is still fresh in the recipient’s mind.
eMarket2 has many more leading-edge ideas e.g. our new Generator2 Demand Generation product.
The differentiator that a leading-edge, technology-based direct marketing agency will offer is true integration of eMail with telemarketing, online marketing and personalised direct mail.
Now that I’ve left you with some mouth-watering, technology-led eMail marketing and tele-eMail ideas, don’t forget that they need to be combined with online advertising, event marketing, and if the budget stretches, personalised printed direct mail. | | | Database issues | | CREATING THE INITIAL INTEREST AND FILLING THE LEAD PIPELINE | It all starts with the data – direct marketing relies on clean, up-to-date data containing personalised information such as product preferences.
The database is so important – it must be up-to-date and contain enough detailed information to allow data segmentation, enabling the campaign to be targeted to a particular market, or personalised to an individuals’ product preferences.
These are some of the issues to consider:
- Mail list sourcing
- Data cleansing
- Data enhancement
- Database build & de-duping
- Database management & hosting
- eMail list enrichment – eMail list cleansing and list building
| | | | | "Most companies do not proceed to lead qualification, lead nurturing, lead management and customer retention..." |  | |
| | | "The differentiator that a leading-edge, technology-based direct marketing agency will offer is true integration of email, with telemarketing, online marketing and personalised direct mail..." | | |
| | | "The database is so important – it must be up-to-date and contain enough detailed information to allow data segmentation..." | | | | | |
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