B2B Marketing

Online marketing is increasingly becoming the de facto mechanism by which B2B organisations enter into dialogue and relationships with prospects and buyers. And with the increasing demand for marketers to demonstrate value to their board for every dollar/pound/euro invested and the constant need to demonstrate quality and a continuous feed at the sales pipeline level, it is now time that marketers took a more unified and holistic view of their interactions with their intended audiences.

Today's audiences are more discerning and better educated than before and effective marketing now needs to leverage multiple modes of communication, multiple messages and is done over a longer time span than can be accomplished with a one shot effort.

Campaign using email systems alone were the ‘in thing' a few years back and still have value, due to the cost effective nature of the medium and better tracking processes than conventional methods but savvy marketers today understand the limitations of such solutions alone, particularly when you consider that customer interactions are typically across many points of touch that support the full marketing lifecycle. The real value is when you can automate processes across the online and offline world, track behaviours and take informed sales and marketing decisions based on those decisions - so you can fuel your sales pipeline with higher quality leads.

The other point worth noting here is that whilst organisations typically take a ‘department centric ‘ view of sales and marketing, customers do not take that view and look across all points of touch. It is imperative therefore for organisations not to lose customer insight when leads are handed over from marketing to sales. The marketing role just does not stop at the point of lead handover. That's where the real action starts!

A new pack of solutions has recently emerged which addresses the challenges marketers face in a more systemic way - under the banner of ‘demand generation' solutions. The leader of the pack is Eloqua but there are others who have recognised the winds of change and are scurrying to help marketers address this shortfall. As a previous power user of Eloqua myself, I have witnessed how the power of process automation, targeted messaging and behavioural analytics can all come together and integrate into a CRM solution of choice, to provide a richer sales pipeline with data that better allows sales and marketing professionals to enter into meaningful interactions which can translate into fruitful business.

For any B2B marketers out there who have not yet given such solutions due consideration, I firmly believe they will be disadvantaged in the medium term. I am a convert and now suggest anything less is a step backwards rather than a step forwards. Here a few suggests: Eloqua, Manticore Technology, Vtrenz, Hubspot, Market2Leads, Marketo, LoopFuse, einsof, iHance, Precience. Happy hunting. And if you need any more advice on where to start, contact me via my website.