5 Tips to Improve Your B-to-B Direct Marketing Efforts

by tradesmeninsights | Apr 7, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Traditional Marketing

Social media may be the hottest topic around the water cooler at work, but when it comes down to generating sales, direct marketing still fills a need. We all need to remember that there are many tools in the marketing tool box and we shouldn’t dismiss or forget about what’s been successful in the past.

You may have been bombarded by DM in past years to the point of oversaturation and were kind of turned off by it. Then there are e-mail campaigns that also began to bombard us and we either tuned them out or our IT department put enough filters on that nothing or next to nothing comes in.

What do you want to bet that the same will hold true of social sometime down the road? That happens when everyone hops on the newest thing. Ironically, we have had for both ourselves and for clients great success of late with DM because very few people are doing it!

I recently read a post by Chris Cottle in BtoB magazine  that highlighted 5 best practices to help guide your DM efforts and I wanted to share some highlights thant might help you:

1. Invest in your list – The old adage “garbage in, garbage out.” Don’t be concerned so much about the size of the list, but the quality. Your best list is an internal one that’s a combination of leads from traditional marketing efforts, as well as input from your customer service, outside sales and warranty cards. Segment the list by markets, job function and if you can, where they are in the buying cycle.
2. The offer matters – “What’s in in for me” should be the first thing a prospect should see. Make offers instantly relevant and show them the benefits.
3. KISS – Keep it simple. You don’t have to have an “award winning” piece, but one that gets the prospect’s attention. Simplicity implies confidence.
4. Frequency matters – Depending on your audience, you’ll have to test to see how often you can touch them without getting pushback. If you’re using e-mail as part of your program, you will find out very quickly where the opt-out rate start to increase.
5. Prove your business case -You only have a few seconds to get their attention and then you need to quickly convince them of the value of your proposition. In most B-to-B cases, there are multiple buying infuences and you want to get this person on your side to be your advocate with other colleagues.

I hope these have spurred some ideas for your next direct marketing program.