Can your prospects hear what you have to say?”

Marketing is often mistaken as “just” a function in a business’s value chain. As marketers, we all understand that “marketing” is “communicating.” What some of us don’t understand is effective marketing, like effective communication, is a two way system that requires the delivered information to be received. This blog post is might mean something to you or it could also be just a bunch of text displayed on your monitor.

As individuals, if we really tried, we are extremely good at communicating and getting our point across. We may verbally express it, blog about it, display an emotion, exhibit a gesture etc… The key here is we never just stick with one channel of communication, but a combination of multiple channels. Think about a time when you were going through emotional distress. You were probably not as talkative as usual (cahnge in behavior), vented about it with some friends and posted it as a facebook status update.Several methods were used to communicate your distress.

As marketers, we can also apply the multi-channel approach to communicate with our prospects. We are often frustrated when we do not get the response rate we want. It does not always mean the offer is of no interest to the prospect. Ever considered that they just didn’t get the message or forgot about it? Do not expect miracles to happen with a single email blast or a single direct mail campaign. Try combining emails with pURLs, direct mail with pURLs, email and direct mail… better yet, do all of it.

I heard a bad answer given by a presenter at a direct marketing event once. His answer was “nothing” and he was right from a technical viewpoint, but clearly wrong in terms of the marketing process. He was answering the question in relation to the design of web landing pages, but this is applicable to Email, Direct Mail and most marketing mediums.

Clearly the campaign creation process is substantially different and involves taking a different approach to campaign goals, creation of content and the campaign offer.

1) Campaign goals are different

Typically, B2B campaigns are not motivated by an immedate sale. They usually involve human interaction as an end goal;

* schedule a Webex
* get a meeting with a decision-maker or influencer
* give a free consult

For most B2C campaigns, success depends on how much sales increase. For most, the sale is usually immediate and is done directly from the Personal URL. Purchases mostly happen without a conversation with your sales staff. E.g. buying a pair of Nike sneakers, a book from Borders, etc.