With so many different channels and ways to communicate with our customers and markets, how can we prioritise our effort, spend and activities?

Over recent years we have seen a dramatic increase in the different marketing channels available to B2B marketers, not least with the advances in internet and digital platforms. This proliferation of media choices, which now includes telemarketing, direct mail, off-the-page advertising, broadcast, internet, email, sponsorship, search and a range of other new media, has made it harder to select the best channels to reach business decision makers.

With so many available, which channels should a B2B Marketer choose to communicate with customers and markets?

The answer to this will depend on the individual marketer’s business strategy and what they want to achieve from their marketing communications. For example it could be to drive more sales, launch new products, protect current revenue, sell into new markets or grow sales to existing customers.

Different types of communication channels tend to lend themselves better to different objectives. For example direct marketing’s strength is in promoting offers, whereas advertising is particularly suited for brand building - and email excels in one-to-one relationship building.

The emergence of email marketing

The recent adoption of email in B2B marketing has been rapid. The 2007 B2B Marketing Insight Report (B2B Marketing Magazine) found that email marketing has had a huge impact on B2B Marketing - over 70% of those surveyed said that they are currently using email marketing and email is predicted to be the biggest growth channel within B2B.

Email marketing is a relatively new medium but is ideal for B2B. It is cost effective, immediate, measurable and great for quickly testing what works and what doesn’t work - all extremely important in a sector where marketing budgets tend to be smaller, the purchase decision-making process more complex, and forging strong customer relationships fundamental for success.

The real value of email to B2B marketers is in its measurability and the customer information marketers can gain immediately from their activity. Email offers the ability to track on an individual level who opened your emails, who clicked on what link and what content they read, not only allowing advertisers to measure the level of interest readers have in the content they are sending them, but also how readers are responding to it. 

B2B marketers can use this information in a variety of ways - they can use it not only to tailor future communications, so that they are of interest to customers, but also to help identify sales leads for products or services.

Channel Prioritisation

B2B marketers operate in very challenging environments selling complex products and services to multiple decision makers, through long sales cycles, often with lower marketing budgets than their B2C counterparts. Faced with this, marketers need to consider a number of factors when selecting which communication channels to use for marketing purposes, including:

• Who is being targeted?
• What are the goals?
• What are the objectives?
• What is the budget?
• Where will the audience be found?

Only once these factors have been reviewed, should the channel or combination of channels be selected.

Take the time to research and understand which channels your target audience is likely to prefer and take into consideration the profile of your target audience.  Also review the lifecycle of your products and services and the decision-making process involved in the purchase of your products or services. These will all affect your choice of media channel, and the content and frequency of your marketing. By planning and researching you’ll then be able to better select the most appropriate channels - with better results.

The need to deliver ROI

As B2B marketers regularly work with limited resources and budgets, ROI and the ability to measure the effectiveness of marketing spend is critical. As a result those channels that tend to be more measurable such as telemarketing, direct mail and marketing tend to dominate the B2B environment.

It is against this increasing need to demonstrate ROI that B2B marketers tend to focus on those channels that can help them generate cost effective quality leads as well as help them build and enhance customer and prospect relationships.

Integration is Key

The key to success is not in using one channel over another, but the integration of a number of channels to help achieve your goals (where the same message is used across the different channels, based on the profile of each customer or target segment). Taking an integrated approach is without a doubt the most successful approach - Jupiter research found that co-ordinated multi-channel marketing increases conversion rates by 27% to 50%.
If email marketing is going to be added into a company’s media mix, it’s important to understand how people interact with this medium. Content can’t just be repurposed - i.e. content from a direct marketing campaign copied and pasted into an email. Because of the personal and immediate nature of email, it is best suited to content that invites interaction and builds an ongoing relationship.
Email habits regarding content should also be factored into the content and presentation of mailings: First and foremost – people scan. They scan their inbox and decide, based on the “from” and the "subject line", whether they'll delete or open. If they open, they then scan to decide whether to keep reading, and possibly clicking. Subscribers give you about 8-12 seconds of their time in making these decisions.
With so many communication channels available it can be a challenge to decide which media to integrate to create a comprehensive, integrated marketing strategy.  Whilst email has a leading part to play in B2B marketing, it should be considered as part of the broader communications strategy that optimises your marketing communications activity.

By Denise Cox,
Email Newsletter Specialist.
Newsweaver
Email: denise.blog@newsweaver.co.uk
UK Tel: 0800 904 7955
Tel (Other countries): +353 23 29880
Newsletter: http://www.businessofemail.com
Blog: www.newsweaver.co.uk/emailnewsletters

About the author
Denise Cox is the Newsletter Specialist for Newsweaver, one of Europe's leading email newsletter software providers. Denise has extensive knowledge in email - from best practice, marketing know-how to content. She has been involved in email marketing since 1996, and provides practical consultancy to Newsweaver’s 600 clients, enabling them to maximise their investment in email. She publishes 'The Business of Email' newsletter and the “…Email matters!” blog.