What Marketing Alternatives Are Left for B2B Companies?

by Mary Sullivan

With ... strict(er) anti-spam laws, you’ll need to get very creative again about how you reach out to customers and prospects. Traditional direct marketing tools such as direct mail and telemarketing are starting to look attractive again, but since everyone will be using them, you’ll need fresh new approaches.

• Viral marketing – Innovate and identify ways to get your own customers sharing your information directly with their own business colleagues. “Word of mouth” can be a powerful sales tool, but your story has to be truly compelling for it to work.

• Direct mailing – A good creative postal mail piece need not cost a fortune. It can draw visitors to your Web site where, if you fulfill the promise of the direct mailer, prospects can opt-in to receive future communications from you about your products and services. Be sure to include a highly attractive offer to increase response rates.

• Telephoning – The “National Do Not Call Registry” applies to residential and wireless numbers, but calls to business telephone numbers are exempt. (See Telemarketers rules at https://telemarketing.donotcall.gov/ ). This sounds like good news for B2B companies, but a lot of former e-mail marketers will be telephoning again and irritation will quickly resurface. To be successful, you will need to screen your calling lists, develop effective call guides, and train a highly professional telephone sales staff.

• E-mailing – You can still e-mail to your real customers, even under the ... law, as long as you show them how they can opt-out. But you’ll need to invest in retooling your database to comply with the new anti-spam legislation.

So it may be best to not approach this alone. Find a tool, partner or company who specializes in email list management and get the message into the in-box and read by a willing recipient, not flushed into cyber-space.


About the Author:
Mary Sullivan is principal and co-founder of KickStart Alliance. For more information, contact Mary.