“The buyer buys more than the seller sells!”
That old bromide is one of the first pieces of sales advice my mentor shared with me when I started my advertising career years ago. It is even more true today than it was in the days before the internet. Companies that hope to remain viable, let alone prosper in the internet age should take heed.
Today, whether you are a B2C or B2B marketer, it is the buyer who is in control of the buying and selling engagement. Consumers seek out product information online, visit sites like pricegrabber.com, they may even visit a retail outlet to check out a product before purchasing online for the lowest price. Is vendor reputation important? Hard to tell. “Get it to me fast and cheap” seems to be the driving consumer consideration.
B2B marketers face more complex challenges. Not only must they have easy-to-find, online information, they are confronted with the challenge of even being found. Websites must be optimized (SEO) for search engines and cross linked to other relevant sites in order to obtain reasonable page positions on Google, BING and other search engines. Paid Ad Words for search page result positions and banner ads on other sites demand careful strategies while they gobble budgets. Blogging, webinars, news posts, email campaigns cost that much more. Web analytic tools for tracking traffic and conversions require specific marketing skills. All of the activity is designed to drive prospects to your website. Once there you better hope prospects find what they want or you can kiss the opportunity good-bye.
For B2B marketers there are also sites like BuyerZone and ThomasNet where buyers submit RFQ’s that vendors can buy. Vendors then compete with each other by submitting their bids. Some of the buyers won’t talk with the vendors. They just want their bid requests fulfilled. The vendor is reduced to a commodity supplier. That’s not good.
Pre-internet, B2B marketers had much more control over the buying process since they controlled the delivery and availability of the information. Purhasing agents may have consulted the big green Thomas Register (now ThomasNet.com) and submitted RFQ’s to specific vendors. But vendors could begin dialogs and negotiate pricing. Today customers order online and may never talk with a sales person. What can B2B vendors do to regain some of the control of the process and improve opportunities for sales?
First examine your B2B website…
- Make sure each page is properly tagged with keywords to improve chances of search engines finding it. (Search Engine Optimization – SEO)
- Include product pictures and specs.
- Make “How to Buy” a highly visible link to a shopping cart or RFQ page.
- Capture visitor RFQ information before routing vistors to distributors. (Capture your leads!)
- Subscribe to a reverse I.P. Address Look-up service to identify and capture visitor company data in your prospect database. (Feed it to your CRM or lead management program.)
- Set-up a web analytics program to track web traffic. (Learn where your visitors are coming from.)
Second…
- Research your AdWord keyword search costs for Google, BING, etc. It is becoming increasingly costly to achieve top positioning.
- Research banner advertising costs on trade, media and other sites targeting your key buying audiences.
- Consider setting up a BLOG to offer professional/expert information on subjects of interest to your customers (link it to your website)
The internet marketing channel is to be found! That much hasn’t changed. It’s just more complex and challenging.
While so many budget dollars are going toward internet marketing, more traditional promotion tactics remain effective. Of particular interest are those that combine approaches. One company, Enthusem, provides an online tool for creating direct mail postcards that direct recipients to landing pages where they must submit a code to see the information. This enables marketers to see who is actually responding. Response rates average 15% or better. You design your cards online, upload your list and Enthusem prints and mails the cards. It is a simple, effective and affordable way to drive traffic to your site, generate requests for online demos, calls or RFQ’s.
For B2B marketers being in the right place at the right time with the right product, price and delivery will remain the big challenge. And buyers will continue to buy more often than the sellers will sell. But by following some of the suggestions above chances are good more will start buying from you.
