- Hello Customer - Log in or Register!
CalculatorI can remember when it shifted – when marketing lost its “fluff factor” in B2B technology industries, and were replaced by analytics and the almighty ROI (return on investment). It was Spring 2001. The Dot.com Bubble had burst, venture capital dried up virtually overnight, leaving young software development companies dying in droves. In February 2001, I took a maternity leave for the birth of my son. When I left for the leave, there were 70 startup tech companies in my local market. But upon return two months later, only 3 of those companies had survived. That year, tech industries learned hard lessons about viable business models, bootstrapping, and tangible marketing outcomes.
Marketing has been rapidly evolving since 2001. Advertising has been on a steep decline. Relationship-based marketing, including social media have seen a sudden ascent. Marketing went from being a highly creative department to one much more focused on number crunching. Companies used to focused more on what felt good in marketing – the tradeshow in a tropical location in the dead of winter – the vanity ad in a trade publication – expensive dinners and wine at a showy executive club. Now we’re more likely to be talking about lead generation and sales pipeline growth, tradeshow ROI and sales win ratios. Still, there are remnants of those earlier years when marketing could still be fluffy and especially executives could keep their favorite marketing programs without responsibility for their ROI. Unless your company has shareholders who don’t mind missing potential dividend, here are some ways to approach this particular issue and bring company leaders up to the present day:
Marketing Program Comparisons
One of the simplest ways to skim the fluffy, unproductive marketing programs off the top is to let them see the light of day. I create an Excel spreadsheet listing all marketing channels. I have a column for yearly program cost both in direct expenses and indirect staff time expenses. Then I have a column for how much business was generated by this channel in the given year. For those of you with long sales cycles, you may need to adjust your time period accordingly. Then I have a final column indicating cost per lead (total channel costs divided by total revenue from that lead source). If this calculation has never been made internally before, then the results may surprise you. I once worked with a company that generated 30% of their total revenue from one annual tradeshow. Knowing this made resource allocation much easier for the Marketing VP.
Inject Accountability While Offering Ways to Raise ROI
Sometimes a favorite channel just can’t be denied to a key company leader. If your president loves his membership to a premium golf course, then you are not likely to be willing or able to cut this perk. Instead, look for ways to leverage that membership to use it in a variety of sales processes. It may never be the channel you hope it would be, but there are ways to get more out of a trade show in the tropics, a vanity ad or other lower-performing marketing programs.
Social Media as an Accelerator Tool
I am always surprised to meet tech company leaders who haven’t chosen to harness the accelerator capabilities of a solid social media program. Social media can help a B2B tech company find potential leads who are in early stages of the sales process (way before the RFP is distributed). It allows a company to monitor key words and interject with introductions when the timing is right. Social media amplifies the company’s publicity, marketing efforts, and particularly online marketing programs. If you want more information about how to do this effectively in B2B markets domestically or internationally, please contact me.
| Product Model | Inside Diameter | Outside Diameter | Thickness |
| PSMF050908A51 bearing | 5 | 9 | 8 |
| PSMF050905A51 bearing | 5 | 9 | 5 |