B2B Channel Marketing & Content Distribution

Before we break away for the Thanksgiving Holiday – I wanted to post an article concerning B2B marketing and the importance of having the neccessary tools in place to manage, track and engage clients, referral channels, and leads.

In today’s world of B2B marketing there are multiple channels used to for audience development, client retention and referral channel development.  These channels typically include the use of various media segments such as:

• eMail (both one to one and one to many)
• Newsletters
• Live In Person events, such as seminars and conferences
• Webinars (both live and recorded)
• Print Media

If this communication is to be effective, the sender must deploy a message of perceived value to a targeted/segmented audience that may or may not include some form of tangible takeaway benefit besides the initial content. For example, offering a free 1 hour online marketing seminar to CPA’s and accounting professionals for referral channel development that is delivered by a marketing expert from a Fortune 100 company and you should expect a 10% participation rate.  If you a add a tangible takeaway benefit to the seminar such as including 2 free CPE credits, your participation rate will increase to 20% or higher.  And your goal for the seminar?  Develop referral channels for your product.  This same scenario can be applied to consumers and businesses alike.

On the surface the above scenario appears to be a relatively benign process. You setup a conference and invite a bunch of people to attend and hope for the best.  However, if you break down the process there is a lot of administrative/organization work involved to achieve your goals.

1. Development, distribution and promotion of event via email and print,
2. Tracking results of that distribution,
3. Event registration and tracking of event registration,
4. Tieback of yes/no responses to database records,
5. Results of seminar; comments from participants, generation of referrals?

In addition to the above:

1. What the event promoted to the correct segment?
2. Did you record who did and did not respond to the event and showed up?
3. Did the attendees refer a client?
4. How does any of this tie into your contact management system? If at all?

The real question is do you have a system in place to perform this type of marketing and event management without a lot of manual interaction?  And does your ‘system’  integrate with your contact management system?

In today’s world a professional services firm requires a system to distribute content to all market segments.  The result of the distribution need to be trackable, reportable and return definable measurable benefits to acquire valid ROI costs.  Systems like those developed by Cool Life Systems allow firms to perform this functions for creation and distribution of content, tracking the success of each distribution, and providing tools for follow up with persons in each identified channel.  These tools work together to allow you and your firm to increase competitive market share, achieve market differentiation from competitors and influence audience segments for a desired outcome.