Direct Marketing Tips

Six Principles of Deliberate Marketing, by Suaad Sait (Part 1 of 2)

Corporations have slashed budgets, instituted rigid procedures, assembled purchasing committees, and delayed spending. The pace of change within these companies has also introduced a greater level of uncertainty into the buying process, so forecasting has become increasingly difficult.

These new market dynamics are chipping away at the tenures of b-to-b marketers who continue to rely on traditional “spray and pray” demand generations methods that net 2% to 3% response rates. Typical marketing job tenures - now just 23 months - are getting shorter and shorter.

A select few have found a survival strategy by transforming their marketing techniques to a more deliberate approach to demand generation. They’ve shifted their marketing and resource investments from brand building creative endeavors to efficient, disciplined, and laser-focused demand generation processes that demonstrate greater value to the target organisation.

Business managers and marketers alike are growing frustrated by the continuous battle to meet pipeline and revenue requirements using so-called 2% programs “. These programs are costly and time-consuming. Marketers can typically only execute one or two at a time, resulting in a significant lag time between responses. So not enough leads flow into the pipeline consistently which is hardly enough to keep a company performing well.

With a deliberate marketing strategy, marketers can inject a consistent stream of qualified buyers directly into the marketing and sales funnel to improve funnel efficiencies and generate faster ROI. It is especially effective in the b-to-b space which is characterised by defined target markets, long sales cycles and complex buyer-seller relationships.

By targeting more marketing dollars toward deliberate marketing programs that produce faster, trackable results, b-to-b sellers can demonstrate a direct and sustained effect on revenue.

The six principles of deliberate marketing

Simply put, deliberate marketing focuses in building in-depth customer insight and repeatable programs that convert leads into qualified buyers and qualified buyers into paying customers in the fastest most efficient way possible. There are six essential principles that differentiate deliberate marketing from traditional tactics:

• Intention vs. attention - Deliberate marketing involves understanding the customer so that you can produce focused messages and programs that convert buyer interest into buyer intent. It is not about distributing high level marketing messages to a broad audience via advertising or public relations hoping to garner attention for a product or company. Those are the air wars intended to soften up he buying audience. Rather, deliberate marketing is focused on converting a targeted segment of prospects into qualified buyers with an interest in purchasing a product or service. This involves knowing far more about your target audience. Here we talk about the difference between a “list” and a “database”. By utilising a multi-cannel approach to prospect building, the b-to-b marketer can:
  1. Call to validate company details, (gathering what’s needed to personalise the message) contact person, job function and job title.

  2. Mail the personalised communication that speaks directly to the benefit propositionfrom the target organisations perspective.

  3. Follow up by fax/e-mail/phone to close the loop and build a prospect database. (Set appointments, note buying cycle, record decision time, note decision path/time lines).

• Role vs. title - Deliberate marketing programs do not rely simply on prospect titles. Today’s enterprises are infinitely complex, in a constant state of flux. It is no longer possible to market based on “titles”. For example, if you purchase a list or access a contact database of 1,000 communications analysts, how can you be certain that the contacts who match those titles are involved with network communications instead of corporate communications?  Titles are simply an appellation of rank, not an indication of the actual role the prospect plays in the organisation or in the buying cycle. Instead, deliberate marketing programs are focused on job functions which is data that can only be determined through a direct conversation with a target company. They target communications based on organisation and the each decision making unit (DMU) role as well as stage of the buying cycle.

Keep an eye out for next weeks list report and the 4 final points in “Six Principles of Deliberate Marketing”

Posted on 13th March 2007

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