Why Direct Mail Works for B2B

Recently on Google+ there was a posting, by Google Analytics I believe, passing on an article that basically stated that b2b and b2c were really no different, since everyone is essentially just a consumer. I took issue with that premise and further suggested that the most effective b2b tactic was actually physical direct mail. I was surprised at the reaction that I got, how audacious I guess it was in the online space to suggest that an old warhorse like direct mail was the way to go. (And no, the increasingly beleaguered USPS did not pay me to write this, although I would welcome the opportunity).

I've already expressed my skepticism when it comes to b2b social in this post and I wish I could link the Google+ thread to this blog, but I still haven't found a way to link my blog to my Google+ business page, not the personal account that it's under, as this thread was under my personal Google+ profile (anyone who knows how to do that please let me know). So I'll just excerpt my response here as to why physical direct mail was a more effective b2b tactic than say, paid search, with one of the reasons being that in search, the person doing the searching is different than the decision-maker :

"...Generally speaking (and I'm only making general inferences here) the CTRs (click-thru-rates) in paid search for b2b and b2c are comparable and at times for b2b they're higher. However, in my experience the abandonment rate on the form and/or landing page for a b2b product is much higher and since most times you're talking about generating leads, you have to factor how many clicks you have to generate to get a sale into your ROI equation. (Even for b2b products that can be self-served, like software trials, data backup or cloud services, I've seen this general pattern hold.) So that buttresses my theory of the discoverer being different than the decision-maker.

With physical DM, using a good hand-compiled list, you can get directly to the decision-maker for the product/service in question -- finance, IT, HR and so on. A couple of years ago -- after a long, long time away -- I briefly took a Director-level position at a corporation (although director is not what it used to be) and there was nobody opening my mail (I wish there was because I invariably forgot to approve invoices and so on). Even at an executive level where there is an assistant opening the mail, if you create a piece with a high-enough perceived value the gatekeeper is going to be very reluctant to toss it. So I find physical DM to be the most efficient tactic when it comes to ROI against a b2b target."

So there you have it, you heard it here first (or last since DM appears to have gone the way of vinyl records, but as any audiophile will tell you, they sound a helluva lot better). Oh, and by the way, b2b direct mail is one of the things I specialize in and I do it because it works. Considering the decline in popularity, I can't be doing it for the money and excuse me because I have to go meet my friends from the PO for a beer to commiserate.

Is B2B Sociable?

As with the snack cracker whose name is similar to a word in this post's title (Sociables) social marketing should be served up in very specific business-to-business situations, when at all. There's a good article on the TargetMarketing.com website that deals with this issue head on.

I agree with the author that Facebook is fundamentally useless for a company whose target is primarily B2B. The exception would be the weekend get-together syndrome, as when someone as an individual mentions they need help with marketing their business and another individual says I know this cool guy Larry Bassani who provides affordable, effective marketing support and gives personalized service too (you can simply cut and past that phrase into your Facebook stream and thank you in advance). However, if your audience is primarily business and you're thinking of standing up a Facebook fan page you're pretty much wasting your time.

Now LinkedIn is a primarily a "professional" social space, but it's dominated by people who are looking for action and who want to burnish their reputations by linking or getting recommendations from other people looking for action. The exception would be recruiters, who are of course looking for people who are looking for action.

If you're a business who has tried to build a following on Twitter beyond the follows that come through your website, you know that most of the followers you get are like-minded people looking to sell you something. Of course, if you're a B2B company, that might not be such a bad thing.

The writer of the Target Marketing piece makes a lot of very good points on how to get people to interact with you on your primary website, instead of spinning your wheels with social. Also, I would say that YouTube and Google + are also good bets for search engine visibility, at least partially because they are owned and promoted by a search engine company.

And besides, if you have a really important potential client, you might want to serve something other than crackers.