Strategic marketing a business-to-business “B2B” company involves teamwork from the president on down.
Getting everyone on the same page for B2B marketing strategies can sometimes be the toughest part of a president’s job. As Internet marketing specialists, Professional Web Services needs to get the feedback from our business customers, concerning their customers through the sales and marketing personnel of what is happening with online advertising campaigns, website landing pages, information requests, referral leads, and current and future products or services. In addition to this direct information from sales and marketing, there is a need from the engineering department to provide the nuts and bolts information of what is being designed, manufactured, or fabricated for their business customers. All of this information must be taken into account when maintaining a website.
As technology changes, or improvements are made in the manufacturing processes, it is important to share the information in a way that does not directly divulge intellectual property rights of either the business being served, nor of the company processes themselves. Simply staying quiet is no longer an option for businesses today. B2B Businesses jump ship as quickly as they can do a search online for the next manufacturer, fabricator, or the technology expert that can solve a problem with a (Wow I didn’t know I could do that!) new solution.
In addition to the competitive nature of just about every industry on the planet today, there is an international competitiveness, that the Internet has made our planet into a very small world indeed. China for one example has become a powerhouse. With their low overhead in labor rates, along with their relatively week adherence to pollution controls, companies in the developed sectors are having their products, OEM parts, and components built in China at a fraction of the cost of what any of the developed countries in the world can build them for.
Take for example, the PCB industry. As recently as ten years ago, the United States was king in the manufacturing of printed circuit boards. However, the Internet has made the United States a past performance item for PCB manufacturing. I have visited many printed circuit shops and can tell you that the United States can’t build a circuit board at the prices that are quoted from China. The raw materials, laminate prices, copper costs, and carbide drills alone are more than what many of the boards can be built here in the USA.
The Internet has also made it easy to transfer information at light speed from one end of the globe to the other. Computers process the data in a fraction of a second. Software programs are used in India to generate the circuit board data from Gerber files. Drill and rout programs can automatically be generated and then transferred to a Chinese manufacturing plant where labor rates are a fraction of anywhere else in the world.
Businesses have squeezed their suppliers so much, that many of them have simply gone out of business. Is there any doubt, in anyone’s mind that we are living in a very competitive landscape? For this reason alone, it is important to maximize a business’s exposure online.
The Online Landscape
But, that brings us back to the teamwork scenario. A B2B business has to work as a team from all facets, in order to maximize the marketing potential available through the online landscape. The online landscape is ripe for opportunities. To take advantage of the situation is like playing a baseball game. Everyone must work together in order for the team to be successful. Take for example of managing an online advertising campaign. Web metrics can only do so much. Sure a person can figure out the conversion from impressions to clicks, but can a person tell with Web metrics alone, how many of these clicks became actual customers? No way. Web metrics can give you an idea of what percentage of people that click on an online Ad go to a specific page, or sign up for a specific item, but Web metrics alone can not tell you for sure if they became a customer later on down the line. The only way to get exact details is to ask.
Why is the Concept of People Metrics so Foreign?
This goes to the first contact principal. When dealing with a customer for the first time, does anyone ask the simple question how they found your business? So, a person says they found your business on the Internet. Great, but did they click on an Ad, did they click on the website in the search results, did they come from an online directory, did they already know your name and search for your company using the search engines, or what was the keyword, keywords, or key phrases were typed into the search bar at Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft Live Search to find your company on the Internet?
The importance of feedback can not be overstated. Without feedback, a company has no way of knowing of how successful anything is. This requires the first or second contact person asking the simple question, and documenting that information for upper management, sales and marketing, and the person or group in charge of Internet marketing and online advertising campaigns.
With solid marketing information, the Internet marketing specialists can make adjustments to online advertising campaigns and improvements to the website design for better overall customer conversions.
Engineers Need To Tell Stories
Many of the businesses that are looking for solutions for manufacturing of their products, or technology solutions to a particular software or hardware issue, often converse with the resident engineers of many of the manufacturing, fabrication, or software technology companies in the world. How often are these stories being shared between what an engineer has talked about with a customer and the sales and marketing staff, or the Internet marketing team? If everyone is just doing their own job mode, your business is missing a wonderful sales and marketing opportunity.
Internet marketing experts do not magically know the inside scoop from each and every business in the world. Every market sector has its own unique set of keywords used. The only way online marketing personnel can learn about that information is for it to be shared with an individual or the Internet marketing team. Companies that supply technology services, or various OEM products to a wide variety of fields, will have a different communications language with the engineers from those market sectors. That is why, it is important to share that information with the team.
Teamwork is your B2B key to success.
Make Professional Web Services part of your marketing team and we will go above and beyond what your expectations are with Internet marketing services designed to produce results for your company. It’s all a matter of Results Oriented Internet Marketing Services.
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