Marketing Advice for the Slow Times : Best Practices in B2B Demand Generation

I belong to a group on Facebook called "What I Saw at the Direct Marketing Revolution" which sends me periodic emails and updates with thoughts and discussion about what is working (and not working) as the marketing landscape changes. Yesterday a bulletin went out to the group that was really interesting, and I hope they don't mind if I publish it here:

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Subject: Recessionary Direct Marketing

Okay – we may not be in an actual recession, but the economy is clearly slowin’ down and lots of direct marketers are hurtin’.

Here’s some advice from a guy who founded a direct marketing shop during the 1989 recession and survived the post 9-11 "depression” (yep, that would be me):

- Don’t panic. This too will pass.
- Use what you know about accountable advertising to justify the continuation of profitable direct marketing.
- If something must be cut, let it be the stuff that isn’t measured and doesn’t produce a damn thing.
- If you allow your new business pipeline to dry up, it may take a long time to recover even after the economy improves. But if you play your cards right and run smart direct marketing, you’ll be among the first to participate in the recovery.

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This email hit home for me on a number of levels. As many of you know, one of the first departments to get cut when a company is struggling is marketing. This was because it is so hard to quantify the value of marketing and the return on your marketing investments. Without being able to prove your worth, you become vulnerable.

No more.

Get a proper CRM tool in place, with good reporting. Use it in combination with a marketing campaign strategy involving mediums that lend themselves to proper monitoring like pay-per-click, webinars, email, and a solid series of landing pages with web forms that send information to your CRM about the source of every new lead. Make sure your CRM system is the same one sales uses to track their pipeline, and make it a requirement that all selling opportunities are credited to the marketing campaign or lead source that brought them the lead. Reward sales for doing it properly, and make sure they understand that they will make more money in the long run if they are diligent and honest about where the leads come from. Then sit back and watch with a stronger sense of security as you are able to selectively spend money only on the marketing campaigns that are actually driving revenue, and not just creating leads.

And best of all, you'll be able to prove it.