B2B Marketing “Trucs”

Despite incorporating a little French into the title ("trucs" means truths) the first B2B session at AD:TECH had a tough time competing with the Big 5 Ideas session next door. Panelists Marty Lash of Mitsubishi Electric, Tim Barngrover of Agency ClearGauge, and Wendy Ravech of Akamai shared their thoughts on reaching B2B buyers to a small audience.

For the first two panelists, the “trucs” boiled down to a very logical methodology of market-> measure -> and optimize. Some of the specific details shared turned out to be the most interesting take-aways of the session.

Marty Lash of Mitsubishi Electric highlighted six steps in their lead generation process for video projectors:

1. Identify success metrics. Understand sales goals and set appropriate benchmarks. The most challenging aspect of this for them has been integrating the call center as a measurable component of the campaign.
2. Build your strategy. Define a clear message. Marty is not a fan of offers here unless you are absolutely sure prospect has a true interest in the product.
3. Tracking. Implement an end-to-end campaign tracking system. In particular, Mitsubishi Electric uses Urchin for analytics, MediaPlex, Atlas OnePoint for bid management, a proprietary call center tool, and Optimost for landing page testing.
4. Establish a testing routine and use it.
5. Create a lead qualification program where you grade leads as they come in. A big motivation here is to maintain sales enthusiasm.
6. Analyze and re-apply.

Mitsubishi Electric finds that as much as 70% of the lead referrals they deliver to their dealer network result in a projector purchase. Roughly half of those will be for a Mitsubishi product. Search is viewed as an essential component of their campaign since 70-80% of projector buyers do their pre-purchase research online.

Tim Barngrover repeated many of the ideas from the first presentation, but added that B2B marketers should be more prospect-centric than product-centric. Nurture your lead pipeline and provide site visitors with multiple next steps.

Wendy Ravech of Akamai pursues a business development strategy more akin to a B2C program. They partner with their customers to co-sponsor particular events and build awareness of the Akamai content delivery tools. For instance, when a game developer offered a sneak peak to conference goers, Akamai partnered with them to manage the delivery and download and generate new business leads at the same time. Something Wendy describes as a win-win for both parties. Truc, truc.

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