B-to-B Direct Marketing: When Close to Perfect Is Good Enough

I think most business-to-business marketers should aim for “get it out” and “good enough” rather than aim for perfection when it comes to marketing to drive leads and sales.

Why?

Because aiming for perfection–in addition to perfection’s being nearly impossible to achieve–results in your marketing campaigns and materials spending far too much time in the concept and development stages, causing significant delays in delivering your lead generating messages to prospective customers.

Or worse, your marketing messages never get delivered at all.

With all this in mind, here are some ideas and resources to consider:

• Instead of constantly reinventing the marketing wheel, consider repurposing or refreshing your existing materials. The reasons someone should engage your company now are often the same as they were last year, so why not simply update the marketing materials that were successful in the past? We are usually sick of our marketing materials long before they stop working with our prospects.

Instead of trying to come up with oh-so-clever copy, focus on crafting clear, well-targeted headlines and messages, which offer real solutions to your prospective customers’ problems or pains. If you think you have a knack for writing, a great book on the subject is “The Copywriter’s Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Copy That Sells” by Robert W. Bly. Or you can find copywriters who can do the job for you by searching on the Internet using phrases like “B2B copywriter” or “direct mail copywriter.”

Remember, longer copy that is easy to skim (using subheads, bullets, callouts, boldface) works with both those prospects who prefer to read all the details and those who prefer to get right to the bottom line.

• Avoid typos and grammatical errors by using a proofreading service such as ProofreadNow.com.

• Instead of using costly giveaways, make compelling “how to” information offers or “buy now” calls-to-action that will get prospective customers to respond. Mark Joyner’s book, “The Irresistible Offer: How to Sell Your Product or Service in Three Seconds or Less” is worth reading.

• Instead of spending a lot of time creating fancy, expensive mailers, fire up your laser printer and send personalized letters to your prospects. Then use window envelopes so that the address on the letter shows through to avoid having to address the envelopes. Or use one of the online lettershop services such as MailersClub or NetPost to mail-merge, print, and mail your business letters.

You can also use postcards as a less costly alternative. Companies such as AmazingMail, Modern Postcard, or Touchpoint Mail can help you get your postcards designed, printed, and mailed cost-effectively.

E-mails to your opt-in list of prospects are another option to developing more costly mailers.

• Instead of creating printed brochures, consider printing pages from your Website instead. If you’re worried about your company’s image, place the pages in a glossy file folder, imprinted with your logo.

• Instead of developing seminars, workshops, or executive briefings on your own, consider partnering with another company or organization to coproduce an event, or simply take your prospects as your guest to an event sponsored by a larger organization.

• Instead of paying for custom photography, consider low-cost stock photo Websites like iStockphoto or Photos.com.

• In addition to hiring full-time people, consider part-timers to help get the marketing job done. If you need specialized expertise on a project-by-project basis, consider hiring independent contractors such as copywriters, designers or event coordinators. And if you’re willing to trade experience for enthusiasm, consider hiring one or more interns from your local college or university.

So next time you find yourself thinking about how to make your marketing perfect, I challenge you to think instead about what constitutes being good enough, and how to get it done sooner rather than later. After all, no one can respond to your business-to-business marketing if it doesn’t reach them in time or, even worse, never at all.

M. H. “Mac” McIntosh is president of North Kingstown, RI-based b-to-b marketing consultancy Mac McIntosh ( www.sales-lead-experts.com).