Advice aplenty can be had about growing a direct-to-consumer business online, particularly one with a brick-and-mortar storefront.
That is mainly because, like pornography driving technology, digital marketing is driven by direct-to-consumer advances.
Options for B2B business development using digital means have been farther between fewer choices, it seems. Digital marketing technology has struggled to effectively crack today’s mobile-driven world.
Reliance on traditional relationship building and using proven selling tools for building books of business has been hard to nudge.
E-mail marketing is the key digital tool used for relationship building and converting prospects into clients. Salesforce is cornering that market.
LinkedIn appears to have tools and targeting that can help, but solutions for how to leverage that network have seemed elusive.
Meanwhile, parking in a suburban grocery store in a hands-free state means seeing increasing numbers of parked drivers hunched over a glowing screen or talking on the phone with their car turned off.
E-mail in that world may be effective, but also feels oddly antiquated.
The issue in trying to leverage digital tools in today’s B2B marketing world is really quite simple: The Internet cuts out the middle man.
There is no two ways around it. Time and time again the Internet has cut out the middle man.
There have been lawsuits, but little settled law. Antitrust for the online giants is coming, but how and when is unknown. New U.S. ‘digital privacy’ and ‘digital rights’ laws are certainly coming, too, but following the European laws or writing our own?
Meanwhile, no matter what results from these looming tectonic digital shifts one fact will remain … the Internet cuts out the middle man.
For businesses marketing to other businesses a sense of order to what feels like disorder sounds comforting.
Reliance on tried and true e-mail marketing — Salesforce — feels sound moving forward.
But is that a missed opportunity?