The Digital Train is leaving - Time to get Onboard

These days marketers must find ways to make the marketing mix produce sales-ready results as the economic slowdown persists through 2009. As they scale back on high-priced tactics like trade shows, direct mail, and print, marketers will have no choice but to embrace digital channels to close the demand generation gap. Luckily, I have heard the interactive whistle blowing, as most now put online channels at the top of their list for this year. Making the digital transformation stick this time means that:

Web sites must cut sales interaction costs. Compared with online interactions, person-to-person sales calls and meetings cost much more to execute. Marketers welcome Web leverage, as I believe that corporate sites will become more important in their marketing mix. With telesales and executive events producing less traction with buyers, Web sites become the main source of online information in the product selection, purchase, and implementation process. To capitalize on this trend, marketers must upgrade online experiences and shift from an inside-out perspective that talks incessantly about features and functions to an outside-in one that focuses on helping prospects and customers accomplish buying and adoption goals.

Digital channels must stretch the B2B marketing mix. In flush economic times, marketers abandon online channels that don't create immediate results and return to what's comfortable — trade shows, PR, and print. Tight budgets require stretching dollars further as marketers use email, Web-based events, online demos, and blogs to replace conventional tactics and create more engaging buyer experiences. Of the all digital tactics that figure more prominently in the 2009 marketing mix, 11 are digital approaches that create more targetable, measurable, and engaging interactions.

Web 2.0 tools must move from experimental to routine. Emerging Web 2.0 tools like microblogs, virtual trade shows, and wikis — as well as long-established tactics like print ads, trade shows, and industry analyst firms — won't figure prominently in the marketing mix this year. Watch virtual trade shows in this space because business buyers — facing cuts in corporate travel — listed these online environments second to support forums as key sources of information they will tap in the coming months to inform purchase decisions.