In Brief: While the jury is out on whether the US economy is headed for recession, businesses are sending signals that one could be imminent. We consider the argument for changing the marketing vs. sales investment mix, review the data on how B2B buyers make purchase decisions, and revisit the importance of content marketing.
The economic winds have shifted in the US. Our concern is with what you should be doing about it.
In a previous post, we described how marketing should change during a recession. Here we want to dive into the debate that is starting to happen in companies on what is more important right now, marketing or sales.
The argument goes something like this: in a buoyant economy your potential customers are actively seeking solutions like yours and it makes sense to advertise and do other marketing activities that generate inbound leads. But in an economic downturn, customers suddenly stop responding to advertising or other marketing outreach. This concludes that what's most important now is sales outbound activity from your reps to potential customers.
If potential customers are deferring purchases, does getting a call from your sales department change the picture?
We believe the inbound vs. outbound debate is a misunderstanding of how the B2B buying process works. Ample data has conclusively established that business buyers are savvy and do extensive research about potential vendors. According to a Bain survey, 80% to 90% already have a list of vendors in mind before the search process even begins. Even more striking is that 90% will ultimately choose a vendor from the initial list.
"We believe the inbound vs. outbound debate is a misunderstanding of how the B2B buying process works."
One of the more important ways your potential customers learn about your products is through digital content on your website and other sites where your company is mentioned or reviewed. If you aren't actively using content marketing, you are leaving the field wide open for your competitors.
Companies that try to use sales staff to mass educate their target market are using resources inefficiently. Consider an inside sales rep with $150,000 on-target compensation securing perhaps 5 meetings per week. Educating 25 customers a month for $12,500 is a very expensive proposition.
Making cuts in marketing budgets during a recession will leave companies lagging behind their competitors. A better approach is to change the mix of internal vs. external resources. Content marketing agencies, with a pool of dedicated writers and editors, can deliver more content, more quickly, and at better economics.
If companies drastically reconfigure their marketing-to-sales investment mix they will likely get wrong-footed and lose out to the competition. The better route is to focus on your customers' discovery process and find better ways of executing on your marketing objectives.
This article was previously published on LinkedIn Pulse.