Hi, I'm Peter Spande, director of TechRepublic and I'm heretoday to talk about the B2B marketing challenge. There are many things thatmake marketing to business professionals challenging. Three things that reallystand out most clearly are these: There are lots of people involved in the purchasedecision. These people have very different backgrounds, very different needsand very different attitudes and because all of these people ultimately have tosync up on one solution, that can often create some challenges.
Second challenge is money. A lot of these solutions cost alot of money. Now how much money, it depends on the companies. For somecompanies, $50,000 will be a massive purchase. For other companies, it might be50 million. At any case, if you don't make the right purchase, your job is injeopardy and the company may suffer as well. Both the number of people and thecomplexity that goes into these decisions coupled with the amount of dollars atstake.
The one thing that makes this most challenging of all andthat is this, time. Everything gets slowed down as you involve all of thesedifferent ingredients into the purchase process. So one way that we like tolook at marketing to these B2B professionals is through the use of we'recalling the marketing funnel. Certainly it's not unique to CNET Networks, butit's something that we find very useful when we look at developing programs andhelping our partners market to these professionals.
At the very top of the funnel, at the wider space, you'retalking to the largest number of people. This is more of the mass marketing andat this point, you're really working to make these people aware of yoursolution. You're trying to tell them what you think they need to know that theydon't know they need to know. So at this point you're really, you're doingbroad advertising, you're working in your PR, you're trying to make as big asplash as possible to pull these people in.
Moving further down the funnel, we're looking to cultivateinterest and at this point, you're really working on educating these people,taking that awareness and moving it to the next level, giving them moredetails, giving them a firmer grasp on the solution so that they can get theirarms around it and understand it at a more deeper level. In both these areas,you're connecting to a number of people, but at the interest level, there'sgoing to be a small group of people than there were at the awareness level.
By the time you get down into the third level, which we'recalling consideration, you're talking to an even smaller group of people andthose people have much more stringent requirements when they're looking at yoursolution. They are looking for, you know, product data. They are looking tocompare this to your competitors. They are looking at alternatives andultimately they're trying to make the best decision that will please all ofthese people, make the most efficient use of your money and ultimately once thesolution is implemented, hopefully save time. At the end of this marketingmission, you are handing off people who have developed an interest to yoursales people who are then turning this back into a sale for your company.
