September 2003

Distributors: Old Channels, New Sales

Instead of bypassing your distributors, charge up those sales channels. Keep them in the loop by communicating better via the Internet. Make sure they can get everything they need—from spec sheets to pricing to marketing materials—right from your site, quickly and painlessly

Lower costs. Faster delivery of information. More sales. It all adds up to partner loyalty—a treasure you can't buy.

It's becoming a tidal wave. Most of us have always known that top level (now popularly known as C-level) executives are the organization's ultimate spending authority. But as technology enables us to dig deeper into data about our target audiences, marketers at the most sophisticated companies are creating campaigns that target execs by their personal profiles and behavior patterns.

Getting too close for comfort? Yes, you might think so--and I know what you mean--but consider the massive volume of stuff we're all exposed to. To say we get hit with several thousand "impressions" (newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, email, Internet, etc.) per day is not an exaggeration. How the heck do you pick out what you can really use from such a deluge?

But if you get an email that addresses a very specific issue you faced yesterday and it's written in terms of how you, the CEO, perceive the issue (not, for example, the way your engineer sees it), the chances you'll read the darn thing go way up. And the chance that you might actually pass that information on to the engineering people in your company goes up, too.

Let's face it. Suggestions from the CEO carry a lot more weight than an ad that simply addresses what engineering wants. Interest at the top is a given; staff don't have to upsell everything they look at.

So in spite of the fact that top execs might not like being asked to reveal who they really are, the approach can result in more focused marketing that could lead to more efficient exchanges between sellers and buyers--and better overall use of everybody's time and money. So maybe it's not a bad idea.

Look for top-exec-targeted publications to balloon in ad revenues--and maybe rates.