Clicks 'n Conversions Blog

This article was first published May 20, 2008 on the Tatum Marketing blog

This week I’m going to write about the fundamentals of technology marketing. Hey. It may sound boring but it’s a great competitive advantage. If you pay attention to the fundamentals, you’ll waste less money.

I’ve been thinking about this topic since Leonard Wadewitz of CompTIA University asked me to update one of our special marketing reports as an article for their soon-to-be-launched newsletter. He thinks the message is one his audience of information technology resellers will find valuable.

While I was looking at the report – called 5 Fundamental Strategies of Successful B2B Marketing Investment written about a year ago –I realized it’s been too long since I’ve covered these factors here. So, here we go.

Here’s the first of those fundamentals.

Marketing’s job is to create sales opportunities. Said another way, marketing’s job is to make people want to do business with your company.

When you read that in a sentence it seems pretty obvious. Marketing should 1) generate traffic or inquiries, or 2) convert that traffic or inquiries into leads or customers.

But either it’s easier to forget this concept than one would imagine or it’s harder to understand. I know that because I see far too many technology company CEOs and marketing specialists struggling with marketing resource allocation decisions that really should be no-brainers.

Some examples of marketing that doesn’t help sales are pretty obvious.

• Image (or brand) adverting with no clear, compelling call to action and no designated spot in the marketing and sales process.
• Slick, multi-color corporate brochures that end up in boxes in the storage room.
• Flash animation on a website homepage.

There are also other, less obvious, ways to waste marketing funds by buying things that don’t contribute to sales. Anytime you spend money on a single marketing tactic – a trade show, an email campaign, a blog, for example – without identifying a measurable link to sales, you run the risk of dumping money into a black hole. (More on this tomorrow.)

Before you spend a dollar on another marketing program – or your first marketing program – ask yourself or your marketing people a simple question: How will this contribute to sales?

If you don’t get a good answer, close your wallet.

Disagree? Let’s hear it.