Whether in geometry, or online marketing, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. The most efficient way to generate sales leads online is to go straight to your prospects, on sites they frequent, rather than taking roundabout, often inconsistent, approaches. We like to call this most-efficient approach straight-line marketing. Because it is so efficient, the vast majority, if not all, of your online marketing budget should be invested in straight-line activities.
Basically, a straight-line marketing activity is any activity that features your company on specialized sites where your prospects hang out. These activities can include email campaigns, webcasts, content promotion, banner ads, newsletter sponsorships—so long as you’re actively and creatively promoting yourself on that type of site, you’re utilizing a straight-line marketing approach.
Here’s a three-step technique to using straight-line marketing:
Step 1: Identify a third-party site that day in and day out attracts large numbers of your prospects (such as, ahem, MSDynamicsWorld.com).
Step 2: Use one or more programs offered through that site to market your company.
Step 3: Generate tons of serious sales leads and close deals.
Unfortunately, many ISVs get sucked into trying to bypass the straight-line approach, and allocate more of their online budget to inbound, or roundabout, marketing activities like SEO, Google Ads, and social media ads than makes financial sense. These activities are primarily designed to generate traffic to your website, but to get that traffic, you end up taking a circuitous and random route. It’s the equivalent of driving a boat around the middle of the ocean looking for fish, when you could be shooting those fish much more quickly and easily in a barrel.
Let’s quickly examine the pros and cons of each of the three main passive marketing options out there.
1. Per-click search engine ads – Consisting primarily of Google ads, these have revolutionized advertising because they allow for individual targeting. There’s no question they yield usable results. But at what cost? The big problem with search engine ads is that the more successful a particular search term becomes in harvesting leads, the more expensive the term quickly becomes, driving up the cost per lead to sometimes astronomical heights. Costs of $10 or even $20 or more per click are common for Dynamics-related search terms. And it can take in some situations dozens and dozens of clicks to yield a usable lead.
2. Social media (i.e. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) – Because of the mammoth amount of demographic data social media companies possess about their users, these vehicles allow much more precise targeting than conventional advertising or direct mail. The big challenge for Dynamics ISVs is that social media tends to be more “social” than business oriented. For example:
Facebook
Pro: Lots of demographic data on each of their users, which can allow advertisers to show their message and brand to people they want to reach.
Con: People use Facebook to get news, and post pictures of family and pets. This is good for consumer-focused businesses, but not so good for B2B organizations, because people typically don’t like to mix their personal and professional lives.
Twitter
Pro: Millions of users, and you can target your ads to reach the followers of specific people in the Dynamics community.
Con: Although it’s definitely better for B2B organizations than Facebook, creating a good Twitter presence is challenging, and the pay-off for most companies is yet to be seen. People will follow you if you have something interesting to say, but will tune out if you stop being interesting.
LinkedIn
Pro: Lots of users and much more business oriented than any other social media platform.
Con: Primarily used as a job recruitment tool, and most people don’t log in regularly unless they are looking for a job or trying to make connections. Not necessarily a bad thing for its users, but for advertisers it can be frustrating since they aren’t getting the consistent attention necessary to gain a strong ROI.
3. SEO. Trying to maximize your presence in organic search engine rankings is definitely a useful thing. But, how much effort and money should you put toward that? SEO consultants can charge astronomical sums, with little or no guarantee of success. Plus, many Dynamics ISVs have no way to create the seemingly endless supply of fresh content essential for drawing prospective prospects to a single company’s site on a regular basis.
If you emphasize the wrong online marketing options, you could wind up not only paying two, three or more times as much for each promising sales lead as you would with better options, but you will inevitably rob your company of precious sales revenues.
Our philosophy: Stop squandering your marketing budget on hit-or-miss online marketing approaches, and instead focus your efforts and marketing investments on straight-line activities. You’ll see an immediate increase in sales lead productivity and improved ROI, plus you’ll get more for each marketing dollar than anywhere else.
