In a Business to Business Marketing Strategy, the 'Big Wait' is a Costly Mistake

The inability to pull the trigger on key marketing decisions is a curious problem. On one hand, a properly selected, well-conceived business to business marketing strategy is the key to a company's growth and expansion. For many companies that have been struggling, or are stalled, implementing a marketing solution that will generate leads and sales is Priority One. So, why is it that such a decision is often put off with some form of "we think we will wait?" Many business owners and execs have no sense of the tremendous liability of waiting to start a business to business marketingeffort. By waiting, they're not confronting how the game is played. Business competition is like a race. When you're not moving forward, you're losing ground. Although clearly there can be a legitimate reason to delay a business-to-business marketing strategy, there are also reasons that sound reasonable, but which are thinly veiled excuses to put off decision making. Famous examples include: "Even though we're interested, we're not going to start a marketing effort until things improve first," "We think marketing will help, but we want to wait until the end of the year," and "We've got to get our ducks in a row so let's talk again in several months." There are immediate and long-term benefits that can be achieved through a full marketing publicity program that illustrate why "waiting" is counter-productive to your strategy. An aggressive online marketing publicity program designed to generate Internet news exposure can drive up the client's keyword rankings on Google and Yahoo!. Within weeks of beginning such a program, a properly distributed press release can drive qualified traffic to your website and stimulate call-in leads. Furthermore, dramatic increases in Google rankings can occur in a few months. 60 percent of all Internet sales go to the companies in the top five search results, so every single day that your company is not at the top it is missing out on legitimate sales opportunities that are being captured by the competition. Generating a large volume of articles published in print is also a critical element in a business to business marketing strategy. but there are inevitable delays in this process. For instance, editors that are approached today with editorial material will likely be working on an issue that won't be out for two to four months. Waiting to start only compounds the delay and places the company's recovery further into the future. The sooner you implement an appropriate business to business marketing strategy strategy, the sooner you will benefit from the leads and sales that will result.