In 1996 business-to-business marketers in the United States spent $6.3 billion on direct marketing. Of this total, $1.3 billion was spent by man¬ufacturers promoting their products to business customers, while service firms spent $i.1 billion on direct response marketing. Other major users of business-to-business direct marketing include wholesalers, financial ser¬vices, communications, transportation, utilities, construction, and mining.

Of the $6.3 billion spent on direct marketing annually, 6o percent-$3.8 billion—is spent on direct mail. The rest, according to Business Marketing magazine, is spent on telemarketing, space advertising, broad-cast advertising, and other marketing communications.
The Business Marketing Association recently surveyed its members concerning their budgets. The results showed that half have budgets of $1 million or more.

According to a recent cover story in Business Marketing magazine, annual business-to-business direct marketing revenues are now approaching $1 trillion. Target Marketing magazine reports that in 1995 business services generated nearly $ 78 billion in direct market¬ing sales, and chemicals and allied products generated $z6 billion in direct marketing sales.d just one other senior person as a final arbiter. Instead of asking people pay their subscriptions immediately, we suggested they send us a post-dated banker's order, so they could try the publication for three months without risk. (And very salutary it is, too, when your readers say with one universal voice: 'What ?' Humility is a fine quality engender in copywriters. And the fact that the creative department has produced 20 of them will not make them any better than if they had come up with one brilliant idea on the back of an envelope.

 

B2B Direct Mail

 

For example, reaching the consumer world is often done through mass media, such as television, and national magazines. On the direct mail and telemarketing side, it is most often done based on demographic criteria—whether the consumer lives in an apartment or a single-family home, whether or not the consumer is married, what the household income of the consumer is, and so on.

 

The larger the business, the more likely it becomes that many individuals are involved in a business decision. So, reaching multiple levels in an organization may be necessary, and there are "subworlds" within each business, based on the kind of product you are selling and the most appropriate audience for it. As for the "in-between" world of the in-home or very small business, that world is becoming more and more attractive to direct marketers. As a result, an increasing number of lists targeting these smaller businesses are becoming available.

 

This site is here to help you achieve those results. It recognizes that business and consumer direct marketing are different in many ways, shows you how to maximize the effectiveness of existing busi¬ness-to-business marketing efforts, and outlines how direct marketing techniques, applied to traditional business-to-business marketing com¬munications, can make those communications many times more powerful and effective.

My, how things have changed! When I started my career in 1979, "business to business" was known as "industrial marketing" and "direct marketing" was called "mail order." In those days, management at firms selling business and industrial products seemed content with adver¬tising and PR programs that "built image" or "created awareness." More was not expected of marketing communications.

But those days are gone and they'll never be back.

 

Today more and more marketers demand a tangible result from their advertising—a qualified, measurable, direct response that can be converted into sales—the kind of response that only direct marketing, not general advertis¬ing, can produce.

 

 

Response Makers - B2B Direct Mail