Antidirect Marketing (Not B2C, it's C2B) or Marketing 2.0 - Making Customers Come to Business

Question: What is the most effective way to approach potential prospects? Through cold-calls? referrals? or others?

by Leo Ky

Dear Leo,

The selection of an approach depends on the market you are targeting and your strategy to get to the target market.

We are an outsourcing company with an offshore design studio in the Indian Subcontinent. Our clients are Commercial Photography Agency, Professional Photographers, Graphics Design firms, Freelance Graphic Designers, Corporate Identity Design companies, Catalog & Brochure Design Studios, Prepress Companies, Desktop Publishing Firms, and Web Design & Development service providers. We work globally and the whole world is our customer.

Now, we can't go on making cold calls to potential clients or assign referrals in different areas of the world. We have already tried that and had a pretty bad experience. Moreover, that would incur huge operation cost as well as reputation cost. Again, cold calls are now considered voice spamming. Email spamming has also lost its respect as an instrument of direct marketing over the internet. Often direct marketing is a pain for consumers or customers.

That's why we prefer Non-traditional Indirect Marketing, which is gaining popularity. Which I would like to call Anti-direct Marketing or C2B Marketing. While Direct Marketing is concerned about going the the potential customers and making sales (B2C), Indirect Marketing is concerned about making customers come to the business (C2B).

The strategy for getting the Customers come to your business (C2B) can be different for different companies. Success factor, risk, and cost is also determinant for adopting appropriate strategy. Some of the strategies are broken into categories below:

Content Marketing

• Corporate Content (Brochure, Catlog, etc.) Mass Marketing to target groups
• Press Release Marketing
• Blog Marketing
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
• Search Engine Advertising (SEA) or Pay Per Click (PPC)

Database Marketing

• RSS, Atom, XML feed Marketing
• Joining Trade & Professional Associations or Establishing one
• Getting yourself listed in the major Directories, Yellow Pages, White Pages
• Providing corporate information to all probable access points or media by your target customers

Social Marketing

• Online Social Media Marketing (SMM)
• Involving in social activities that involves high concentration of your target market
• Exchanging strategic benefits with other businesses for free trials to the potential clients (e.g. A Motorbike co. can give free bike ride in the transition time to those who come to fix their car or bike in a Auto Repair Shop. A after-bath hair lotion, can be given in small sachet for free with any big brand shampoo)

This list is only the tip of an ice-berg. However, marketing research is essential to understand which type of Non-traditional Indirect Marketing you would choose. You can use paid surveys or mystery buying to understand the behavior of your customers.

Philanthropists are the greatest marketers, and vice versa