Industry friend and all around character Jeffrey Ogden (Fearless Competitor) recently pointed his readers to an article by Paul Dunay—and it is worth a read. A summary:

Marketers in the mid-60's, and for the most part since then, have followed the Four P's:

Product
Price
Placement
Promotion

Paul opines, and I agree, that today's B2B marketers must follow the Four C's:

Content
Connection
Communication
Conversion

One reply to Paul's blog was that the Four C's are simply a subset of "Promotion". I disagree because I feel that marketing during the era of "Mad Men" was more manipulative, more promotional and more in keeping with P.T. Barnum's philosophy that "there is a fool born every minute" while today's marketing is more about education (content) and connection.

In addition to more and better content, buyers today expect a connection. Connection, or resonance, is why "green" sells. Connection also satisfies the need for surety—a need that used to be satisfied by placement and promotion.

I don't entirely subscribe to the theory that the Internet has changed everything about marketing and sales. Yes, we do buy books, movies and laptops over "the net". However, in the B2B world the more senior the buyer the more they expect to be sold, albeit by very sophisticated, "trusted advisors" (I don't really like this description, but it fits here). Senior executives don't have time to spend hours combing the Internet for information—they depend on people they trust (often people outside of their own company and frequently professional sales people) to help them understand how their products and/or services are perceived in the market, potential solutions for any deficiencies, differentiation among those solutions—and they expect detailed documentation on expected return—all without spending hours in front of their laptops (in fact they could not get this information even if they spent months in front of their laptop).

Targeted lead generation, like other marketing, is about content, connection, communication and conversion. Successful companies blend media to deliver content, build connection, stay in front of buyers with effective communication (note: not a carpet bombing of emails) and timely conversion.

By Dan McDade