B2B Marketing in the Philippines Before the Internet and Now

Several of our clients at Leadfunnel.ph are Business-to-Business (B2B) marketing departments of sales-driven businesses. I got involved in B2B marketing through tech, so I've always been fascinated with lead generation before the era of the web. Here are some of those. People in the business say they're still quite effective for visibility, branding and lead generation.

• Trade magazines - This is the pre-internet counterpart of Content Marketing or display advertising in websites that carry content specific to your field. As long as the right people read them, they are an opportunity to reach your audience.
• Trade shows - My bias is lead generation, so whenever I can, I ask folks with booths in trade shows, conventions and conferences how many leads they get from their booths and their cost per lead (this is my segue to Leadfunnel.ph :-) The numbers vary, but I also hear about the importance of brand visibility and supporting the industry.
• Directories - Before search engines, you let your fingers do the walking with the telephone directory. How things have changed. Even the Philippine Yellow Pages now sells Google ads to SMEs. But don't let tech bias blind you to opportunities. We have a client who still makes a few million pesos of revenue a year coming from leads via phone calls that came from the (hard copy) Yellow Pages.

What's different with B2B Marketing with the Internet?
In a previous post, I already shared my personal list web technologies for B2B marketing. In terms of the actual work of B2B marketers, the main differences I think are the following:

• There are many more choices, but this makes choosing harder. Compare this to the old days when you just had a few options. But if you're up to the challenge, the opportunities abound.
• More data is available, but you need to new skills to capture and make sense of them. Every year, I train undergrads for the a global student competition sponsored by Google. It's very clear that the students who will succeed in this new world of marketing are those who are comfortable with data - huge swathes of it.
• It is easy to increase or decrease lead volume. I could not think of a downside to this.
• It could be more cost-effective or more expensive. This really depends on how well you are doing it.

I think the main job of a B2B marketer is to test different channels, compare them (in terms of lead volume, lead quality, cost per lead and cost per customer acquisition), and invest more in the winners. This is easier to do with digital channels, but the classic ones should not be neglected.

Are you a B2B marketer in the Philippines? What are other classic ways of doing local B2B marketing? What digital channels have worked best for you? Have you tried out Leadfunnel.ph?

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