In the dark ages of B2B marketing communications, circa 1980, the goal was to get your snail-mailed communications past the office gatekeepers (a/k/a "executive assistants"), and onto the desks of your targeted decision-makers. Most often, however, the sheer volume of first-class mail processed every morning by office gatekeepers made it more likely that your personalized pitch letter and costly sales brochure would end up, unopened, in the garbage can. Dead on arrival. But starting in the mid-1990s, corporate adoption of email communication changed the dynamics of direct marketing. First-class mail volume dropped from a peak of 59 billion pieces in 1996, to 23 billion pieces in 2013 — a 61
Surprisingly, a significant number of professional services firms continue to resist building online brand visibility as a business development strategy. The excuses we hear from them most often include: “We’re in a relationship business.” “New clients don’t find us by searching online.” “Our business is driven exclusively by referrals.” Although often it’s a waste of time to push back on their refusal to embrace online visibility, these are 3 reasons that we use to plant some seeds of doubt: The Way People Make Decisions Has Changed Forever In the pre-internet world, personal relationships, referrals and endorsements played a significant role in the decision-making process. Before making a
