What is Digital Business Development?
What is Digital Business Development?
Are Your Customers Shopping Without You?
The traditional sales process is one in which the sales representative connects with a prospect and leads that prospect through a discovery and education process that hopefully results in the prospect becoming a customer. If this is still what happens at your company, you might want to consider if it still works as effectively as it once did.
Today your prospects are shopping without you. They are self-educators who know what they need and how to find it. They are self-educated about your products, you’re competitors’ products, and your attitude towards business.
We live in a digital age in which anything and everything can be discovered online within seconds. As a result, people no longer need to be sold to, they need to be engaged, and then they may buy from you. Some recent studies indicate that for B2B companies, 80 percent of the time the buyer finds the seller, and it is much higher than that for B2C companies.
Three Technologies That Have Simultaneously Reached Mass Adoption Have Changed Everything
As a digital business development and marketing consultant, I am constantly doing research on the future of marketing. I have reached several conclusions about why and how everything has changed. To start with, there has been a dramatic change in how people communicate with one another, learn, and behave. How did this happen, and how did it happen so fast?
The mass adoption of three technologies (broadband Internet, mobile Internet and social media) all happening simultaneously have created a perfect storm—a rare combination of circumstances that has forever changed the way we buy, sell and live.
The Internet has been around for what seems to be a long time now, but it is only recently that people have seen broadband Internet as a must-have at home as well as in the workplace. Marketing companies and savvy marketers rapidly adapted to that change and started to move to online advertising and the use of video. People now “need” not “want” mobile Internet at high speeds. Combine these two elements with the reality that you are not a player in this world unless you have some type of social media presence, and you have the perfect storm.
Seek First to Influence, Then Engage With a Consistent Message
What is Digital Business Development?
Promotional marketing today is all about influencing people before you get to engage them — a concept I refer to as Digital Business Development. If you are a marketing professional, you’re quite familiar with the four Ps of Marketing (Product, Price, Place and Promotion). Digital Business Development incorporates a fifth P—PEOPLE. Not only your people, but also the people who make the decisions on whether or not to purchase your product.
Digital Business Development and targeted messaging should be the key business strategy for forward-thinking companies. Targeted messaging allows a company to shape opinions and motivate behavior. Many of the Fortune 500 companies have already developed messaging strategies and implemented them effectively in the market. But, they have large marketing budgets and can afford the new skill sets required to develop and implement this type of strategy.
These companies are innovators and early adopters of a holistic communication strategy. Some mid-market companies fall into the early adopter category, but it is by no means mainstream yet. This means that small and medium businesses can achieve significant competitive advantage by developing and implementing a communication strategy ahead of the curve.
Frozen Fire is a Dallas internet marketing and video production company that helps companies harness the most powerful aspect of modern marketing—the internet—to engage customers in memorable and meaningful ways. Ways that ignite sales and business growth. Contact us to learn how we can help your business.