Marketing will continue to play a greater role in B2B, but not just “inbound marketing.”  Marketing defined is “all activities involved in taking a product from manufacture to market.”  This, naturally, includes branding, distribution channels, research & development, promotion, advertising, content creation, blogging, SEO, and the rest of the marketing mix, not the least of which is “sales.”  By the way, sales lead generation still remains the first goal of any marketing effort.

That’s why I like publicity so much; it is the catalyst that boosts the impact of any marketing program.

Publicity amplifies the impact of a new website, puts your product’s advantages in front of audiences and provides real-time data on where to advertise, it can open new distribution channels, introduce your products to new markets functionally and geographically, and create many other sales opportunities.

As David Meerman Scott wrote in “The New Rules of Marketing & PR,” today, savvy marketing and PR professionals use news releases to reach buyers directly. Your primary audience is no longer just journalists. Today the audience is millions of people with internet access and offers direct-to-consumer access.

For B2B companies, this new reality offers tremendous marketing opportunities. Scott advocates something I’ve been doing for my clients for over 39 years and that is, “Don’t just send news releases when big news is happening; find good reasons to send them all the time.” Those good reasons involve all of the ways in which your products can solve problems. Don’t assume people have identified their own problems. Henry Ford famously said, “If I asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

As Dan Lambert, Marketing Manager for Anomet Products, Inc., a small manufacturer of custom clad composite metal products for aerospace, electronic, instrumentation, and medical device applications said, “Don’t be afraid to explore new markets or regions. Cost-effective product releases allow you to try new markets or new market segments without breaking the budget.”

Illustrating how your products solve problems is essential in B2B marketing. If you want to get a feel for how this is done, visit our Newsroom and see a couple hundred examples or hit the “client news” tab and see thousands of published examples from leading media outlets. You’ll find a company similar to yours.

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© 2016 Steven M. Stroum (with permission to share)