The Incognito Salesman

Newsletter should be viewed as an effective marketing tool, and not just an expensive throwaway.

- Dr Pk Chatterjee

Corporate promotion has long been accepted as an essential ingredient of a sound business, be it B2C or B2B. In today’s highly competitive and fast-moving market, corporate promotion is essential as no firm automatically becomes known to the market; similarly, neither do products get positioned by themselves nor sell because they are superior, are first of a kind, or have an edge over the competition until their differential merits are communicated well to the target customer. Communication is also essential to first create and then maintain brand equity.

B2B industrial marketing is an arduous and heterodox profession compared to B2C, as it is engineering and technology-oriented and end-to-end solution-based. It is also more rational than emotional, and dictated by past customer firm relationship. In addition, due to limited customer base and strategic dependence on a few corporate houses/clients, ongoing relationship with the customer is vital, indispensable and major business asset of the firms. For such B2B firms, the greatest opportunities lie in keeping, retaining, growing and managing the existing customer rather than finding new ones. This heightens the distinct need for building a strong firm-customer relationship through corporate communication and promotion.

The aspects that are important for B2B industrial marketing firms to stay competitive are:

- Unrelenting customer centricity across the organisation as its primary mandate

- A digital-first brand building strategy