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In business-to-business marketing, the products sold and the buying process are typically complex, requiring not one but a series of touches.

DMers grapple with countless challenges. What's the optimal number of touches? Which media make the greatest impact at various points of the process? How do you measure the effectiveness of each touch — and the effort as a whole?

Unfortunately, there are few reliable answers to these questions. But some principles are beginning to emerge about what works best.

The business case for integration is compelling. First, provided they work well together, mixed media can generate better results than a single medium. Second, if communications aren't delivering a consistent message they can cancel each other out. Customers expect reliable information from their vendors. Anything less can cause confusion and erode a brand's value.

But it isn't easy to pull this off, especially in medium-size and large companies. Functional silos have arisen in marketing communications, all with their own vocabularies, cultures, budgets and objectives. Coordinating them requires tenacity, a maniacal focus on the customer experience, and support from senior management.

But the payoff can be huge: a powerful, well-oiled machine. And the kicker is the bonus lead generators reap from brand communications. All outbound contacts with customers, whether they be customer-service or even billing-related messages, can potentially be harnessed to drum up leads.

The simplest way to gain this kind of leverage is to put the company's Web address — which has a registration offer prominently displayed on the home page — on all messages that go out to customers. The same principle applies to customer touch points that are less obviously part of marketing communications, such as packaging, point-of-purchase displays, billing statements — any instance when the customer comes in contact with the product or service.

Similarly, with a little effort, some of your messages can do even more to support lead generation.

To stimulate your thinking:

• Include a white paper offer, with response instructions such as an 800 number or a dedicated URL, in every press release.

• Ensure that all brand-awareness advertising includes an offer, a call to action and a response device.

• When executives give speeches, invite customers and prospects to attend.

There really is a potentially endless stream of good ideas for integrating the marketing communications function. The best way to approach this is to systematically review everything in your company that touches customers and prospects, and consider ways to convert those touch points into actionable inquiries that can be nudged along toward completed sales.

Ideally, business marketers seek to leverage the potency of all media channels simultaneously. The whole being greater than the sum of its parts, as they say.

Here are some examples of how mixed media can work well together:

• Telephone follow-up to direct mail

  This tried-and-true approach combines the telephone's deep penetration with mail's persuasive punch. When paired they can build on each other to deliver a lower cost per action than each element could on its own. Just make sure the follow-up call is a substantive part of moving the prospect along the buying process, and not simply an empty confirmation that a mailing arrived. In fact, telemarketing experts recommend that you avoid mentioning the mail piece during the call because it diverts the discussion from the objective at hand.

• Direct mail follow-up to phone

  Some business marketers reverse the process, by telephoning first, and following up with mail later. This works well when asking for a specific action, like attendance at a seminar. Calling also is a good way to qualify inquirers from trade shows, where many people may stop by your booth but only a few will ever become buyers. Rather than invest further in the inquirer by sending an expensive fulfillment package, a phone call can be used to screen out the duds.

• E-mail before and after direct mail

  As long as you already have some kind of business relationship with the target, e-mail enhances the communications mix thanks to its low cost. E-mail is proving unusable for cold prospecting, but for inquirers and current customers, it nicely reinforces key messages and provides an additional touch.

• Postcards as support for other media

  Some marketers find it's helpful to vary the mail format. Begin with a series of postcards, follow up with a letter and then a phone call or e-mail. Because the phone is so forceful and intrusive, you may find a simple postcard in advance is enough to grab attention.

• Print ads mailed as reprints

  It's wise to make your advertising work harder by redeploying it as part of an ongoing program for keeping in touch. Accompanied by a letter saying, “In case you missed our recent ad in such-and-such magazine…,” this technique provides a good excuse to contact your house file directly.

• Using corporate communications as “air cover.”

  Mass-media awareness campaigns, in such channels as television and print, provide excellent support for lead generation. If you can time your campaigns to coincide with (or follow shortly after) a branding effort, your response rates will be stronger than usual.

RUTH P. STEVENS (ruth@ruthstevens.com) is a visiting professor at Singapore Management University for the spring 2008 term. When in New York she consults on customer acquisition and retention, and teaches marketing to graduate students at Columbia Business School. She is the author of “The DMA Lead Generation Handbook” and “Trade Show and Event Marketing.”

The media mix is a function of several variables you need to examine:

• Cost

  As a rule of thumb, it makes sense to use lower-cost media in the early stages of the buying process and more expensive media later, as the likelihood of closing increases.

• Availability

  When are the industry trade shows scheduled during the year? Profitable banner-ad media may exist, but can you get enough to satisfy your need for leads?

• Time horizon

  Print is faster to create and place than direct mail, for example.

• Business objectives

  Your sales team may require more leads, say, in the first and fourth quarters.

To manage all these factors, a spreadsheet makes an excellent planning tool. Lay out the media options on a spreadsheet, conduct scenarios based on financial projections, and seek to optimize the communications stream. You can expand the spreadsheet to include other key points, like timing and geographic territory requirements.

In the chart below, the expected qualification rate is broken out by inquiry source, a refinement that can assist in making truly effective media decisions. You're likely to end up with some very inexpensive leads in your mix.

The unfortunate thing is that, typically, these leads won't be sufficient to meet your growth needs or support your sales force's quota. So you'll need to select several options, ranking them by ROI, availability and your lead-flow criteria, to come up with the best combination.

Medium	Volume	Cost per Thousand	Response Rate	Gross Inquiries	Qualification Rate	Qualified Leads	Cost per
Lead
Mail	30,000	$1,500	2%	600	25%	150	$300
Print	40,000	$100	.5%	200	20%	40	$100
Trade Shows	—	$15,000 per show	—	400	10%	40	$375
Banners	5,000	$50	.5%	25	40%	10	$25
Web Registrations	—	—	—	100	60%	60	$0