Before the internet, marketing would “fish” for new customers much like deep sea fishing. Get out to the deep water, get the right bait for the fish you’re trying to catch set your line out and wait. You feel the rod jerk, set the hook and reel em’ in. As my grandfather would say, through billows of cigar smoke as I forlornly watched my still rod on his boat anchored off some shoal in Atlantic waters… “you need to have patience”.

The internet has now changed the game of fishing for customers from deep sea fishing to fly fishing in a mountain stream for willey cutthroat trout.

For example- marketing creates a direct marketing campaign using unique urls that are personalized with the prospect’s name and distributed via mass email blasts. The emails are targeted to specific groups of prospects equipped with cookies and tracking tools that alert the sales force when their prospects are looking at their personal url or micro-site. Imagine the surprise of the prospect as they click on the link they received via email when the phone rings to answer a call where a sales person states “I couldn’t help but notice you are looking at the offer I sent you via email… are there any questions I can answer for you?” The prospect politely declines while scanning his office for the hidden camera or wondering what else do you know about their internet travels.

This has happened. And it still does…

The transparency the internet offers is a powerful tool to see how prospects engage your marketing message. The instant reporting and real time alerts can tell sales people the campaign is working and who to follow-up on now that they know more about your organization or specific offer. But trying to engage in the next step of setting the hook must be done carefully. First impressions are key and coming across as too anxious or scaring your prospect with an Orwellian approach may cause irreversible harm in ever reaching that prospect again.

So back to that cold mountain stream and the internet metaphor; You can now see the fish in the shallow waters as they approach your drifting fly and watch as they rise all with the magic of analytics, cookies and tracking alerts. You can change the type of fly to get the desired response just like you can change your offer or your message. But let em’ take it before you set the hook. The mantra still holds true… “you need to have patience”.

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1. 2008 B2B Marketing Budgets- Spend More on Online Marketing
2. Marketing Can Radically Impact Sales
3. Is the Unique Selling Proposition (USP) dead?
4. Recession regression? Creative marketing can be the difference between a “good job” and a “goodbye”…
5. Sales Team vs. E-commerce – let the B2B battle begin

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