Seth Godin just posted a pithy observation: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/01/sold-or-bought.html

Some things are bought–like bottled water, airplane tickets and chewing gum. The vendor sets up shop and then waits, patiently, for someone to come along and decide to buy.

Other things are sold–like cars, placement of advertising in magazines and life insurance. If no salesperson is present, if no pitch is made, nothing happens.

This is an interesting observation, especially considering that Seth Godin has also popularized the concept of permission marketing – which is accepted in some circles as the “only” way to sell. (The Amazon.com book listing says: “Permission Marketing offers consumers incentives to accept advertising voluntarily.”)

Let’s explore what Seth Godin says now that affects how we should handle online marketing – an important arena of permission marketing – and therefore a major conduit for products that are bought, and not sold.

When Online Marketing Really Works for Businesses

Online marketing works – when you have something that people buy. Online, you can sell things that people make up their own minds to buy on their own time: books, minor electronics, small appliances, some clothing, collectible baseball cards.

In fact, when the good is easily “bought”, a salesperson is usually seen as a nuisance.

Also, selling via online marketing and social media has strong appeal to introverted owners of some businesses who are more comfortable with blogging and with running web sites, than with making “old fashioned” or “intrusive” sales calls.

What Godin has identified, however, is a fatal flaw in this narrative of social networking goodness that can damage some businesses:

Permission marketing (and therefore, online marketing) – which work well for goods that are bought – doesn’t work well when you have something that really must be sold.

What Must Be Sold?

Here are the examples that Godin provides:

• Cars
• Placement of advertising in magazines
• Life insurance

Cars are expensive purchases. Advertising is a common B2B transaction that can run in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, or more. Life insurance is a complex financial product that can require deep explanation.

Examples of the types of things that a customer “just wants to buy” and will buy on his own would be most types of products under $1000, and services that cost less than $100 per month.

Godin implies with his examples that the type of product that a customer really needs and probably wants to discuss with a representative of a vendor business would be any extremely expensive purchase that can have deep or far reaching impact upon the buyer or his organization.

Examples of “sold” items from the IT industry include:

• Providing contracted employees to a business.
• Selling and Installing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Software
• Expert professional services – consultants, copywriters, contracted high level software architects.

So How Can You Tell?

A simple rule that says whether you can successfully market your product or service online – or not – is this:

Would your desired type of customer “Google” for your type of product or service and then initiate contact to buy it? And would it make sense for them to buy it directly from a web site?

If the answers are yes for these questions, then by all means, you can base your marketing and sales almost completely upon social media and internet marketing. Your product fits below the bar of things that are bought by customers, and not “actively sold.”

If the answer is no for either question, then you still probably must maintain a strong internet presence – but it will not bring you customers like you would have hoped. You must go out and sell your services or products.

The Limits of Social Media For B2B Business

Seth Godin has indirectly put his finger on the key weakness of social media as a marketing vehicle for vendors of expensive B2B products and services: customers in this space don’t usually act like customers of consumer commodities and inexpensive products and services. Those things, in other words, that are bought.

• They don’t follow Facebook to watch for products that their friends are interested in.
• They don’t commonly follow Twitter to learn about brands or types of products in their organization’s area of need.
• They do conduct their own research. And they do pay attention to information-rich blogs, and also, content that may be provided by social media.

And some of that content may figure into their eventual purchase decision.

But the bottom line is this: the business owner or executive who requires a service or a product for their business that cannot be ordered off of a shelf probably really wants to speak to a salesperson.

Not a stereotypical overbearing and controlling salesman in the “Glengarry Glen Ross” mold – but a product and industry expert who can provide a perspective on how that vendor can help him.

What Is the Role of Content and Social Media In Selling?

The issue of having to sell your product does not absolve you of creating content nor of not having a social media outreach.

Every “serious” business – meaning every business that sells “important” things that are actively sold – must have advertising collateral.

If anything, your important product or service must have a quality social media presence as well as well developed content. So that prospective customers who are approached by your business can read about what you do and how you are the right choice.

What About Lead Generation?

If your product must be sold, lead generation through online presence could be effective as a sales tool. Potential customers can email or contact your business directly if they are attracted to content that you have produced online.

But it will probably be the case that your customers simply do not look for products or services of your type online because they (reasonably) do not expect quality search results, and also because they simply don’t think to do so.

Consumers will Google for “photo editing for Android” or “wine preserver systems”.

Executives will probably not Google for “Java architect in zip 45040″.

Incidentally, service providers are a special problem for search, which this example illustrates. If you try this search link, you will see that most search results point to job listing and recruiting sites.

Conclusion

The implication of Seth Godin’s piece is this:

If your product needs to be sold, then you need to sell it actively. Through personal contact with prospects.

How? By non social media fueled techniques that harken back to older times:

• In-person networking in organizations
• Cold calling
• “Drip” marketing campaigns that are a combination of cold calling and direct mail

I know where I’ll be in this. I may be the next inbound call that you receive, just to introduce you to my services.

And I know the difference between selling and buying.