When it comes to media decision-making in B2B, it's useful to separate acquisition media from retention media.

Editor's note: The following is adapted from an article entitled, "The Best Media Options of B2B Retention Marketing", by the author.

Defining acquisition is fairly straightforward. It means cold prospecting, attracting an entirely new contact and persuading him or her to respond and express some interest in your product or your company. It's also often known as lead generation, or inquiry generation.

To find a new potential customer, who may or may not have heard of you, takes a particular set of campaign strategies. The best digital media for acquisition include:

• Your website, enhanced with techniques designed to compel visitors to leave behind their contact information -- namely, an offer and a call to action.
• Search engine optimisation, so your website is found in the first place.
• Search engine marketing.
• And while not necessarily carried out through digital media, PR. In business marketing, PR usually proves to be a better prospecting investment than advertising.

For media planning purposes, it makes sense to consider inquiry generation, lead qualification and nurturing, and retention in the same bucket. It may take years until the prospect actually buys. At that point, the retention objective then takes on its typical character, meaning, promoting repurchase, cross-selling or up-selling, and preventing defection.

Here are the best digital media for communicating with inquirers and current customers in B2B markets:

Email
Its low cost makes email, hands down, the number one medium for B2B retention marketing communications. Not only cheap, it's also versatile, allowing you to communicate with the intimacy of a text-based letter, or the graphic impact of an HTML advertisement. You can also use email in a newsletter format, delivering useful information that is welcomed by business people. Recent data from The Direct Marketing Association's new study "B2B Direct Marketing Benchmarks" confirms that 71.2 percent of marketers said they used email for retention, and 60 percent said they used it to follow up on inquiries.

Webinar
Webinars arrived on the B2B marketing scene only a few years ago, but they very quickly developed a reputation as little more than a long-form sales pitch. Sign-up rates -- and show-up rates -- continue to decline, which is a shame, since the medium permits marketers to tell their stories with great detail and variety. My guess is that overuse simply killed the Golden Webinar Goose.

However, if used intelligently, the medium still has plenty to offer. The secret is timing and content quality. Webinars are best applied at two key stages in the buying process: when your prospects are researching solutions and when they are comparing vendors. One interesting new wrinkle on webinar usage comes from Howard J. Sewell, president of Connect Direct in Redwood City CA, who pointed out recently that webinars can also be pre-recorded at the convenience of the speaker, and then delivered as if live, at the convenience of the customer.

RSS feeds
This relatively recent Web 2.0 medium is already looking good for B2B, since it instantly and proactively delivers whatever content your customer has requested -- email newsletter, fresh blog content, anything. The problem is persuading customers and prospects to sign up, and keeping them interested in continuing the subscription. So, the content is king in this medium. You'll end up with highly qualified readers -- but not necessarily everyone you want to reach.

Ruth P. Stevens is a lecturer at the Colombia Business School. Read full bio.