Crafting a Successful B2B Marketing Strategy
For a lot of B2B marketing professionals, the conventional marketing funnel, which encourages prospects to recognize themselves, and then go to a sales funnel is instilled in our minds. But it is now today’s Age of the Customer, Forrester Research’s term for a market-driven by customers The funnel has changed to reflect a different customer’s expectation, which calls for marketing and sales to collaborate.
In this regard, B2B marketers must evaluate whether the current B2B marketing strategy aligns in relation to their buyers’ journey. That is, B2B marketers must know how to develop an effective marketing plan that is based on the buyer.
We have laid out an order of actions to consider when creating an effective B2B marketing strategy that is customer-centric. Ask you and your team members, “have we checked the following boxes while preparing the B2B strategy for marketing?”
IDENTIFY TARGET PERSONAS IN YOUR B2B MARKETING STRATEGY
Conducting the process to build personas using the research of customers and markets is essential to understand not just who is your target market, but also how you can connect them to the buying journey. The incorporation of marketing personas in websites makes them at least two-five times more efficient and simpler for users with specific needs to use. But only 44 percent of B2B marketers employ buyer personas. Therefore, make sure the B2B marketing strategy incorporates persona-based experiences that move buyers further along their journey to your brand.
MAP A PERSONA-BASED CUSTOMER JOURNEY for B2B marketing Strategy
Making your decision personas and influencers to identify your ideal customer is only one aspect of laying an omnichannel foundation for your strategy. The next step is to identify the various points along the buyer’s journey across each stage of your buyer’s journey. In order to complete the loop between awareness and revenue, it’s essential to identify the key points of contact throughout the process that act as the most motivators as well as detractors, in order to impact all aspects that make up the experience for customers. When you are developing the B2B marketing strategy, ask the question “How do I develop an approach that is based on the framework that is aligned with the customer’s journey in order to get clarity and determine priorities?”
DESCRIBE AND VERIFY B2B MARKETING STRATEGY GOALS and METRICS
It’s probably a simple thing for an information-driven B2B marketer is having clear metrics to measure the success. With the increased focus on customer experience and personalization (CX) Marketing for B2B objectives and metrics should be defined to evaluate the effectiveness of marketing initiatives that aid a client’s progress through the buyer’s journey. Your B2B marketing plan must define how it will make an immediate contribution to revenue, that will yield a profit and drive rapid growth.
An interesting case study by one of our platform’s technology and services clients is Viewpointe one of the top private clouds managed services companies. Viewpointe was faced with the task of maintaining engagement with customers over the course of a 6-months sales cycle. After having clearly defined their B2B marketing objectives They made sure that their content marketing strategy was aligned with their persona-based journey for customers. In the end, Viewpointe maintained contact with their clients throughout their buyer journey and also closed more sales. One method Viewpointe evaluated the level of customer engagement was an increase of 52% in the amount of content on their website that is persona-aligned and a 164% rise in blog post engagement due to organic search results.
Your B2B marketing strategy will help you to take advantage of the most actionable insights from sales
Recalling our earlier illustration of the funnel for customers, we will look at the typical hand-off of marketing to sales with no feedback loop after the lead is “flipped across the fence to sales” which causes misalignment between B2B sales and marketing. In reality, 25 percent of B2B marketers don’t know their conversion rate to customers. With the Age of the Customer, your marketing plan must outline how you can get rid of the proverbial wall and instead encourage team collaboration. Ensuring that there are sales and marketing coordination is vital to ensure the same experience for your customers across the buying process. Making sure to share information among teams is one method to increase the acceptance of the successful B2B marketing strategy implementation.
The next step
Only 45 percent of B2B marketers claiming that they are able to demonstrate decent but not exceptional levels of customer centricity now is the perfect time to develop a brand fresh B2B plan of marketing that puts your company above its competitors.
