11 Ways to Make B2B Marketing Campaigns More Successful

1. Promote solutions, not speeds and feeds.

There are many purchases that are purely product-based. Like when you need a specific part to fix something, have a craving for pizza, or need a cleaning service. But in today’s business world, B2B professionals are looking for solutions to resolve specific pain points that affect both their organization and ultimately their careers. Your messaging should clearly identify how your product and/or services resolve their pain point(s). Doing so not only helps improve the chances of closing the sale, it helps turn prospects into customers who will look to you to help resolve future challenges.

2. Identify and target specific decision makers and influencers.

Most B2B technology purchases involve several individuals, who often have different titles and levels of influence across different vertical markets. And depending on their role and area of expertise and/or responsibility, they will have different perspectives on various goods and services. It’s important to speak to your sales team to learn exactly who they deal with on a daily basis when looking to close a sale. Starting from the first point of contact through the final pitch and PO authorization, you may be surprised to see how many individuals may be involved in the process. The more significant the size and nature of the purchase, the longer this list of titles could be.

Once you have a list, identify what makes each tick – what do they want to see from this partnership. This usually starts with a performance metric or product/service requirement at the top of the list followed by reliability, warranty, life expectancy, compliance, compatibility, cost, and delivery time. Then formulate a messaging matrix that prioritizes all the most relevant factors to address these challenges and how they combine to resolve the customer’s pain point – better than the competition. This is one of the most critical tasks you need to perform to help ensure the success of your marketing campaign.

3. Speak to customers and channel partners differently.

The people who purchase your products generally fall into two categories: end users and resellers. It’s very simple. But their motivation for purchasing your products is very different. Users, as previously discussed, are generally looking to purchase goods or services that resolve a business challenge. Resellers are looking to increase revenue. Their motivations are completely different, if not contradictory, as end users really don’t want to hear how profitable your offering is to the people who are selling it to them. Formulating different messaging pillars for these two very different customers also creates the classic push/pull effect that will further contribute to your marketing program’s ultimate business objectives.

4. Set realistic objectives for your marketing campaigns.

It’s important to discuss and establish realistic KPIs for every marketing campaign. There’s nothing worse than creating and executing a highly successful marketing program that delivers tons of MQLs/SQLs only to have management tell you how disappointed they were with the final metrics. This is an all-too-frequent nightmare B2B marketers face. There are so many different factors that impact a user’s journey through the sales funnel, ranging from product issues to pricing and availability, and so on. Be realistic in setting “marketing” objectives based on actual anticipated metrics and conversions and have management buy-in so they can accurately evaluate the results of your efforts.

5. Avoid using acronyms and jargon.

Pet peeve alert! Not everyone knows the acronyms you may personally use (or have invented) or those your organization uses internally. Unless you clearly identify what the acronym stands for – clearly spelled out and identified in context – skip it. Undefined acronyms only cause confusion, which is a surefire way of losing interest. Same goes for using common jargon, that may not be so common to those outside your walls, or simply overused trending language that some of your targets may not be familiar with – even if relevant to their application.

6. Use strong CTAs.

Offering high-value content as a call to action typically yields high results. For example, the probability of a targeted prospect contacting you to gain access to a tip sheet or whitepaper is far greater than simply replying for more information. The metrics don’t lie. The more relevant high-value content you can offer a prospect, the higher the probability you’ll get their attention and get them into the funnel.

7. Automate your marketing program.

Marketing automation platforms provide substantial benefits to every aspect of your marketing campaigns, from initial outreach to nurturing and metrics tracking. Often not cheap to implement, marketing automation tools allow you to execute multiple tasks and campaigns simultaneously in a fraction of the time it would take to execute manually. And as your program matures, it opens up numerous ways to customize your campaigns to really focus on specific market segments. Fortunately, there are cost-effective ways to ease into marketing automation platforms, allowing you to scale functionality as your program evolves.

8. Budgets are important, but not campaign killers.

Don’t let lack of budgets kill your campaigns before they get off the ground. We have often heard clients share management’s wisdom that they need to hold off investing any budget into a new solution until it starts to generate revenue. An archaic concept at best, it is pretty much a proven fact that it often takes money (even a little) to make money (sometimes a lot). This often becomes a campaign killer at the onset of go-to-market conversations. But it shouldn’t be – and it’s what sets great marketing minds apart from, well… others. With some thought and a little bit of creativity and perseverance, you can formulate a sound marketing launch strategy without a lot of, or sometimes any, budget at all. Inventory what tools are at your disposal, develop the best possible supporting deliverables to leverage them, and keep moving forward. You may be surprised at the results, and even the possibility that management sees them and throws a few extra dollars your way.

9. Develop clear and concise messaging pillars.

Once you’ve clearly identified what the value propositions are for your offering and the target audience, develop a clear and concise list of messaging pillars to guide your creative development and share it with all involved stakeholders to get their feedback. You’ll find it leads to new ideas and directions for your messaging that may help stimulate new ways of differentiating your positioning.

10. Develop an integrated marketing campaign structure.

It’s important to create multiple touchpoints when developing campaign outreach strategies. Given all the various media/communications platforms we’re exposed to every day, it’s important that you reach your prospects on as many different platforms as possible, knowing that different people prefer different media outlets and social media platforms. Preferences will also vary based on the target profiles you’ve identified for outreach. And frequency counts too for both paid and organic media outlets.

11. Develop a strategic marketing plan.

See all of the above. It’s fundamental to align your marketing program with your organization’s roadmap to support specific initiatives and sources of revenue generation. Not all business activities will require a full, dedicated campaign, but your campaign calendar should include those activities that warrant marketing support. Having a campaign calendar aligned with your organization’s fiscal year ensures that you’ll have sufficient time to prepare for scheduled campaigns and deliverables, revise timed execution dates as needed and add new tasks as they arise (and they always do). This living document can also serve to help report and substantiate marketing activities to management.

If you’ve read this far, there’s definitely a level of interest and/or desire to further enhance your marketing program, and perhaps we can assist with some or all of this. Just drop us a line and we’ll set up a brief introduction call.