B2B Marketing
Develop a B2B Marketing Strategy

Creating a B2B marketing strategy involves defining what you want to achieve, and deciding how to achieve the desired results. Strategic planning helps you define your vision, mission, and objectives.

1. Develop a B2B Marketing Plan

A B2B marketing plan defines your goals and provides the steps to achieve your objectives. It is a blueprint of marketing and demand generation activities to execute to achieve desired results.

2. What are your Business Objectives?

Define your business goals. What do you want to achieve? This in turn is then used to define your sales and marketing objectives. This can cover a range of goals including revenue, profit, business leads, new customers, client retention, brand awareness and brand engagement.

In order to develop an effective B2B marketing strategy and understand what B2B marketing budget would be needed, you would need to know what your objectives are.

3. Who is your B2B Target Customer?

Do you know which companies you wish to target? If so, this makes B2B marketing easier.

Define who your target customer and target audience are. Identifying your target market is a key element of developing a B2B marketing plan. Your target market is a specific group of potential clients whom your business aims to sell its products or services to at a profit.

The target market should cover the sector, location, organisations, and the decision-makers within those companies.

Define your buyers, and what their individual needs are. Do you know who the decision-makers are in your target market? What roles do they occupy within different organisations?
Identifying the individuals who are the decision makers along with those who are involved in the purchase decision can dictate your buyer journey and marketing strategy.

There may be multiple people from different departments within a target company involved in the B2B purchase decision. The motivation to buy of these individuals in different areas within the same organisation may differ. This is due a purchase impacting multiple departments differently. It is vital to understand who the key decision-maker is.

What is the buyer’s motivation? Buyer motivation is a combination of the factors including both emotional and logical reasoning that drive individuals to make a purchase decision. It is important to decipher what motivates different job titles involved to make their purchase decision within your sector. For example, the end-user of a product may use different reasoning than an executive decision-maker. This is due to the differing impact a product/service may have for their day-to-day role or department within a company.

Buyer personas are a detailed profile of your ideal customer. Theses customer personas help businesses understand their target audience.

4. Market Research and Competitors

Conducting market research and analysing your target market, product offering, competitors and marketing tactics is vital for effective B2B marketing. This allows your company to differentiate your product/service, provide a unique selling proposition (USP), define your brand, promote and sell effectively.

5. Define Unique Selling Proposition

What is your unique selling point and proposition? A unique selling proposition is what differentiates your product or service compared to your competitors. It is why a client would buy from your business over the competition. Your company or offering may have multiple unique selling points that combine to create your USP.

6. B2B Buyer’s Journey

What is the B2B buyer journey? The B2B buyer’s journey are the stages of the purchase process that a potential client undertakes in order to make a purchase decision to buy a product or service from your business.

A critical component of successful B2B sales & marketing involves leading prospective clients through the stages of the buyer’s journey, while addressing their needs and overcoming objections at every stage.

The stages of the B2B buyer journey can include:

• Awareness
• Consideration
• Purchase decision
• Implementation
• Evaluation

Combining effective marketing with complementary sales techniques is required to successfully hit sales targets. It is important to define your B2B sales process and the steps of the sale.

7. B2B Marketing Mix

What is the B2B marketing mix? The B2B marketing mix is a combination of controllable factors, tools and strategies that businesses use to promote and influence B2B prospects with the aim of selling to these businesses.

To achieve results, it is crucial to define your corporation’s optimal B2B marketing mix, and focus on the needs of your customer. The potential 7 P’s of B2B marketing include:

• Product: what is the overall value proposition of a product or service, and how is your offering positioned for the target audience?
• Price: how much does a product or service cost , and what offers are in place to entice clients to purchase?
• Place: where is the product/service sold, and how is it distributed to clients?
• Promotion: What marketing activities are used to win clients?
• People: Who are the individuals involved in the buyer journey, and also in delivering the product/service?
• Physical evidence: what tangible proof do you provide to establish credibility and influence a prospect?
• Process: what is the decision-making process and buyer journey?

8. Brand

A brand distinguishes your business identity from your competitors. Building a brand covers all the elements and tactics that influence the market perception of your company, product or service. A brand provides a foundation for building trust and credibility amongst your target audience. This can be critical for business success.

How to build a winning B2B brand? The steps to create a strong brand identity include:

• Identify your target audience.
• Clarify your brand values.
• Define you brand positioning.
• Develop your unique value proposition.
• Establish a consistent brand voice.
• Build a brand presence.
• Engage and build client relationships.
• Monitor customer and market perceptions, and adapt accordingly.
• Foster brand advocacy.

9. B2B Marketing Channels

B2B marketing channels are the mediums that businesses use to promote, generate leads and sell to other businesses. The optimal B2B marketing channel mix is unique to each business,

10. Types of B2B Marketing

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to B2B marketing. The types of business to business marketing that will yield the best results for your organisation is highly dependent upon your target customer, sector and individual business.
The end-customer should dictate what the correct B2B marketing tactics are. It is essential to put your customer at the heart of your marketing strategy decisions, while also considering your own strengths and weaknesses.
So, what are the types of B2B marketing? Combining elements of B2B digital marketing, traditional marketing and PR can result in a winning cost-effective marketing strategy.

11. Digital Marketing for B2B

As a B2B digital marketing company, The Marketing Consultant can manage all elements of your digital marketing. This could include:

• An optimised user-friendly website
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
• Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
• Email Marketing
• Advertising
• Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Ads
• Content Marketing
• LinkedIn Marketing
• Social Media Marketing
• Influencer Marketing
• Partnership marketing
• Affiliate Marketing
• Video Marketing
• Audio Marketing
• Digital Event Marketing
• Marketplace Marketing
• Demand Generation
• Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• Marketing Automation

12. Traditional Marketing for B2B

Traditional B2B marketing is any form of offline marketing used to reach your target audience. It can include:

• B2B advertising
• Sponsorship
• TV and radio
• Direct mail
• Print
• Events
• Partnership marketing

13. Public Relations

PR is the practice of shaping market perception of your brand. Efforts should focus on getting your business in front of the correct decision makers, building awareness, and establishing a positive reputation. Public Relations involves identifying opportunities for press releases, media relations, events, content, podcasts, webinars, radio, TV, Social Media and digital PR.

14. Personal Selling for B2B

Sales and marketing must be aligned to bring buyers a journey. B2b Personal selling involves your company Sale Rep interacting directly to convert leads into clients.

15. CRM

A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system can help manage and report on your sales interactions with potential and existing customers.

16. Measurement, Reporting and Optimisation

To perform, it is important to test marketing channels and campaigns, measure performance, and report results. Specify what are the important sales and marketing metrics, and monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) to track success. Then, optimise based on data insights to improve execution and performance.