A quick-dive into some top performing B2B Marketing strategies and how they’ve grown in importance over the years
Someone rightly said, “A strategy without tactics is a daydream and tactics without a strategy is a nightmare”.
When it comes to marketing, it is important to remember, marketing tactics and marketing strategies are two different concepts and they shouldn’t be mistaken for each other. It also suggests that one cannot exist without the other. Strategy should lead, tactics should follow. After all, a good marketing strategy and process is the base of everything in marketing.
What are marketing strategies? This can mean different things to different marketers. Technically, a strategy is a way by which your brand is set on approaching the market, and the way your company takes steps to create the brand presence and image in that market.
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When we talk about marketing strategies, there is always a slight difference between B2C and B2B marketing strategies. Business-to-business (B2B) marketing has evolved from bearing a product based concept to having a story to tell. Today, it is more about what product to position, how to position, when, where and whom to present it to. The best part about B2B marketing is that brands already know their target audience, B2B marketers only need to come up with apt value argumentation that works for particular customers.
Marketing strategies keep evolving to be engaging, competitive and of course, cost-effective.
B2B marketing strategies that are often the base of most B2B marketing plans:
1. Creating a formal Marketing plan for a set duration:
In an encouraging and significant shift in the B2B marketing mix over a past few years, approximate 68% of B2B marketers use a formal marketing plan, for a period of time (e.g: two quarters) to evaluate whether it is working well or not. Marketers are moving towards a more strategic marketing plan based approach rather than a tactical one, where the former will involve thorough market research combined by a situational analysis of the brand.
2. Intend to spend 10% revenue on Marketing alone:
Every organization carries different marketing goals. Despite the importance of marketing, many senior management teams still expect marketing to reduce marketing acquisition costs. On the other hand, marketers believe it is more critical to focus on developing and executing strategies in order to drive brand awareness and positioning. Marketers need advanced and automatic tactics, interactive content personalization and the ability to build new user experiences, and all this demands a greater portion of a business’s budget.
3. Account-based marketing:
Account-based marketing (ABM) is the need of the hour. It is the practice of customizing marketing and sales strategies into a unified platform that in turn creates a huge impact on the organization’s ROI. ABM doesn’t care about how many followers you have on Instagram; it only cares about how many deals you can close from that list. In a study conducted by Sirius Decisions, 42% of the marketers claim using ABM for the last 6 months. In their ABM approach, the size of their deals was 35% larger than the deals closed without using ABM.
4. Embracing automation and more Martech:
A plethora of innovative marketing technologies are available in the market in order to make the lives of today’s marketers easy. These Martech tools are used to enhance marketing capabilities, marketing automation platforms help you reach your prospects, offer at-scale personalization and enhances communication with customers. Reviewing old-school marketing techniques can reduce business costs if the right marketing automation is set in place.
5. Harnessing the power of big data:
Delivering consistent experiences for your customers is crucial for long-term survival in the market. Marketers who can harness the power of advanced data analytics and big data algorithms to reach out to the accurate customer based on their intent can always find more suitable ways to stay a step ahead. With such insights, you know what your customers are looking for, and you can identify the best ways to reach out to them. Big data is truly redefining the marketing landscape. It helps in boosting business by improving the quality of sales leads, enhancing customer experiences, coupled with actionable insights to make well informed business decisions.
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Marketing will not give your results until you have your audience needs in mind. Your marketing strategy should be able to convey how your business can help consumers.
