Every marketer is familiar with B2C marketing. The term can be used to define marketing activities targeted at consumers, but it can also describe the inbound marketing methodologies used by businesses to attract, convert and retain customers. This method approaches marketing not as an end in itself but rather as a tool to fuel business activity and generate revenue. B2B marketing takes this even further, using marketing not just to generate business but to grow and nurture business success.
If you’re looking to get started in B2B marketing or want to know what methods and materials brands working in the industry are using to gain success, you’ve come to the right place. Here, we’ll cover some of the key takeaways from working in B2B marketing for businesses in Israel.
Data-driven Decisions
One of the distinguishing factors of successful B2B marketers is not only their analytical skills but also their willingness to use data to inform marketing decisions. The B2B marketing manager reviews key performance indicators (KPIs) such as web traffic, lead generation and conversion rates to determine the success of marketing activities and formulate strategies to meet business objectives. It’s important to remember that marketing and sales differ, which means that marketing strategies should not be implemented by sales personnel without consulting with a marketing expert first. The goal should be to generate growth through marketing, which leads to a greater chance of success for the whole business.
The industry term for this approach is ‘data-driven marketing’, which means the marketing manager uses data to make marketing decisions rather than relying on intuition or ‘gut’ feeling. Data-driven marketing was originally used in marketing for consumer goods, but it’s rapidly gaining acceptance in B2B marketing circles as well.
Integration Of Marketing And Sales
The B2B marketer typically serves as a bridge between marketing and sales, working with the business owners to analyze key performance indicators and determine how marketing strategies are functioning to meet business objectives. It’s a crucial role because it means the marketer is responsible for driving and optimizing marketing activities while also ensuring those activities are effectively incorporated into the business and driving revenue growth. If marketing and sales are not integrated, key performance indicators and metrics will not be reliable measures of success, and it will be difficult to track ROI (return on investment) on marketing campaigns and programs.
Integrating marketing and sales provides many advantages. First, it gives the marketer a clear view of marketing activity and how it’s performing in relation to business goals. Second, it gives marketing and sales a shared language, shared metrics and reliable metrics through which to track performance. Third, it ensures that marketing and sales are working together as a single unit to achieve optimum performance.
Create A Buyer Persona
The B2B marketer must understand their customers, potential customers and the unique challenges they face. One way of doing this is through the development of buyer personas. A buyer persona is a hypothetical model of a typical user based on insights gathered from analysis of customer behavior.
The goal of the persona development is not only to understand who your audience is but to also to create a clear picture of what they want and need. The more you know about your buyers, the more you can tailor your approach to be effective. Knowing more about your buyers means you’ll be able to identify and analyze key performance indicators more accurately and formulate strategies to meet business goals. Furthermore, developing buyer personas will help you identify which platforms and digital tools are most effective for reaching your target audience, and it will help you develop a strategy for using digital marketing to attract, engage and retain customers.
Measurement And Evaluation
The B2B marketer should be armed with the proper measurement tools. Without them, it’s very difficult to track the success of marketing efforts and determine areas for improvement. The tools should be appropriate for the type of metric they’re measuring (e.g. for website metrics, you might need a web analytics tool), and they should be easy to use for marketing and business professionals alike.
Measuring and evaluating marketing activities is fundamental to formulating strategies for growth. Some of the most common metrics include unique visitors, lead generation, conversion rates, growth through SEO and social media and in-house marketing and sales effectiveness.
It’s essential to note that some of these metrics can be very difficult to measure accurately. For example, you may want to track the growth of a business through their website, but you can’t easily determine how many unique visitors that website actually brings in comparison to your overall audience. Instead, you’ll have to look at a variety of factors such as engagement, conversion, etc. to get a sense of the website’s overall success.
Plan For The Future
The B2B marketer creates strategies and plans for the future, taking into consideration the goals and objectives established by the business, but also the changing trends and technologies that emerge within the industry.
The challenge is that business objectives, goals and strategies can change with the emergence of new opportunities, technologies and the changing industry landscape. To remain successful, the B2B marketer needs to be continually planning and adapting their strategies to keep ahead of the curve.
It’s essential to establish processes to track marketing performance and establish benchmarks for success. Without these processes, it’s difficult to gauge the effectiveness of specific marketing activities and strategies. For example, you might want to establish a monthly budget for advertsorials (opinions and trends articles published in trade journals and magazines) to track how effective they are in generating leads. Establishing this budget and tracking the results of your advertsorials will give you a clear sense of their effectiveness, allowing you to determine if and when you should change strategies or approach to gain greater traction in the marketplace.
These are just a few tips to establish yourself as a B2B marketer; this is a very broad and there are many others. For more information on this topic, check out the book Radical Marketing: Unconventional Strategies for Growth in a New World by Gartheey Kanan.