Planning a successful B2B marketing campaign goes beyond job titles. Learn how to understand the buying ecosystem, prioritise awareness, balance targeting and deliver real value.
B2B audiences are human audiences. Humans that don’t follow predictable paths to purchase, don’t hang out solely in B2B environments and rarely make decisions based on rational factors alone. Launching a successful marketing campaign requires more than just reaching the right job titles with product messaging. It demands a strategic approach that considers varying audience motivations, focuses on building lasting value and achieves an emotional connection for your brand.
Often, the initial instinct is to laser-focus on those who appear ready to buy now. However, talking only to that very small pool of prospects is costly, resource-heavy and above all else, a slippery slope to falling into the dreaded ‘doom loop’.
There is, of course, a time and a place for this type of laser-focus. It’s smart strategic thinking to have a highly targeted, performance element to your campaign.
However, it must only ever be that – a part of your campaign. Put too much focus into this at the expense of tactics that drive emotional connection and build longer-term memory structures with your audience, and you will become over-reliant upon the short-term outcomes of marketing. These short-term outcomes are much less dependent upon forces upon which you can exert any control, such as changes in competitor product/positioning, category shifts in demand, as well as advertising factors such as media inflation and competitor ad spend.
Short-termism is rife in B2B marketing
it is important we layer a degree of pragmatism to all of the above in order for it to be useful and applicable. Here is a step-by-step process of some of the most crucial factors to consider when planning a B2B marketing campaign:
- Understand the entire buying ecosystem
- Prioritise awareness and mental availability
- Get the balance of targeting right
- Diversify your content formats and channels
- Focus on value and education
- Have a measurement framework and stick to it
- Embrace a test-and-learn approach