How To Create a B2B Marketing Strategy
B2B marketing strategies are often sold as packages and people buy them without knowing how they work. Others just market in a random way, taking whatever marketing method that is at hand and rotating through strategies apparently willy-nilly until something works.
A marketing strategy should be at the heart of any business plan. A rationalized plan will see that you use an optimal mix of market techniques that you purposely select. It will turn your marketing efforts into a planned investment rather than a hopeful gamble.
Entrepreneurs know they need a business plan, but many don’t think about a B2B marketing plan. When an effective marketing strategy is in place, you will have worked out:
- The profiles of the kinds of customers you want to buy your product.
- Potential new market opportunities.
- Possible variations of your product to reach niche markets.
- Who your real customers are versus who you thought they would be.
- How to budget your marketing dollars.
Get To Know Your Target Market
The first part of a marketing plan is to understand who it is you are trying to reach. You may not be certain about who you really want to reach, or how to describe them. Start looking at the demographics of the people in the wider community within your marketing range.
Once you have a profile of what your community is like, you can begin to “segment” the potential market, break it into groups and visualize which are your most likely audience. Then you will want to create a “buyer persona” as a way of humanizing the kind of purchaser you will want to address.
Persona Development is a powerful tool used by successful marketing companies. Start by describing a personality who would summarize your most likely target person. Then add in the demographic: age, gender, income, buying habits, computer use, and any other variable you think is important.
Review your demographic research to estimate how many people this group might include, where they live, and so forth. Then direct your marketing to reach them.
The Value and Uniqueness of Your Product.
Next, look carefully at your product. Why did you invent it or select it as your product? In your analysis, find the ways your product uniquely meets a need or provides a better way of meeting a need than other available products.
Then, put together a dynamic product description that points out the unique advantages of your product. That is what you have to communicate to your buyer’s persona, in terms that he, she and they will understand.
Keep Giving Yourself Feedback.
Develop ways of finding out how your B2B marketing efforts are working. If you are marketing online with a website and landing pages, that process of data collection can be relatively simple. Search engines like Google offer very complete marketing data.
Google Analytics is a free marketing data collection tool that can tell you:
- Which parts of your website are getting the most clicks.
- How long individual visitors remain on your website.
- Where they spend the most time.
The tools can identify individual visitors and tell you:
- Who is a returning visitor vs. a first-time visitor
- How their visits look as a function of time – time of day and time of year.
Focus On Your Target Audience
Plan and develop systems for customer support. Your marketing strategy should always include a way to humanize your business. Companies who focus on customer service, and making some kind of direct contact with visitors are nearly always the more successful companies.
Your marketing communication and organization should be organized around giving value so that your product is worth the price and so that the quality of your product is never compromised.
Creative MMS is a highly skilled team who can help you evaluate the competition, conduct market research, and create a custom digital strategy to build your business. Contact our expert B2B digital marketing team to learn more!