Top Ten B2B Marketing Best Practices

by | May 29, 2019 | Uncategorized | 0 comments

B2B Marketers Keep A Lot of Balls In The Air

A Riddle:

What does the average startup founder have in common with Ganesh?

Hint:

Ganesh is the Lord of Success, Knowledge & Wealth. (Think about it)

Leaders Get Down To Business

OK, maybe its because Ganesh has four hands.

Reminds me of most business leaders I work with who roll up their sleeves because they have a lot to do.

My wife and I have five adult children, each with their own personality. When I decided to interpret each of their personalities by creating a painting, I pictured one of the over-achiever kids as Ganesh. (No surprise, she now runs marketing for a technology company).

Wearing Many Hats

My company’s clients who offer B2B services and products, are busy folks. They wear a lot of hats. They work hard because there is so much they have to accomplish in order to succeed. They become clients when they come to terms, they cannot possibly do everything. Then they’re willing to let me contribute to their marketing efforts. While they concentrate their energies on other things.

Pragmatic Marketing

B2B company teams are not too worried about brand recognition. Their sales teams need leads. They want qualified prospects to invite them in. As these B2B companies travel a journey with potential buyers, they realize they also need key pieces of content, each serving a different purpose, at different stages of their dialog.  They have very pragmatic requirements from marketing.

My work can generally be described as “Pragmatic Marketing”.  I routinely work in a minimal infrastructure environment. This means I must be innovative. I design any content contributions so they can be re-purposed. So, a blog post can be tweaked to serve as a piece of literature, 20 social posts, an Infograph, a SlideShare, and more.

Top Ten B2B Marketing Best Practice Balls to Juggle

Every client is unique. They face different challenges, even those in the same industry and the same market. But there are (at least) 10 elements to a product launch we need to consistently juggle for every engagement; for every product launch; for every campaign or program. Here they are…

  1. Work to Build Relationships Don’t rush into conversations and start selling your product. Strive to know people. Your relationships will be authentic. You will be trusted. If you put others first, you earn a place as a trusted advisor. Then your prospects will appreciate that you’re not just selling product. You’re trying to help clients come up with solutions to their challenges.
  2. Present Yourself as a Thought Leader. If your passionate about your topic, you’re an intentional learner, constantly absorbing information about the latest trends in your space. Plus, you’re probably talking to others who are also hip-deep into the same subject. What you learn from those encounters is unique to you. You should freely share this information with the world, without asking for anything in return. The result? When your potential customers encounter you, they can tell they’ll learn invaluable insights, and will be inclined to invite you to their offices for a discussion. What better payoff can you wish for? BTW, the care and feeding of your social presence doesn’t have to take more of your time than 10 minutes of your time in the morning and another 10 minutes in the evening.
  3. Identify Your Optimal Markets. To make the most of your marketing spend, continue to narrow down the group of people you try to reach. Work hard to become part of that community. These are your PEOPLE!
  4. Get To Know Your Prospect by Talking to Them. Ask clients and prospects what they think. What challenges are they facing? What are their goals? Learn how their company makes buying decisions. Who gets involved in the acquisition process? Ask how you can help them. I find most people are very generous when I call and express a genuine interest in their feedback. I like to act like a detective or a news journalist during these calls. There is valuable information to be discovered on those calls. I want to know more!
  5. Constantly Test Your Messaging. Keep tinkering with your email subject lines, with who you list as the sender, and with offers made in the calls to action. Use A/B testing to see what works best. Don’t accept success until one message obviously outperforms all the others. If you want to talk to people who might buy your offering, you’ll have more success if you’re talking about topics your buyer wants to hear. Keep your ears open and your antennae up. Learn and speak your buyer’s language. Find out what topics your buyers are interested in and talk about them.
  6. Refresh Your Website. Your presence on the web stands in your place on the internet. Those messages you tested and proven winners should be part of the story you tell on your site. Plus, marketing technology keeps marching forward with new, exciting technology showing up all the time. You want to be perceived as someone who embraces “what’s next” in technology. The refresh of your website provides you an opportunity to show that off.
  7. E-Mail is Still the Most Powerful Marketing Channel for B2B. Beef up your database all the time. For those who unsubscribe, yet are still important prospects in your opinion, reach them with LinkedIn ads, which can be as targeted, frequently more so, than emails.
  8. Assemble a Marketing Strategy First. You’ll find deciding on a particular marketing tactic is very easy when the choices are informed by a strategy. I suggest a thorough research project, selecting your best markets, find out what messages resonate, then document what you’ve learned in a “Playbook”. This way everyone (including you) can understand exactly what you’re trying to accomplish with your marketing outreach program (and the budget dollars you’re spending on different activities. The Playbook is also a great way to help partners and investors appreciate your well-researched marketing spend decisions.
  9. Provide Everyone With a Battle Card. The Battle Card has everything anyone representing your offering could need to know about how to sell your B2B offering to your target prospects. I think of it like an encyclopedia of a sort. The Battle Cards I prepare for clients often include:
  • Messaging
  • Personas
  • Brand Position
  • Handling Objections
  • Elevator Pitch
  • Competitive Advantages
  • Products, Services And Solutions
  • Our Audience’s Vision For Ideal
  • Qualification
  • Opportunity Definition

10. Keep Your Eye On the Ball. Things change. Google modifies its algorithm often, so you’ll need to tweak your SEO and SEM efforts periodically to retain your visibility. Keep trying different marketing channels. If you stay on the ball, knowing what works, it is worth real money when you apply your knowledge to your marketing spend.

Here’s the Infograph Version

Ron Shulkin serves as the Fractional Chief Marketing Officer for emerging digital technology startups. He provides go-to-market strategy guidance and transformational roadmaps to companies of all sizes, architects product launch campaigns, and hires, trains & manages sales teams. As part of his work (and armed with intellectual curiosity), Ron monitors, curates and writes about the latest emerging digital marketing. 

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