Need better results from your marketing efforts? Start with a B2B digital marketing strategy. In this article, we explore what a B2B marketing strategy is and why you will fail without one. If your business is part of the 49% of companies that are executing digital marketing without a strategy, then this is for you!
Source: Smart Insights
Do businesses need a B2B digital marketing strategy?
A digital marketing strategy is the cornerstone of any successful B2B marketing activity. You can spend your entire marketing budget on digital, but if your tactics are not integrated with a common strategy, then you’ll be wasting a lot of that budget.
With so many marketing channels and digital tactics at your disposal, it’s easy to be everywhere but achieve nothing. Digital is full of shiny objects, and that’s why having a digital marketing strategy is essential.
In the ever-changing world of digital, your strategy is your compass. A lack of strategy, at best, results in a lack of focus, at worst it means that your tactics can be working against each other.
A typical example is where your teams go off and create multiple landing pages each trying to achieve similar goals, but with each page diminishing your chances of ranking in the organic results. A marketing funnel needs to support different entry points and needs multiple landing pages, but these need to be created with a customer-centric B2B digital marketing strategy in mind.
What if you don’t have a strategy?
The results of not having a B2B digital marketing strategy are a poor return on investment and a lack of consistency.
The issues that arise from a lack of strategy are particularly prevalent in business-to-business (B2B) companies where multiple B2B digital marketing tactics target a very niche audience. Without a clear strategy that audience will receive multiple different messages from multiple different channels, wasting marketing budget and resulting in confusion. This is poor marketing and worse yet a bad customer experience which your prospects will remember.
How could having a B2B digital marketing strategy help your business?
A B2B digital marketing strategy helps guide every digital marketing tactic towards the same set of goals. It’s easy for employees to start executing tactics independently of each other and under the radar of any corporate governance. A digital strategy gives everyone in your organization a clear direction and prioritisation of your digital marketing activity.
The process of preparing a strategy is just as valuable as having the finished document. In your B2B digital marketing strategy, you need to understand who your audience is and what they want to talk to you about.
How can a B2B digital marketing strategy help optimise my marketing funnel?
A digital marketing strategy is an overview for anyone in your business that needs to understand your sales and marketing funnel. It should capture your marketing vision from target market to marketing goals. Your digital marketing strategy should inform your marketing funnel in the following ways
- Who is your audience? – A digital strategy is founded in knowing your audience. This informs all other digital marketing activity.
- What content do you need to produce? – What content will appeal to your audience at different parts of the marketing funnel? This needs to align with your content strategy.
- How can you reach your audience? – Great content if not promoted is wasted. A strategy will tell you where your audience lives online and the mix of content marketing, search engine marketing and advertising that will help reach your audience.
- What does success look like? – Digital marketers have no shortage of data. Unless you know what to measure and what matters it’s likely that you will be overwhelmed by data rather than informed by it. At FullerFunnels we connect our strategy to our bespoke visual analytics system. This is our decision-making hub and ensures your digital marketing strategy is delivering real marketing results.
A digital marketing strategy helps your organisation think digital first
Despite the fast adoption of digital by B2B buyers, B2B vendors are falling behind with less than 25% of B2B executives understanding the impact digital is having on their industries (source). A B2B digital marketing strategy is a tool for building digital understanding among executives. When compared the B2C businesses, B2B businesses are behind in digital strategy, organizations effectiveness, digital skills, and digital culture.
Establishing a B2B digital marketing strategy helps organizations to evaluate their own businesses, both its strengths and weaknesses. A digital marketing strategy also requires a business to look outwards at the industry and direct competitors. A digital strategy helps to guide a business forward with an awareness of all factors that will influence the business.
A B2B digital marketing strategy isn’t just a document that gathers dust. Businesses with a digital marketing strategy have owners responsible for delivery. Unlike businesses with no documented strategy, having a digital marketing strategy provides accountability for delivery. By linking your digital marketing strategy to a tangible marketing funnel you’ll be able to give accountability for implementation and results.
Sun Tzu said “tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat” and that is a fact in digital marketing. You’ll be wasting your time and your marketing budget without a strategy to guide your actions.
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