Marketing is designed for reach, but it must also contribute to the bottom line. Many ad platforms today are built to generate profit for themselves, which is why it is essential to know what you are doing. Reach is pleasant and important, but it must be reach that is subsequently used to increase business revenue. Increasing privacy regulations, cookie-less browsers, and dark social make it more difficult to gain insight into your marketing performance. Therefore, here is a solution to maintain control and steer based on what actually works. In this article, I explain how you can utilize marketing to close deals in this changing B2B market.
The current problem in B2B marketing
Sales is becoming increasingly dependent on marketing to gauge the right signals and buyer intent. The old structure from MQL to SQL is no longer as linear as it once was, even though the essence remains the same. Buyers are less inclined to indicate ‘I am ready to buy’ by, for example, filling out lead forms. We must now piece this behavior together through indirect methods. Digital tools, your website, and paid ads are becoming increasingly important in this process. You must collect data, but this must be done with structure.
How to bring structure back to your marketing
Launching campaigns online and seeing what happens is no longer a viable way to work. You have likely noticed this yourself, or it may be the reason you are hesitant to launch campaigns. Launching a campaign will always be a hurdle. Therefore, it is important to have structure and clear goals to guide you. Marketing is a journey rather than an exact science. Fortunately, there are ways to find a middle ground.
- Set a goal for your campaign
- Put yourself in the shoes of the target audience
- Create a list of all pain points
- Connect your solutions to these pain points
- Create content for each pain point
- Launch organic posts and paid ads per pain point
- Implement a funnel to monitor intent per phase
- Discuss all data with sales every two weeks
1. Set a goal for your campaign
Before you begin, clarify for yourself and internally within the organization what you want to achieve. This can be as simple as: more revenue, more deals, more touchpoints, more followers, and interaction. This prevents you from launching a campaign that you stop monitoring after two weeks. This way, you can also use the results to improve your subsequent campaigns and steer toward success.
2. Put yourself in the shoes of the target audience
You want to meet your target audience’s needs in your content. To do this, you must speak their language or at least know what concerns them or how you can help them. This prevents you from projecting your own solutions onto the target audience without them having any idea that they understand you.
3. Create a list of all pain points
Gather people internally to compile a list of all pain points that the target audience identifies with. The more, the better; this allows you to choose later which points best fit your solutions. You can also combine different pain points if there is overlap for the same solution.
4. Connect your solutions to these pain points
Now you want to create a list of all solutions; subsequently, you can combine pain points with your solutions, ensuring a smooth transition from pain to solution. You then not only highlight a problem but immediately offer a solution for it.
5. Create content for each pain point
Now that you have a good insight into all pain points and solutions, you can start creating specific content. Ensure that you produce the content efficiently. Consider a blog, video, document ads, or perhaps even a white paper. This content can then be divided into multiple social posts or short videos.
6. Launch organic posts and paid ads per pain point
Create a content calendar to work ahead with social posts. This allows you to maintain a consistent pipeline of content. For example, consider two posts per week on the company page and two on a personal page. By working ahead, you can maintain the same workflow so that your content never runs dry.
7. Implement a funnel to monitor intent per phase
Now that your posts have had time to gather organic intent and interaction, you can determine if you want to sponsor them. If you see positive interaction and above-average performance, it is a must to also advertise these posts online, so that you can consistently present these points to the target audience.
8. Discuss all data with sales every two weeks
Now that your ads are online, you can collect all followers, likes, and comments to put into a list for sales. This way, sales knows which individuals and companies have interacted, when, and with which points. This saves sales a significant amount of work in establishing a contact moment. You can approach the target audience with a personalized message.
A functioning marketing machine that also generates more sales
While this is a relatively generalized approach, it serves as a very strong foundation for starting your marketing. It is, of course, extremely dependent on the company and industry how you fill in the details. We understand this better than anyone and have already set up successful campaigns for more than 100 companies in dozens of sectors that continue to deliver impact to this day.
We ensure a strong start for your marketing machine based on structure and clear steps. You are the brain; we are the execution. With your expertise and passion, we create campaigns that deliver these types of results and build the bridge between marketing and sales.
