Why you need to rethink your B2B marketing strategy to keep up with the pace of change

Let’s start with addressing the status quo. For a long time, tried and tested B2B marketing strategies have been based around a linear model, where activities aim to gather prospects at one end of a pipeline (or funnel) and gently nudge and nurture until they leave as newly won customers at the other end. It’s been this way for quite a while. It’s given rise to language that any B2B marketer is familiar with such as “MQLs” (marketing qualified leads) and “SQLs” (sales qualified leads), it’s shaped how B2B marketing and sales should work together (where one hands the baton on to the other in the form of a well nurtured, warm lead) and KPIs that evaluate this linear performance (pipeline velocity, #MQLs and #SQLs, to name just three). So established is the thinking that the world’s biggest…

7 steps ensure top-down strategic alignment between business strategy and partner marketing

Aligning partner marketing with your organization's overall business strategy and specific strategic initiatives is essential for driving success and maximizing the value that partners bring to an organization. However, this alignment can often be challenging due to a lack of understanding and buy-in from internal stakeholders. Before exploring practical strategies to bridge this gap, let's first clarify business strategy. Harvard Business School defines Business Strategy as “The strategic initiatives a company pursues to create value for the organization and its stakeholders and gain a competitive advantage in the market. This strategy is crucial to a company's success and is needed before any goods or services are produced or delivered.”

Does your organization value partner as part of your overall strategy?

If the answer is “no” or “partly” then it will hinder the effectiveness of any marketing programme. There is a need to establish…

The manufacturing industry is experiencing rapid change. Catch up on the latest trends and innovations in this sector plus what we've learned about how to market a manufacturing company in 2021

Around the world, manufacturing marketers and managers are rapidly adapting and amending their marketing strategies to win more customers. Marketing for manufacturing is a unique skill, requiring a strong reliance on physical products in a digital world. That's why so many manufacturing businesses right now are relying on omnichannel marketing to acquire and retain high-value customers. We've got marketing strategies and tactics to help boost your profits. But first, let's take a deeper look into exactly how to market a manufacturing company.

How to market a manufacturing company with the RACE Framework

Regardless of your current levels of digital maturity, the RACE Framework is a structure you can use to take stock of your current manufacturing marketing efforts and find out how to…

If you're planning to launch or grow your SME in 2021, discover 5 small business marketing strategies to accelerate your growth from startup to long-term stability

Launching a start-up can be an exhilarating experience. However, there's a difference between launching an enterprise and being able to grow a small business so that it becomes a long-term success. The key to success is ensuring your small business marketing activity is working efficiently and effectively to build an audience for you.

If small business marketing was easy, everyone would be successful first time. Oftentimes what happens is that when a startup is launched, its founders tend to get overzealous with their efforts to monetize its products and services, while failing to build a solid foundation from which the startup can actually be a viable company in the future.

While running a small business presents many unique challenges,…

76% of B2B marketers have a formal marketing plan, but what B2B marketing trends can you optimize in your 2021 digital marketing strategy?

Understanding where B2B industries are going with their marketing strategies can help you identify trends and outpace your competition. Our 2021 B2B marketing trends summarises the key tactics you can look to for increased sales and conversions over the next few months. We’ve taken a look at the B2B 2021 Marketing Mix Report from Sagefrog Marketing Group to see what the state of B2B marketing currently is. We’ve highlighted what we believe are some of the key trends that could help you see more success from your marketing planning in 2021. "Use a structured framework to create a plan and improvement process. The RACE practical digital strategy Learning Path is designed for marketers to plan, manage and optimize their digital marketing strategy."

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Most organizations have…

Real-world examples of PR getting an account-based makeover

You ride on the ABM train because your destination is a results town. Life is all about the names on your account list that you’ve converted into customers and the revenue you’ve brought in from doing so. There’s a beauty to this kind of commercial simplicity! Although the endpoint is succinct and straightforward, that doesn’t mean to say the process will be. You’ll likely have to flip, hack, and smash your way through the age-old promotional mix in a way that befits an approach that operates with laserlike focus. This brings a neat blend of freedom and flexibility when you’re looking at the activities to deploy as part of an ABM campaign. One such area that’s been under the spotlight for me recently in helping companies with ABM strategy is PR: specifically account-based PR. Before we get into the detail on that - first things…

B2C strategies can also be used for B2B audiences, after all, all marketing is human to human

B2B marketing strategies can be hard to get a handle on since reaching potential customers is very different from B2C ones, right? Or are there strategies that translate from consumer-focused organizations to B2B ones? In a word, yes...and it is those strategies that need to infiltrate our marketing efforts in the business-to-business world to compete in the current and future age. All marketing is, after all, human to human. In their article (and accompanying infographic), Imaginasium, a B2B marketing agency, demystifies B2B marketing with stats, tips, and strategies you can put to use today. First, let’s review a couple of those surprising stats about B2B marketing strategies; for more of these, see the full infographic below. 51% of companies don’t have a clear marketing strategy 68% struggle with getting enough quality B2B leads 79%…

Channel sales compose a fundamental part of most business models. Trusted partners can help companies enter new regional markets with little investment or expand their share in existing markets.

But most channel partners will work with more than one brand, so a business needs to establish close relationships with its partners to boost its channel sales strategy. In a crowded landscape, live experiences (online and offline) have proven to be a successful way for brands to establish relationships with target audiences. Traditional marketing can communicate the quality of your brand’s product and the value of your relationship, but connecting channel partners with your brand amplifies the impact even more. With the right B2B event marketing strategy, you can build confidence in your brand plan and help secure further investment, too. [si_guide_block id="146918" title="Download our Business Resource – Channel and partner marketing improvement guide" description="In this guide we'll show you the seven factors that you should use…

Looking to improve your content marketing outcomes? Capture share of mind with a data-driven B2B content marketing strategy that doesn’t cost the earth

The B2B purchase cycle is changing significantly - and so are decisionmakers, who are under more scrutiny than ever to ensure that the solutions they pick deliver ROI. This means they need to get up to speed fast on new technologies, new approaches, new solutions and more. It’s a tall order, which has led the average sales cycle for a B2B solution to increase by 22% in recent years, according to Kapost. As a result, content is now playing a vital role. B2B decisionmakers are spending more than 57% of the purchase cycle engaging with content before they ever reach out to sales representatives. According to Forrester, on average a person consumes 11.4 pieces of content before making a purchase decision. That’s…

A content marketing funnel acts as a guide for your prospects and leads. It shows them the specific steps they need to take before purchasing your product or service

According to Demand Metric, content marketing generates three times more leads than outbound marketing and it’s about 62% less costly. As a B2B brand, if you want to attract more leads to your business and spend less to do so, you should leverage content marketing. [caption id="attachment_148039" align="aligncenter" width="550"] [Image via Demand Metric][/caption]To do this effectively, you need a content marketing funnel. A content marketing funnel acts as a guide for your prospects and leads. It shows them the specific steps they need to take before purchasing your product or service. It also helps your business get more qualified leads. In this post, you will learn how to create a…