“How much revenue did your marketing programs bring in?”
Another year, another budget cycle, another series of meetings to demonstrate the value your marketing programs had on the company’s bottom line. There’s rarely time to discuss budget limitations, creative demands, evolving technology platforms, and channel decisions…all the things B2B marketers have to juggle when developing marketing strategies.
Quantifying the value of marketing to leaders who may not understand the complexities of the long game has always been difficult. It’s become even more challenging as audiences and technologies are changing at dizzying speeds.
Implementing these can’t-miss strategies can help you get results and prove your program’s value as an essential part of the engine that fuels growth and drives revenue.
Target a new kind of business buyer
GenZers and Millennials are the next generation of B2B buyers, comprising 65% of the workforce. They’ve grown up with social media, search engines, and review sites, so it’s no surprise that they do more of their own research ahead of time and expect value-added interactions across all touchpoints.
This means evolving your B2B marketing tactics toward their preferences, like:
- Real-time response
- Mobile experiences
- Social media engagement
- User-generated content
Leverage your sales team to understand this audiences’ unique needs, objections, and desires, so you can align your goals and KPIs. This will ensure more targeted and compelling campaigns, ultimately driving better lead generation and conversion rates. According to Forrester, highly aligned companies grow 19% faster and are 15% more profitable. We discuss the value of including product and commercial sales teams in developing strategy and messaging in this article.
Dig deeper with data: a recent report shows that B2B marketers will spend $3.91 billion on data this year to help them better understand their customers and gain a competitive edge. But nearly 50% of marketers cite the difficulty of using data to inform decisions and measure performance as their biggest challenge.
Bring data experts in-house or collaborate with partners who have data expertise to help you understand exactly what makes these savvy buyers tick. Read an example of how we used data to uncover persona-specific messaging.
Provide content and experiences that won’t disrupt their research
B2B buyers in general, and these new self-educating buyers in particular, take more care and time to research products and services before purchasing (resulting in a longer buying cycle, according to a study conducted by McKinsey).
These buyers don’t want the hard sell. They value high-quality information that will help them make decisions—independent research, competitor comparisons, third-party analyses. Google has even published policies designed to improve the quality of Search by showing less content that feels like it was made to attract clicks, and more content that people find useful.
Using language and information focused on ROI in eBooks, blog posts, interactive tools, webinars, etc. will show that you understand your customer’s thirst for verifiable data and position your company as the go-to resource.
However, having exceptional content alone is insufficient. In today’s landscape, where 73% of business buyers expect engagement across various channels throughout their purchasing journey, delivering a captivating content experience has never been more critical.
That means finding the right formula of relevant and personalized content that buyers can access, consume, engage with, and respond to across diverse devices, platforms, and channels through their journey from prospect to customer.
An account-based marketing campaign can be a valuable part of your comprehensive program that leverages aligned sales and marketing strategies to target specific customers with deliberate and personalized messaging that can help close an account faster.
Leverage technology to gain efficiencies
Technology plays a crucial role in enabling personalization at scale. The marketing technology (martech) landscape is vast and ever-expanding—according to Martech.org, there are 9,932 martech solutions currently available, up from 8,000 just two years ago.
Marketing automation platforms, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, and customer data platforms (CDPs) can all help you efficiently deliver more tailored, relevant campaigns. The surge in artificial intelligence (AI) offerings combined with automation promises the ultimate in efficiency and time-saving benefits. Some examples of how AI can augment automation:
- Data analysis
- Customer segmentation
- SEO and keyword optimization
- Writing email subject lines
- Lead scoring
The question isn’t whether to use AI, but how to use it in a way that enhances efficiency, personalization, and data-driven decision-making. Read more about our approach to integrating AI with human creativity and strategic thinking.
Try these strategies to reach your goals and defend your spend
Implementing these strategies can help you put greater emphasis on buyer enablement, education, and empowerment, all critical to the new B2B buyers who are pushing for more personal engagement. Capture their mindshare and you’ll be able to defend and increase your spend with tangible results at that next budget meeting.
At The Simon Group, we embrace our supporting role as avid researchers and strategic partners. We stay on top of evolving buyer audiences and the rapidly changing technology landscape to bring insights and creative inspirations that will help you forge deeper connections with your customers to drive long term success.
