Is It Time to Reevaluate Your B2B Marketing Strategy?

Take just a minute and think about the vehicle you drive each and every day. It’s how you get to work, to the grocery store, to daycare, and efficiently back home. Every morning you get in it to drive to work and expect it to turn over, but it’s a major inconvenience if it doesn’t. There are so many moving parts inside that vehicle, and everything inside it needs to work together in sync in order for it to function optimally and at it’s best. Without regular maintenance, problems can arise, and can sometimes end up costing you big. 

As cheesy as it may sound, your B2B marketing strategy works exactly the same way. It’s all too easy to just let your marketing coast, and expect it to continue working the way it has been for the last few years. But, you’d never drive your car for that same amount of time without a little TLC. So, buckle up, because it’s time to reevaluate your B2B marketing strategy. 

Step 1: Benchmark your goals

Begin with a high-level overview of the goals in your current strategy and the data behind them. If you had a goal to increase marketing-qualified leads by 40% year over year, have you achieved that? If you wanted to increase your retention rate by 20%, has that happened? If you wanted to branch out into a new area, what percent of market share do you own?

Benchmarking these goals is an important first step to evaluating your current marketing strategy, and whether or not it’s working. If you don’t have any goals that are clearly laid out for you and your team to review, then it’s definitely time for a refresh. 

Step 2: Identify where your leads are coming from

Ideally, your B2B marketing strategy uses multiple channels to reach your target market and generate leads. Understanding where your leads come from and the role each channel plays in this is key to attributing success or failure to your marketing strategy. Are your leads coming in from Google organic searches, PPC ads, white paper downloads, RFQs, or something else?

Is the data what you expected? Do you notice any trends? Does your data change as you look at first-touch attribution vs. last-touch? These are all important questions to think about as you look at the different channels you use in your marketing strategy. 

Step 3: Understand where you are falling short

Once you know where you stand with meeting your goals, and understand how you are achieving them, it’s time to identify the shortfalls (wherever they may lie in your process). Is your CRM still working as you’d like it to? Are leads being tracked properly? Does your PPC budget need to be tweaked? Is your B2B website still profiting, or is it stagnant? Is your sales team still on board with your goals? Are you falling behind your competitors? All of this, and much more, can be considered for planning your B2B marketing strategy revamp. 

Step 4: Plan

It’s time to set new goals for your B2B marketing strategy. After completing steps 1-3, your new goals may be glaringly obvious to your organization. As an example, you might say, “We need to work with our sales team on constantly entering leads correctly into our CRM” and can set goals from there. Some may look at the information from steps 1-3 and say, “We’re doing great, everything is still working the way we want”. That’s awesome! But where could you improve? Can you increase your goal of website leads to push you and your team to do even better? Can you still work on your SEO to increase your search rankings? Have you joined forces with HR yet to begin marketing to employees? There’s always room for improvement and optimization. 

When setting goals for your new B2B digital marketing strategy, each goal needs to be: 

• Specific and clear -Write them down and make them available to everyone
• Measurable – What data will you be monitoring to measure your success?
• Achievable – Be realistic, and take baby steps if necessary
• Relevant – Your goals should be result-based
• Time limited – Give your goals a deadline to hold yourself and your team accountable

Yes, that’s right, make S.M.A.R.T. goals. It’s an old concept but is still an effective way to plan your new B2B digital marketing objectives. Your strategy is your compass to guide marketing efforts to success. A well thought out strategy will help you discover your voice, plan your message, and execute effective methods to reach your goals. 

If you begin to dive into your strategy and goals and realize you might be in over your head, don’t worry – we’ve got your back. Give us a shout and let us take a deep dive into your current strategy, identify areas for improvements, and layout a revamped B2B digital marketing strategy for you to deliver measurable bottom-line results.