Principle and foundations of business to business ( b2b) marketing is different from b2c companies, and even in 2019, many b2b business stakeholders fail to understand.
In b2b business situation, the primordial difference is that the buyer is not a single person. Businesses buy with a team of conscience and approvals. Professionals owning specific roles manage businesses or Organisations. Here measuring buyer persona is different. Their accountability and responsibility are attached to these functions that they practice within the organisation. Instead of a single person making decision-making, there will be a more than one person who involve in the buying process such as decision-makers, end-users, advocates, specifiers or advisers. Their buying persona psychology utterly different from each other.
KEY CHALLENGE in b2b marketing:
Relationship between processes. A research report from Aberdeen 2018 conveys, 90% of the SME companies don’t believe marketing is the first! The sales will lead to the show, and there starts the misalignment. The majority don’t think that 90% of the people don’t like cold calls and 90% of the buyer search online, before a call or writing to the company.
B to B marketing is not just a generation of sale leads.
What is essential to know in B to B marketing is that it is not just about generating leads; it also requires a significant brad building work. Our team will generate leads, and the conversion will be a considerable challenge. b2b business typically, focusing on its sales turnover without giving importance to brand building exercises. We often come across a comment from CXOs that, though leads are happening, the sale is not closing. There may be a lead generation engine through automation; however, difficulty in conversion to orders. One of the key reason would be lack of brand recall with the target audience.
b2b marketing consultant must take care of the Marketing fluctuations impact brand building;
The fluctuation ( VUCA!) of the market generates problems that are much more complex and that need to be focused first. Marketers can tune the messages based on market situations such as VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity) and reach out to get quality leads. Even if there are market fluctuations, and if there is a perfect blend of branding activities, the expected qualified leads are achievable.
Thus, to acquire and retain your customers, take a comprehensive marketing approach and do not confine yourself to the mere consideration of generating revenue at the expense of all other indicators of growth and success.
b2b marketing consultant must have a command CONTROL dashboard.
Do not just limit yourself to the numbers, so you do NOT skip the budget factors and process efficiencies of any marketing operation. Have a control dashboard to stop, gear change and accelerate the processes. Full control on operations with metrics and indicators perspective will be your best guarantee for controlling budgets and performance for all stages of a B to B marketing cycle from planning to execution.
Market PLAN-TO-SELL
After many years in active working marketing and sales processes, , I began to work as a b2b marketing consultant. I provide tailor-made PLAN-TO-SELL programs for my clients. The greatest success stories in marketing are achieved when there is a useful marketing data was available to build a tool or management applications that give minimum analytics to take right decisions.
B2B marketing includes all marketing measures that have a positive effect on the relationship between two companies. The purpose of marketing activities is to establish a foundation of TRUST and to bond more closely. Compared to large and relatively impersonal B2C marketing, B2B marketing directly focusses on the benefit and positive impacts of both the organisation.
Take the right steps.
It is essential to question certain habits and behaviour of the buyers because addressing business buyers requires different modes and methodologies compared to individual consumers. Indeed, there are cases, or it is quite exceptional, in B2B, that a customer makes a spontaneous purchase influenced by emotion since he only orders the service or the product when there is a real demand.
Case study:
My customer was a manufacturer of around 300 employees with a six-member sales team. They have a marketing team of three members. Two junior attendees were doing cold call and receiving the inbound calls, and qualifying it over the phone. Another senior executive is handling ads and copywriting. They provide print ads as per sales team requirements. Company is looking for the next phase of growth with a proper marketing brand building set-up, where competition is very high and only price war among the leading players.
Solution:
Recruited a team of internal marketing staff and realigned the current staff. Lead generation to conversion processes established. The conducted Value proposition and value mapping exercises. Repacking with new brand identity on the product front. Introduced both inbound and outbound marketing strategies to the team. The marketing process for retail and dealer network established. The customer’s customer was only retailers and manufacturers. Brand recall was a critical objective. The team then conducted a brand audit and brand recall check.
Result:
We monitored the execution for six months and tested again results were phenomenally positive. One of the key initiatives was changing the mindset of their sales staff. They never knew or believed in the difference between a brand and a product. The team conducted separate practical classes for sales team on branding and social intelligence. Key Result Areas were modified, allocated 15% of the KRAs to marketing support. After a few months of working and monitoring the performance, Joint KPIs introduced in the company for the first time. The existing and new staff are all now motivated to be part of the latest targets of the year!
To summarise;
It is not about establishing the strategy and processes such as digital marketing, lead generation content marketing, account management, channel management and sales management in your organisation, it’s about how perfectly all these process are aligned to reach your goals. b2b marketing consultant can identify this problem and give you the right solutions.
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