The 5 pillars of an
outstanding B2B marketing plan

Building a successful B2B marketing plan is no mean feat. As the saying goes, building your house on the sand is a bad idea, and the same can be said for your marketing activity. Without a rock-solid foundation, you’re unlikely to achieve the results you’re hoping for. So, we have recommended 5 key pillars you need to get right to create an outstanding B2B marketing plan that drives serious ROI for your business…

1. Data

Prospect data is the beating heart of any demand generation campaign. Without up-to-date, good-quality, well-segmented data, it’s likely your time and resource will be wasted trying to contact the wrong prospects. That’s why data should be the foundation of your marketing plan but, building and maintaining such a database is easier said than done.

Using GDPR-compliant partners, intent signals and propensity modelling, you’ll be able to build a robust data universe that will yield the very best results from your activity, even if your target audience is niche. In some cases, industry-leading agencies can act as an external CRM for you by holding, maintaining and growing your data – no more messy, uncoordinated spreadsheets or increased admin time for your sales team.

2. Planning

What makes a great B2B marketing plan? Vigorous research, the best buyer personas, a deep dive into the data, segmentation and value proposition mapping. Not forgetting the power of planning software, like our very own Enigma 2.0, which has crunched over 14 million rows of live campaign data to accurately forecast the campaign results we can expect to achieve (based on vertical).

We believe a B2B marketing plan is about understanding your business objectives and buying markets, then using this insight to create clear marketing goals that will generate the most ROI from your budget. For example, utilising a multi-channel approach is a useful way of getting the most out of a tight marketing budget, as you are likely to increase reach and generate more engagement across several different channels, rather than just one.

‘A multichannel campaign creates consumption synergies, enabling advertisers to capture consumer attention at different engagement points in their purchase journey’.

3. Technology

As much as the name would lead you to believe, marketing automation is not a quick, magical fix for your marketing activity. Whilst the end results can be transformational for your campaigns, it takes great skill, planning, knowledge, attention to detail and a lot of elbow grease to deliver exceptional automation programs.

If you’re looking at expanding your tech stack or are starting to build a marketing operation from scratch, an outsourced agency might be a good option to look at. A number of agencies now have existing marketing automation teams, with experience implementing, maintaining and auditing all different types of marketing technology. Just remember, when choosing your latest martech tool, keep your campaign objectives in mind, it can be easy to get side-tracked by cool features that don’t deliver what you need them to.

4. Creative

Marketing creative comes in all shapes and sizes having amazing content is great. However, without the right data and insight driving your decisions, it can quickly become little more than pretty pictures.

No matter what your content bank currently looks like, it’s important you start with a content strategy. This should be informed by your wider marketing strategy, and it’s useful to include a content mission statement that every piece of content you generate should live up to. Like martech, content marketing is difficult to get right. That’s why there are creative agencies that can help brands consolidate their content, develop clear strategy and provide bold, innovative ideas for content creation.

At Really B2B for example, our creative and content team use powerful industry insights and data to inform their content generation. We create meaningful, relevant and impactful content for our client’s target audiences, which drives them to engage.

5. Metrics

Engagement metrics like open rates and social media engagement have their place and use within the B2B marketing realm, as they can highlight what is keeping prospects and customers engaged. However, there is a thin line between tracking useful engagement and vanity metrics, which may offer impressive looking statistics, but no real insight. For most marketing teams, ROI is the end goal. Only by determining the ROI of your activities can you truly prove the value of your marketing strategy to the c-suite.

Create campaigns that wow

If any of our 5 pillars have got you thinking about your own marketing strategy for 2021 and beyond, we’d love to hear from you. No matter what stage you’re at with your data, martech or creative strategies, our team have over 15 years’ experience generating award-winning campaigns, that deliver a strong marketing ROI.

Reach out via our website, give us a call on 0845 519 8517 or email info@reallyb2b.com.