How to Get Started with Marketing B2B
“We need to start marketing our business but where do we start”
If the above statement summarises how you feel about marketing, then this article will give you clear direction on how to begin marketing in an effective way.
Notes: This article is relevant if your business sells to other businesses (B2B) and assumes that you are planning to initially outsource at least some part of your marketing.
Decide on your Marketing Objectives:
Take a blank sheet /document and write down, in any order, what you would like to achieve. You can begin with broad statements, for example “we need more sales”, “we want to even out the demand so we’re not really busy sometimes and then idle at other times”, “we want more people to know about our business”, “we need to get going on social media for our business” etc. To help you do this, imagine you have a “magic wand” that you could wave over your business…what would be different about your business (re sales/marketing) after you have waved your wand? These differences are your objectives.
A Marketing Strategy is Essential:
Now that you have some objectives clarified, you need a marketing strategy. A written marketing is essential if your marketing is to be successful. It needs to be created between you, the business owner and a professional marketing agency/consultant.
Reasons your business needs a marketing strategy
Can’t we just dive in and start doing marketing activities, such as posting to social media, running Google Ads, improving our website etc, you may ask? There are numerous reasons why you need a written strategy. However, the overriding reason is that the every marketing action you take will take time, effort and investment, therefore you need to be very sure that the actions you are taking will result in your business “moving the needle” closer achieving your objectives.
A marketing strategy will comb through and analyse all of the relevant information about your business, your competitors, your environment and take those into account before deciding on any actions. It is helpful to consider that a marketing strategy consists of 6 main parts:
- Situation Analysis, including SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats)
- Objectives
- Strategic Plan, including target market descriptions, strategy type, competitive advantage, brand voice etc
- Tactics
- Actions
- Controls, metrics to measure performance
As you can see, deciding on the Actions i.e. the “what, how, who, where, when, why” part is the fifth of six steps. Steps 1-4 give you the information and the logic to decide on Step 5, the Actions. Step 6 will ensure you are measuring the important metrics and therefore you will be able to amend your strategy as you begin to see what works and what doesn’t work.
Finding a suitable marketing agency for Business to Business (B2B):
You are ready to begin to find a suitable agency/consultant to work with. Key points to check with potential candidates:
- Strategy: Will they create a detailed marketing strategy, as outlined briefly above?
- Experience: Have they worked with businesses in similar industries before?
- Understanding your business: Are they initially asking lots of questions to understand your business? (i.e. you are talking 90% of the time and they are asking questions for 10% of the time in the initial consultation) Nobody understands your business as well as you do and the marketing strategy will only work if your consultant/agency glean this information from you.
- Understanding your technical product/service: If your business is manufacturing/heavy engineering, are they prepared to do the due diligence to understand the finer technical points about your products/services so that any content you/they create will be accurate, understandable to your target market and effective?
- Implementation: Will they you detailed information for implementing the strategy i.e. the Actions, the “what, how, who, where, when, why” part. This can be the longest part of the strategy. Will you/your staff know exactly what to do if you are implementing it yourself?
- Contract: Have they given you a detailed contract so that you know exactly what is covered in the costs and what is not. Have they advised what will happen if any part of the strategy needs to change?
Like to discuss your marketing with us?
We have created marketing strategies for business in the following industries: insulation, ventilation, estate agents, human resources, IT specialists, medical devices training companies etc. Contact us today