Business-to-business (B2B) marketing can mean lots of things – market analysis, product strategy, branding, communications, media and analyst outreach, sales enablement, etc. For marketing organizations to succeed, a new clarity of responsibility is needed:
Demand generation is the fundamental mission of B2B marketing, and lead development is its primary metric.
To deliver on this mission, marketing professionals need to exercise their “CORE” marketing muscles: Content, Outreach, Response, and Engagement.
Content
You need white papers, research reports, position papers, product videos, ROI calculators, press releases, and e-books. However, there are two basic challenges to creating winning content. First, the people that know the most about your customers and products – sales leaders and product engineers – are terrible writers. Second, your audience has no time to read.
You can’t outsource the content creation challenge. The reality is you need a person on your team that understands your product, calls on customers, writes clearly, and has the time and interest to create compelling content. This is not a traditional marketing communications person that knows about brand guidelines, copywriting, and layout. It’s probably a product engineer or customer support person that is an amateur photographer, minored in literature, or enjoys going to art exhibits. You need to find/hire this person and give them the time to shadow your best customer-facing professionals.
The second challenge – your audience has little time – is easier to address. Be brief. Be brilliant. Begone! Try to make one point and make it well. Layout the copy with bolded headings for easy scanning. Use lists and bullet points.
It’s not about eloquent prose or funny comments. It’s about clear, concise communications.
Outreach
Your salespeople can tell you what they are hearing from their prospecting calls – the issues that are top-of-mind, the business initiatives underway, and the strategic shifts on the horizon. Take those insights and turn them into content nuggets – one-pagers with common themes. Use those one-pagers as part of a drip communications program.
Remember, good content gets better when it is delivered in small chunks.
Create videos but don’t overproduce them. Use your mobile phone. Then post your videos on your own YouTube channel, paying careful attention to titles and search tags. Also, build a library of webinars and invite people to on-demand viewings. Finally, make sure your documents are easy to download (no forms), email (small file size), and print (not a lot of dense colors).
Response
Too many campaigns point people to corporate web sites or product landing pages that make the visitor feel like they are starting all over again. A strong inbound marketing site automatically collects basic profile information, welcomes visitors with tailored messages, and guides them to other valuable content and interactive tools.
The key is to orient your marketing programs around how your customers buy. This buying process occurs in sequential stages: awareness, research, evaluation, selection, and purchase. Your content and web design should be based on that buying process. The site will delight visitors by helping them recognize where they are in the buying process, presenting content that fits that stage and inviting them to go to the next stage.
Engagement
Much of B2B marketing drives enterprise buying decisions that have strategic value, operational impact, relatively long buying cycles (12 to 18 months), and significant budget requirements. To be successful, you need to engage these prospects over time through interactive dialogue that builds a trusted relationship.
The most important aspect of engagement is “they ask.” Every time prospects have valuable interactions with you, either online or in-person, you have earned the right to ask them questions. You should learn about them (profile information), their purchase intent (BANT = Budget + Authority + Need + Timeframe), and of course ask for the business!
CORE marketing can help you organize your marketing team, prioritize your efforts, improve the results of your campaigns, and close deals.
Are you ready to start exercising your CORE marketing muscles?