2023 B2B Marketing Strategy: 3 Things to Look for in a Partner

Sean Parnell - December 3, 2022 2:55 pm

With a new year around the corner, you may be tempted to experiment with marketing strategies you’ve read about online or cherry-pick some new marketing technology in an effort to start the year off right.

Every year, a flood of shiny new marketing products, strategies and services promising exponential growth hits the market. But without a trusted advisor or thoughtful strategy, it’s hard to know which way to go.

If you’ve decided to look for a B2B marketing partner to help you navigate this process, the challenge can seem just as daunting as going it alone. Should you turn to a web designer for a redesign? Hire a freelance writer to helm your blog? Add an in-house marketer to your staff?

Make sure you know exactly that you are getting. Don’t play whack-a-mole with marketing solutions. A marketing partner who understands your business and has the expertise to develop and execute strategies tailored to your needs can provide the skills and services of all of these positions with a strategic approach that aligns your marketing to your sales goals.

How can you recognize the right partner? Here’s an overview of what to look for.

1. A Comprehensive Strategy Tailored to Your Business

Effective marketing techniques are not random acts. One-off recommendations and stand-alone fixes do not produce consistent results. The most successful marketing strategies take the big picture into account and should never be “one size fits all.” If a potential marketing firm, professional, or partner has only a cursory understanding of what you do and what your prospects are looking for, consider that a red flag.

Instead, look for a partner with a track record of B2B success and established processes for learning their clients’ businesses.

The right partner should be able to present you with a multi-layered strategic proposal. Instead of a loose to-do list of generic marketing recommendations, the strategy should contain a plan that blends content and digital marketing tactics tailored to the messaging your prospects need to hear. What solutions do you provide for the specific problems they face?

This strategy should be continuously revisited and reassessed. An effective B2B marketing partner will present new ideas and strategies based on frequent assessment of what is working and what isn’t. Your marketing partner should be as invested in the success of your business as you are.

2. An Understanding of Inbound Marketing Best Practices

It’s likely that people are actively searching for the products or services you provide – but are they finding you? And once they’ve found you, are they met with a clear-eyed vision of the solutions you can provide?

To drive growth, your website needs to have substantive content and it needs to be easy to find.

A good marketing partner will recognize the importance of SEO, but also know that search engine optimization means very little if it doesn’t lead to strong content. This content —in addition to being well written — must appeal to prospects in every stage of the marketing funnel. The right marketing partner should have a strategic plan for how to effectively communicate with casual leads, invested prospects, and prospects ready to become customers.

Your partner should also be able to articulate how to create and maintain high performing infrastructure, optimized for user experience. Even the best content will fail if your site lags or is slow to load.

3. Understanding How Outbound Marketing Attracts the Right Prospects

You may have a website that’s humming along, populated with engaging content, and generating plenty of traffic, but if your message isn’t reaching the right people it’s not doing the job you need.

Maybe you’ve sent out email blasts that were relatively effective. But without clear intent or strategy, it’s hard to know whether your message is being seen by people actively searching for you.

Maybe you’ve had some luck with Google Ads or pay per click, but not the results you were expecting.

Perhaps you’ve ventured into the weeds of marketing technology and found that driving traffic to your site is not as easy as you were led to believe.

The guidance of the right marketing partner can close the gap between your efforts and the results you want by calibrating a mix of inbound and outbound messaging. The right outbound strategies and tools are critical for ensuring that your message reaches not just any prospects, but the right ones.

Innovaxis Can Put You on the Path to Double-Digit Growth in 2023

The team at Innovaxis has an effective and well-established process for understanding your B2B business and crafting strategic marketing plans that drive results. Since 2007, the Innovaxis team has served as trusted advisors to a wide array of B2B clients, providing the support and solutions that drive double-digit growth.