Don’t Mistake Random Acts of Marketing for a B2B Marketing Strategy
Without a strategy, B2B marketing can be like trying to find a needle in a haystack while wearing oven mitts. Many small and midsize businesses jump from idea to idea, hoping to stumble upon a winning effort.
They often end up hiring B2B marketing agencies that design eye-popping graphics but go lightly around the whole “strategy” part.
Spoiler alert: it’s not great for your business.
The High Cost of Random Acts of Marketing
Many businesses have been let down by marketing efforts that lack a guiding strategy. We’ve seen it all — a hodge-podge of sporadic, opportunistic, and often expensive tactics that produce little return. These “random acts of marketing” are disjointed, ineffective and produce little return on investment (ROI). Examples include:
- Billboards and expensive trade show signage
- Email newsletters with no calls-to-action or follow-up
- Sending out a single postcard or email and expecting results
- TikTok videos your non-teenage, B2B prospects will never see
- Fluffy, “out-of-funnel” website content that generates traffic but no leads
- Flurries of social media updates in a quest to increase “likes”
- Web design makeovers that lack compelling brand storytelling and thought leadership
- Hiring a company in India to “do SEO”
- Any ad with no call-to-action
- Paying for an award issued by a publication you’ve never heard of
- Getting suckered by someone offering a free marketing audit by someone who used to work at Google
These random acts of marketing may look impressive at first glance, but they won’t deliver sustainable lead generation and double-digit growth. Worse: they waste time, money and effort you could be using toward a targeted marketing program that actually works and can tarnish your brand instead of build upon it.
Start with a Prospect-Centered Strategy
Instead of throwing marketing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks, channel that energy into a solid, data-backed strategy. Begin by answering these key questions:
- Who is your target market and what are the problems keeping them from reaching their goals?
- What solutions do you provide that will solve their problems and how do they compare with direct competitors and indirect alternatives?
- Where are your best opportunities for reaching them?
- Why aren’t your current marketing efforts working and where are the gaps?
- How can marketing close those gaps to reach your target audience, generate quality leads, and drive revenue?
- How much revenue do you need to generate to achieve your growth goals? Try our Lead Generation & Marketing Calculator
Generate Leads with Quality Content
Content marketing is the cornerstone of lead generation and meaningful content is essential for attracting and engaging potential customers. Messaging that is primarily focused on the attributes of your company and its products and services has a way of getting get lost in the drone of a million other marketing efforts all doing the same thing. Like a billboard in a sea of them, “look at me!” messaging flickers past busy prospects on their way to somewhere else.
A B2B marketing company that really wants to drive results for your business will begin with brand storytelling that goes deep into your prospects’ stories – not yours. What are their struggles and how do your products and services help them overcome those obstacles?
Market research can also help you understand your target audience better. While many companies think they know their prospects through-and-through, there is almost always something more to learn that could help bring in more and better leads.
Strategic B2B marketing is built on asking the right questions, analyzing the data to determine what’s working and what isn’t and staying agile enough to regularly revisit, adjust and hone your strategies. It’s not a billboard, a slogan or a tote bag with your logo on it.
Support Strategy with Design & Digital Expertise
While refreshing your logo or your color scheme is fun and maybe even a good idea, it’s not a source of B2B lead generation. Design should enhance and support your messaging. Beware of marketing agencies that want to lead with it. It suggests a limited understanding of what drives demand in the B2B world.
Strategic B2B marketing looks for answers first. Utilizing digital tools to track performance metrics and online customer engagement provides insight into what’s resonating and what isn’t, ensuring that your marketing plan is both effective and adaptable to changing trends
Why a Data-Backed Strategy Matters
A data-backed, strategy-led approach ensures that every marketing effort is purposeful and aligned with business goals – including those of your prospects when you focus on these key performance indicators of marketing:
- Keyword Rankings: just make sure you’ve conducted a comprehensive keyword analysis – running a small Google Ads campaign can help identify keywords that even the most exhaustive keyword research misses
- Organic Search Traffic: especially the number of new visitors to your site
- Overall Search Traffic: organic is the most important but direct, referral and other sources are also important
- Lead Generation: website form submissions, direct email, calls, and any other form of engagement with prospects
- Sales: revenues generated from leads generated by marketing efforts
- Marketing ROI: how much sales attributed to marketing leads divided by the cost of all marketing efforts in any given timeframe (annual is best)
Doing so is like having a GPS for your marketing journey, showing you how to close gaps, convert prospects, and drive sustained growth. Instead of disjointed tactics, strategic marketing delivers measurable success.
See a 300%+ ROI In Your Marketing Efforts
Innovaxis takes a strategic, holistic and data-driven approach to marketing, built on understanding your business and industry to create tailored solutions that drive real results. The process starts with a strategic marketing audit and plan that identify gaps, opportunities and how to generate sustainable double digit growth. The plan leads to development of a custom marketing program that will implement your plan and generate the results you want.
Unlike other agencies, we don’t just rely on flashy designs — we leverage market research, innovative execution, and extensive B2B experience in high-tech and commercial/industrial markets to craft powerful, messaging that resonates powerfully with your target audience.
With a proven track record of delivering a 300%+ ROI within the first 12-18 months, our personalized service, clear communication, and collaborative approach ensure that we are always aligned with your objectives. Discover the Innovaxis difference and transform your marketing into a cohesive, results-driven powerhouse.
