B2B Marketing Fundamentals
Introduction
Before we deep dive each of the key components contained within B2B marketing strategy, this section will briefly cover some key underlying components such as the B2B buying journey and essential fundamentals that act as both an introduction and preface to the remainder of this guide.
1. What Is B2B Marketing?
In its purest form, B2B marketing is a structured process of driving awareness and demand for your products, services and brand with organisations and professional buyers. So quite literally by definition, B2B marketing is a key enabler for the mechanism of one business transacting with another – by targeting, engaging and nurturing a select number of key decision makers to take them from the earliest stages in the B2B buying journey, all the way to the end.
Key to understanding the above statement is to understand exactly how organisations purchase from one another. Whereas in the B2C world you have a single buyer who largely makes purchase decisions based on emotions, in the B2B world, purchases by a company are essentially made by a group of buyers known as the decision making unit (DMU) who sit within the buying company and use a combination of logic and reason to guide their buying actions.
B2B marketing strategy then is an organised plan of action designed to outline exactly how you will drive awareness and demand for your products, services and brand with DMU’s at other organisations who are aligned with your value proposition and what you have to offer.
2. The Modern B2B Buyer
As touched upon above, DMU’s comprise the ‘buying unit’ that consists of key stakeholders from within an organisation.
Not all members of the buying unit have equal weighting or authority within a DMU. In fact, even the label ‘decision making unit’ isn’t entirely accurate as in reality, not all members are making the decisions. With this in mind, there are a number of different roles held within a broader DMU, each with their own attributes and purpose. The reason this is important is simple, it means that for every different role you have different motivations, information requirements and needs – all of which need to be considered when they are actively targeted by your B2B marketing strategy.
Despite these variances within the buying unit – there are common characteristics, behaviour, and expectations they all share, most of which have developed over recent times in line with the merging of internet technologies with global economies and society as a whole.
Understanding these traits is essential to ensure you approach target audiences strategically as the broader B2B buying journey and sales process they move through has become increasingly complex and long – attributes of the modern B2B buyer includes:
- Driven: B2B buyers conduct much of their own research on a challenge, requirement or need they have autonomously before engaging with a vendor or supplier. This doesn’t mean that it’s not possible to engage with buyers in early stages of their journey (because it is and you should proactively be doing this), but what it instead means is that buyers no longer wait for guidance, but rather proactively seek information and follow their own processes of information extraction and consumption.
- Informed: Directly related to the above point, B2B buyers are highly informed in relation to their challenge, requirement and need along with the solution that is suitable for them. This doesn’t mean that buyers don’t possess an element of reliance on vendors, because they do – but organisations need to prepare and strategise for how they both target and form relationships with a highly knowledgeable target audience that hold a strong position throughout the B2B buying journey.
- Connected: Digital channels have become the dominant medium for research and information gathering at all stages in the B2B buying journey – with a variety of different channels being utilised by buyers, your strategy needs to factor in this ‘integrated’ approach to effectively reach, engage and convert target audiences. This of course was building prior to the pandemic, but the past 12-months has seen even more buyer/seller interactions moving to ‘digital-first’.
- Expectant: Buyers crave educational-based content that can drive in-depth understanding of their challenge, requirement or need and deliver value to their broader research initiative. They also expect to be able to locate and consume most of this content autonomously, away from a formal sales cycle. Further to this, buyers now expect a greater level of personalisation with relation to the content they consume and information they engage with – leading to additional considerations for vendors to contend with.
- Trusting: With ever growing sales cycles, choice, and friction points – B2B buyers are naturally placing more trust in vendors to deliver a solution to satisfy their needs – but vendors must do more to earn it. This means buyers expect an ‘always on’ approach from vendors who must cater by delivering an aligned and valuable experience at every stage in the buying journey – including post-purchase and beyond.
3. B2B Buying Journey
The B2B buying journey is a visualisation of the key stages a DMU/buying unit travels through, from the point of problem identification all the way to solution purchase and beyond. Further to this, the framework illustrates the key tasks that buyers must complete to progress to each stage.
There are multiple interpretations of this framework available (see models from Gartner and Hubspot for further insight), but regardless of which variant you utilise it will act as a guiding tool for which the bulk of your B2B marketing strategy can be built.
At a high-level, the below version of the B2B buyers journey contains four stages, with each stage containing three key tasks along with a core outcome triggered upon task completion.
3.1 – Stage #1 – Identification
In this first stage, buyers have become aware of a need they have in relation to a particular problem, challenge, or opportunity and are proactively seeking information to both better comprehend and understand their requirement.
Key Buying Unit Tasks:
- Gain Awareness of Need: The obvious first task is for a buyer within a buying unit to become aware of an underlying business need that could relate to a challenge/pain point that must be resolved, or an opportunity/goal that must be unlocked. If an existing DMU doesn’t exist within an organisation that would be suitable – this task would act as the catalyst for creating one.
- Focussed Info Gathering: After becoming aware of a challenge or opportunity – the buyer aims to increase their comprehension through information hunting and gathering as a way of improving their knowledge and familiarity with directly related topics and areas.
- Interpret Key Findings: With the raw research and collation undertaken, the buyer will begin to extract and interpret key insight related to their need. The goal here is to provide the broader buying unit with a comprehensive background of the actual challenge or opportunity faced, along with the feasibility of the need being met by an external solution. Although this isn’t the stage for solution exploration, it’s certainly the stage for ascertaining whether to continue the buying process.
Upon task completion, the buying unit gains understanding and comprehension of the challenge or opportunity they have – which leads to the next stage of seeking a suitable solution.
3.2 – Stage #2 – Consideration
In this second stage, buyers have gathered enough information on their requirement and are proactively exploring options for a suitable solution.
Key Buying Unit Tasks:
- Assemble Requirements: Once the buying unit better understands their need, they will begin developing formalised requirements and objectives that will involve multiple stakeholders from within the buying unit (and potentially outside of it). This can almost be an extension of the previous stage, but it’s a critical step that essentially means converting a conceptual need into a set of practical requirements and goals that define expected ROI and outcomes.
- Explore Suitable Solutions: With requirements gathered, the buyer will begin exploring and researching suitable solutions (products and services) that are matched in terms of broad capabilities. The complexity of this stage will depend on the actual need/requirement and will likely involve multiple DMU members.
- Evaluate & Develop Case: Once a broad list of suitable solutions has been collated, they will be measured, compared and scored against a selection criteria. This will relate back to the requirements (as the criteria could be set there) – but it’s in this step the viable solutions will be evaluated. The key focus for the buyer here will be analysing the solution category itself (as opposed to the supplier) which for certain segments (such as a technology-based solution) could contain a multitude of suitable options. Eventually, one or several solution categories or types will be selected as the front-runner that could potentially lead to a second round of evaluation including product testing – with an internal business case then developed to reflect this choice and drive collective buy-in across the entire buying unit.
Upon task completion, the buying unit finds alignment between their challenge or opportunity with a suitable solution along with formalised agreement between all DMU members – which leads to the next stage of seeking a suitable vendor/supplier.
3.3 – Stage #3 – Decision
In this third stage, buyers have broadly identified the solution they require to solve their key challenge or exploit their opportunity – and are proactively seeking the most suitable vendor to supply this solution.
Key Buying Unit Tasks:
- Formulate Vendor Options: Once the buying unit has agreed on suitable solutions, this will be used as a guide for assembling a list of potential vendors who could supply this product or service.
- Test Vendor Suitability: The complexity of this stage will be determined by both the complexity and size of the solution – meaning that suitability testing could range from opening a discussion with potential vendors, all the way to initiating a formal RFP process that contains considerably more moving pieces. Essentially, alignment needs to be found between the buying (need) and selling (solution) parties that will commonly contain a proposal sub-step.
- Assess & Select Vendor: Once vendors have been tested for their suitability, commonly a shortlist will be drawn up and once again, a selection criteria will be developed to effectively assess the key findings, expected capabilities and proposals. Again, this will depend on several factors, but this stage could range from a simple checklist all the way to a formal presentation process from the selling company. After a rigorous assessment step, a preferred vendor will be selected broadly based on their ability to meet the expected ROI and project objectives and the final step of negotiations will conclude.
Upon task completion, a purchase or commercial transaction will be made leading to customer status – which leads to the next stage of extracting value and determining solution ROI.
3.4 – Stage #4 – Usage
In this fourth stage, a buyer is actively utilising the solution, extracting benefits, and looking for ways to maximise the value derived.
Key Buying Unit Tasks:
- Business Implementation: Once purchased, at least one member of the buying unit will generally assist or oversee the internal integration of the solution – whilst continuing to dialogue with the chosen vendor. The bulk of this responsibility will obviously be passed over to the most suited organisation members – but the DMU will still bare a level of accountability and deep interest with regards to successful delivery of the solution along with ensuring that agreed deliverables and requirements are met.
- Continued Validation: After successful implementation – the buying unit (or select members) in collaboration with organisation members will continually keep tabs on both solution performance and the vendor relationship – which could both be merged under the ‘customer experience’ label.
- ROI/Value Analysis: A direct continuation from the previous step is the formal quantitative analysis of solution ROI and qualitative analysis of the vendor relationship. The key here is to decide whether the broader project in terms of resolving a challenge or unlocking an opportunity has been successful by measuring key results against the formal requirements and objective set earlier in the buying journey.
Upon activity completion, a customer will renew/repeat or continue to utilise the vendor to grow and expand the initial solution that also includes up/cross-selling mechanisms.