B2B Marketing Strategy Framework
Part #0
Introduction
B2B marketing strategy is an ongoing process – gone are the days that a single document is created, and everything is set in stone. Things can change quickly, and therefore your strategy should be viewed as more of a guide that can be refined and optimised when there is a requirement to do so. That being said, your strategy should still be robust enough that it can lead the entire marketing function and explain how it will support the broader business goals that are unlikely to change very often throughout the course of a year.
Before you start developing your B2B marketing strategy, you need a model or framework to guide your process. There are countless variants available for you to use, but unless you already have deep knowledge into B2B marketing, it could be easy for you to select the wrong framework, or more specifically, select one that doesn’t contain all of the key components that you need to consider or offer the flexibility that a modern day strategy requires.
With this in mind, I have created the ‘Eight-Spoke Framework’ to provide a comprehensive model that can be used to either refine an existing, or develop a new B2B marketing strategy – retaining the key attributes required from above.
As the name suggests, this framework contains eight key pieces that represent each of the key elements that any effective B2B marketing strategy should contain. This particular model is unique in that its holistic in nature, yet provides each key piece with flexibility and autonomy to a certain degree, meaning that the overall final strategy is able to easily evolve in line with internal changes and external forces as it’s a collection of a several smaller pieces.
1. Eight Spoke Framework
Each ‘spoke’ of the framework represents a key component – with all pieces coming together to form your broader B2B marketing strategy.
1.1 – Objectives (How You Define)
Every B2B marketing strategy should begin with objectives, as without them, you are unable to define exactly what you are trying to achieve and why you are trying to achieve it. It’s critical that your objectives relate to broader goals, which in turn relates to the broader business mission – thus providing a closed-loop to boost alignment and effectiveness. Never underestimate how important it is to get your objective setting right, once you have done this, you can ensure that every single other area of your strategy has meaning and purpose.
1.2 – Intelligence (How You Understand)
There are multiple areas that need to be covered under the marketing research and intelligence umbrella, all of which converge to provide clear insight into your customer, industry, competitor and internal function. Depending on your objectives and whether you are a new or existing organisation, the key areas to focus on and the depth of insight required will vary – but regardless of this, having a cache of up-to-date marketing intelligence is key to crafting and sustaining an effective strategy.
1.3 – Brand (How You Shape)
The foundation in which your business and almost all marketing activities are based upon, is your brand. This is an area that can sometimes be difficult to define and even more difficult to quantify. Ultimately, your brand is a mixture of the credibility, perception, emotion and personality that your business is associated with. Luckily, a detailed brand strategy will enable your business to emit a certain ‘frequency’ in the marketplace and among target audiences, meaning you have control over how you shape your identity and positioning along with your value proposition.
1.4 – Content (How You Engage)
Content marketing isn’t just another channel, it’s more of a separate component that fuels multiple areas of your marketing function. Content marketing is massively important and incredibly easy to do wrong, hence why it requires its own dedicated strategy that dovetails into your broader marketing strategy. Considering the broader ‘Eight-Spoke Framework’, this is probably the component that requires the greatest level of flexibility, and proactive effort to maintain. But this is for good reason, as it’s the key tool for both your inbound and outbound marketing initiatives.
1.5 – Channels (How You Reach)
Your channel mix consists of the mechanisms you will use to distribute your content, campaigns, brand and communications to target audiences within key market sectors. The choice of channels you select will largely be determined by your objectives and marketing intelligence – and not the other way around. Marketers sometimes feel the urge to utilise as many channels as possible with the hope that this will maximise marketing success – but the key here is to be strategic in both selection and operation of marketing channels. It’s also important to note that channels can be used both in isolation and as part of a specific campaign – thus your channel selection may actually fall more often under marketing campaign development (which is a separate component).
1.6 – Campaigns (How You Convert)
In the B2B space, marketing campaigns are the key to filling your pipeline, driving lead-generation and maximising opportunity enablement. Essentially, a marketing campaign bundles together multiple other elements of the ‘Eight-Spoke Framework’ such as brand, content and channels into a smaller and highly focussed package. There are multiple different key types of B2B marketing campaign, each with their own purpose and focus – but ultimately all are geared towards converting your target audiences and entering them into a commercial cycle. It’s important to note although content and channels are their own separate component under the ‘Eight-Spoke Framework’, they won’t necessarily be operated in isolation and will in many instances be developed as part of a specific campaign you are running.
1.7 – Processes (How You Operate)
Your broader B2B marketing strategy can become very complex very quickly, thus you will need clear guidelines on how you operate the major pieces within your marketing function. This doesn’t just mean functional roles and tasks, but largely refers to how the key mechanisms and logistics work in the back-end of your campaigns, channels and content platforms. Further to this, you will need to consider how you integrate your sales and marketing teams together and introduce marketing automation into the mix.
1.8 – Measurement (How You Optimise)
All marketing activities need to be measured and reported against your key objectives – to ultimately determine the success of your strategy. You will quickly find that in the B2B space, attribution and measurement can be difficult at times, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a myriad of metrics, tools and techniques you can utilise. Remember, the stronger your ability to measure and extract insight, the stronger your ability to optimise and improve your strategy.