B2B Marketing Campaigns: Choosing the Right Path for Success

How does your B2B company get where it’s going?

The short answer: One step at a time.

Read on for the much longer answer.

I started thinking about this post because, with summer just around the corner, I’m putting the finishing touches on our summer vacation plans. This year, we’ve rented a beautiful vacation home in upstate NY, fronting one of the Finger Lakes, as our home base. The area is home to wineries, historical sites, hiking trails and, of course, plenty of water. My parents (who will be celebrating their 51^st anniversary) and sister will be joining us to make it an extended family vacation so, in total, we’ll have a group of 7 – including 2 teenagers. Of course, all of the above informs what it is that we’re planning to do while we’re in town.

When you think about it, putting together a great B2B marketing campaign isn’t all that different than planning a great family vacation. You need to know your audience (are they retirees, teenagers, or both?) and what they’re likely to care about. You need to know what you’re offering – what’s the product or service – to that audience (hiking, paddleboarding, wine tasting). You need to think about the value proposition (relaxation, family fun). You need to know your budget. And you’ll probably need to compromise here and there to deliver on that value proposition without busting that budget.

But, first and most importantly, you need to know where you’re going.

When you work with emerging technologies, it’s not always clear where you’re going at the start. There may be multiple potential use cases, multiple potential markets. You may already have a handful of customers in different markets with those very different use cases. And, while that may bode well in the long-term for the technology, and the future growth trajectory of the business, in the short term it’s an absolute disaster for your marketing team.

Why is that? Because when you’re in the position of having to speak to every market and every use case – and under very real budget constraints – your campaigns will quickly become generic, ho-hum. Now, this approach might work at the very beginning, for awareness-level campaigns designed to get your brand and product in front of as many people as possible and to suss out who’s really in-market for what you have to offer. But when it comes time to convert those aware buyers into qualified leads, those generic campaigns will fall flat.

B2B buyers want to know that you understand their specific needs, their specific business. They want to be confident that their purchase of your technology will either 1) drive incremental revenue or 2) save untold costs for their business. Practically, that means crafting highly-targeted campaigns that use the language your audience is familiar with and address the use cases they care about. A generic B2B marketing campaign can’t do this. And the further down the marketing funnel your target buyer, the more tailored those marketing communications will need to be. Product marketing that speaks to their pain points, decision-level content that explicitly addresses alternatives in the same space. There are many steps in the customer’s buying journey, and your job as a marketer is to make sure you’re well-represented at each.

Not being clear on ‘where you’re going’ – the target audience, product offering, and value proposition – isn’t just a disaster for marketing, but also for sales, customer operations, and engineering. Start with a single target market, a solid product, and finite set of use cases, and it’s far easier for the sales motion to quickly become a science. The same goes for customer operations, who can guide new customers through onboarding and answer questions with a level of expertise that starts the relationship on a good note (and underscores the smart purchase decision they just made). And, for engineering, those same customers – with many of the same needs – will provide invaluable feedback for the roadmap. Prioritization becomes a heck of a lot easier when it’s clear who it is you’re building the product for.

But what happens, you ask, when you’re going in the wrong direction? It’s simple. You start over by choosing a new place to go – a different use case/target audience/value proposition. And then you take one step at a time, supporting that new buying journey, all over again. It’s one of the things I love about the photo of natural steps in the woods that accompanies this post: The right next steps will be there to guide you once you’re on the path, providing a foothold – and confirmation that you’re headed in the right direction – along the way. But in order to get started, you need to first choose the path.

Don’t see the steps? You might need to alter your course a bit, but that’s all part of the adventure. After all, next year, we’ll go somewhere different on vacation. In the meantime, we’re going to make the most of our time in upstate NY so that everyone involved – adults and teenagers alike – have a great, relaxing time – and are ready to do it all over again next summer.