The Key to B2B Marketing Transformation: Integrate People, Processes and Technology
Each week, I get some very interesting questions from members of our exclusive, invitation-only B2B LinkedIn Group. We exchange notes with thought leaders in the industry on a range of topics and challenges faced by B2B organizations.
Based on a quick survey within the group, here are the top 10 questions that amajority of these B2B companies appear to be struggling with:
We want to uncover relevant industry/market insights and target the right customers—how can we do that?
In terms of reporting and metrics, what are the most relevant ways to monitor and track goals?
Is our marketing budget and campaign planning process making the right use of customer data?
Are we spending too much or too little on marketing? How do we measure return on investment?
Is data gathered from social media collated with customer insights gleaned across other channels?
Are we equipped to personalize social interactions with customers across various channels?
Is there sufficient transparency and visibility in our marketing process to facilitate 360° customer interactions with our brand?
What’s the formula for the ideal marketing mix? Is there one?
Is our Sales and Marketing aligned to take advantage of automation and nurture quality leads?
How can we apply real-time business intelligence and predictive analytics to our lead generation campaigns? Does our marketing automation software have the capability to do that?
We then asked the group what they feel is required to help them meet these challenges. Overall, the responses were:
B2B organizations require strategic advisory services to help them plan their business ecosystem models.
They need direction on marketing process design that uses an omni-channel approach.
With shrinking budgets, expertise with zero-budget methodology is what will really help these companies.
As innovation and the explosion of data gathering tools continues, B2B players need flexibility of databases that work well with existing and new systems.
While access to data is not necessarily an issue, most of these companies are seeking ways to intelligently mine the data and reveal actionable insights.
10 Steps to Create Marketing Transformation
Is your company plagued by organizational inefficiencies? You’re not alone! Take the right steps at the right time to reinvent your marketing department. Here is some useful advice on how to bring about a visible, tangible transformation.
Breakdown the silos and start streamlining roles and responsibilities—make both sales and marketing accountable for customer experience.
Establish customer experience frameworks that focus on personalization.
Package your content to work well with different channels. Focus on creating quality content that your audience trusts, values and can actually use to their benefit.
Optimize your channel management processes and create performance metrics to manage partners by tracking KPIs.
Align sales and marketing goals with your overall business objectives so you can measure effectiveness of lead generation campaigns based on the actual impact on growth and profitability.
Make sure you create a strong foundation to include processes, mechanisms and policies that your team can use to run campaigns efficiently. While you may have a core team that defines processes and policies, it’s important to get buy-in from other team members who will be responsible for implementing and following those guidelines.
Love your data but don’t be blinded by it! (Click here to Tweet this). The mountain of data most organizations accumulate is overwhelming and often wasted because there is no time or method to use it and achieve the right results. Take the time to analyze key data points and channels before, during and after each marketing campaign. That way, you know what’s working, what’s not and you can avoid making the same mistakes.
Be flexible so that it becomes easier to integrate new marketing channels into planning, execution, analytics and reporting.
Take an all-round view of various fragmented technologies, platforms and systems you are using. Look at ways to adopt integrated marketing with the right solutions.
And last, but not the least, reinvent your marketing department using a coordinated approach that integrates people, processes and technology.
How will you achieve marketing transformation within your B2B organization? Every little step counts! Join this exclusive, B2B LinkedIn Group to exchange notes with thought leaders in the industry.
Don’t worry if you have made mistakes with your lead generation in the past. There’s always a chance to course-correct and optimize your process for better results. DownloadYour B2B Demand Generation Detox Diet today.
