6 Ways to skyrocket your B2B Marketing ROI.

 

We all know, and I am sure, you will also agree that - Creating a full-fledged B2B Marketing strategy is the most important step towards accomplishing the B2B Marketing ROI goal.

Within a B2B Marketing strategy, there are different marketing campaigns that help a marketer reach the audience and meet the Marketing goal. Every campaign needs well-defined specs and that’s not the end, every campaign (along with specs) must be aligned with the marketing strategy. Hush!! So many terms and conditions there. Aren’t there?

We did brainstorming sessions, data analysis for 100s of B2B Campaign we do on Monthly basis. We started the discussion by listing the common challenges we faced, these are:

 

1. Target Account List (TAL) is not matching the ABM campaign criteria.
2. Undefined or insufficient Exclusion list.
3. Undefined industry vertical.
4. Inaccurate department listing in the campaign specs.
5. Listing a job title and job levels in specs that don’t have or have little influence on the decision-making process.
6. Choosing the wrong channel for delivering the content.

 

We not only listed the challenges but our team came up with an effective solution for each of these.

Here are the six ways to address the top challenges B2B marketers face. These are the common strategic ways our team figured out and implemented that lead us to gain a significant B2B Marketing ROI.    

 

1. Sync the TAL to the campaign criteria.
2. Build an exclusion list thoroughly.
3. Priorities Industry verticals and structure it right. 
4. Research the inner hierarchy in a department to understand the decision-making process right. 
5. Listen and learn the Persona, Job level and Job title like a curious kid
6. Segment the channel type according to campaign need and persona.

 

Let’s look into it in detail:

 

1: The first step to improve B2B Marketing ROI is ensuring the Target Account List is matching ABM Campaign criteria.

 

Before you push an ABM campaign to the marketing team, it is important to ensure that your TAL, and every account within it, must match the ABM campaign criteria/specs.

While developing the product and service or doing marketing, today’s companies don’t have to be reminded that they need to keep eyes on the target market and accounts that have the greater potential for their businesses.

When we talk about ABM, it is a more targeted approach for marketing. It is not a new concept either,

 

“92% of B2B marketers worldwide say that ABM is ‘extremely’ important to their overall marketing efforts.” (SiriusDecisons, Apr 2015)

 

A well-defined and clear ICP is key to creating an effective and clean TAL. Creating Ideal customer profile (ICP) for TAL and then for every account within it while creating TAL is very important in an ABM campaign designing. Most of the campaign designer fail at researching their ideal customer and so creating a profile for them.

With a high caution, the research and creation of TAL are needed to be done right. Remember it is a base of your marketing efforts and a weak base could not hold the empire. Creation of clear ICP, creation of effective TAL, Predict the high B2B Marketing ROI campaign.
 

2: The second step to improve B2B Marketing ROI is building an exclusion list thoroughly.

 

You have done a magnificent job to create a handsome TAL list. Congratulations!! But before you hand the campaign over the marketing team, you must understand and research the potential as well as established competitors, partners, and existing clients those must be excluded from the target audience.

Every process has some dos and some don’ts – creating TAL is a part of dos and creating an exclusion list is a part of don’ts. Having a full ‘coverage’ of accounts in your TAL is a critical step in ABM, similarly having well thought of exclusion list is equally Important from an overall ROI point of view.

Not well-prepared exclusion list sent by end client to marketer many time become the cause for the bad lead delivery to the end client. And that often leads to making both the parties spend their time investigating. – that’s too much confusion and wastage of time, isn’t it?

 

3: Define, prioritize and structure the Industry verticals right.

 

The campaign spec designers must have the thorough understanding of the needs of a market and the features of the product/service so they re-create a great product-market fit and so will succeed to define the industries needed to target well.

Failing to prioritize the industry verticals and not defining them right are the most common and the most pressing issue for the marketer – often irrelevant industry vertical causes a bad lead to enter a sales funnel.
 

4: Research the inner hierarchy in a department to understand the decision-making process right. 

 

Decision making is relatively a complex process, especially in the B2B scenario. It includes a hierarchy of direct and indirect influencers who may be working in the same or different departments that will close a deal or helps the higher authorities make a decision about it.

While campaign design, it is important to be aware of the departments and their role in the decision-making process. Knowing the right department(s) to focus on is a crucial step in a campaign specs design. For instance - The purchase decision to be made about an H.R. payroll and performance management software must come under an H.R. department. Apart from the H.R. department, there may be other departments/stakeholders involved in it. Considering company revenue size, employee strength and internal hierarchy, it is needed to recognize that influencers and department very early. This process must be clean and clear so a marketer can focus on only those specific departments and job functions that are worthy.
 

5: Listen and learn the Persona, Job level and Job title like a curious kid:

 

Defining department right is the very first step to influence the key decision-makers. Campaign designer must dig deep the department and hunt the job level and job titles that are going to be involved in a buying process.

As explained, the internal hierarchy is complex and different account to account and industry to industry. There are also some companies who come up with complex and unique job role. It is where the campaign specs needed to updated accordingly. To achieve great specificity at choosing the job level and job title, today's organization have to conduct deep research and have a good understanding of the hierarchy of every account and department they are intending to target.

 

6: Segment the channel type according to campaign need and persona:

 

E-mail, Social Media and telecall have been the topmost favorite channel for marketers to promote the content. While some marketer chose randomly target every prospect by dropping a mail in their inbox, there are some smart marketers who know what channel works for whom. Again, study the persona of prospects and respect their likes and dislike. Not every prospect is ready to hear from you, and not every prospect is ready to read your content. For every different stage, one must consider using the right mix of channels to convey the info and message effectively and consistently.

 

Supplementary: The power of Events, Social Media, SEO and Videos in making the higher B2B Marketing ROI goal true.

 

B2B Marketing is getting more versatile and innovative with new tools, technology, and creatives. Business events are the opportunity to connect a community of the same shared value and interest. While Social Media like LinkedIn is becoming a very effective platform to influence the key decision-makers.

SEO is not dead at all, it is being proven effective even today, with deliberately chosen keywords and intent, an organization can attract and retain prospect they are looking for.

The age of visual content - Innovation and creativity are making a difference in the marketing process. Creative video promos are getting popular on all kind of platform, and B2B can’t be an exception. Videos can be a part of your content marketing as it has tremendous attention and retention rate over another content type. There are AR and AI also rolling up their sleeves to show off their importance in the overall B2B marketing funnel.

 

Bottom line:

 

These are the right ways and means to design right campaign specs that bring maximum B2B Marketing ROI.

Do you have similar challenges or any other? Do these ways you apply or any new ways you think of?

Re-visit and Re-think the marketing strategy