Future-Proofing Your B2B Marketing Strategy: 3 Opportunities to Beat the Competition

If you have a business-to-business (B2B) brand, you are at risk of falling behind your competition in winning the hearts and minds of your partners or customers, if it hasn’t already happened.

For many years, B2B companies and brands have been able to rely on the time-tested approach of regular phone calls or in-person meetings, industry events, and targeted communications like direct mail and email, to reach and sell to partners and customers. Sales or BD teams have often led these efforts, with Marketing providing things like collateral, booth graphics, email templates, and trade advertising or PR.

Today, three major pressures are shaking up the formula – and Marketing leadership will play a pivotal role in driving this shift for an organization.

The three main B2B marketing challenges that I see for some firms are:

1. They haven’t integrated their data sets, company functions, and technology platforms around the customer journey and buyer funnel.
   
   
2. A lack of prior investment in brand building has diluted brand awareness, recall and consideration – making it easier for the competition to reach a company’s customers faster and with less effort.
   
   
3. The absence of a clear, differentiated positioning, story, and marketing plan leads a firm to be “drowned out” as AI-enabled content floods the market. Generic messages, stories, and posts simply won’t cut it anymore.

The good news is that digital tools and the democratization of good planning guidance makes standing up a more robust B2B marketing strategy much more accessible. As I see it, three key activities will deliver meaningful impact to your B2B growth or profitability goals. The three top opportunities I see are:

1. Map the customer journey and the buyer funnel. With these in place, a customized marketing plan may be developed that leverages the insights gleaned from the journey and the funnel, considering the unique pain points and characteristics of a firm’s ideal target customer. The subsequent execution of this plan can lead to increased conversions or reduce sales cycle times.
   
   
2. Define how people will be part of your brand story and messaging: AI is going to have an impact, but humans yearn for connection and relationship. As the old adage goes, “people work with people they like.” By thinking about how it can deliver a human-centric experience, a firm can take “the best of both worlds” by integrating people-centered interactions with technology tools and platforms. Doing so both will increase conversion and build long-term customer loyalty for industries that don’t compete solely on price.
   
   
3. Craft your differentiated story. I write often about differentiation, or how a firm can define its key differentiators and then use those in its marketing strategy and plan to be better positioned against its competition. Read more here.

In my next post, I’ll delve into key strategies and tactics for applying these opportunities to a B2B brand.