Archives for category: Planning
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Dismantling the 15 Steps of B2B Marketing

September 9, 2015 //
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If you’re a regular recent reader of this blog, you’ll know that I’ve concluded a series of posts on what I term the 15 steps of B2B marketing, a process that can be applied to pretty much any project, plan or period.

Having built up the 15 steps, I now want to break them up a little.

You may feel that your company, project or plan does not warrant such an exhaustive list of steps. You may also feel that it’s possible to get pretty immediate feedback on your tests and that you might even be able to get stuff out there sooner and iterate your offering while you’re already in the market. A sort of ready-fire-aim approach, if you like.

Indeed, lately, many marketers are starting to borrow from software development and start-up methodologies and talk about ‘agile marketing’, or ‘lean marketing’. Taking a lean approach is a bit like taking a slice of your marketing plan and seeing what it tastes like for customers. This early feedback arms you to improve the next few slices in a series of small improvements, rather than one big cascading marketing push at the end of what might be some untested assumptions and homework.

Lean marketing is not a fad, it’s more a response to the reality that the mechanism of the web makes it much easier for you to very quickly get a steer on whether what you’re doing resonates with those whom you want to relieve of some money. For more on this read here.

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Categories Marketing, Planning, Strategy

The Fifteenth B2B Marketing Step

September 7, 2015 //
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In our penultimate B2B marketing step, we iterated our plan as we went, testing the results and tweaking our approach accordingly. And so we come to the final B2B marketing step in any marketing project or plan, the fifteenth step in what I call the 15-step B2B marketing process.

This step will come as no surprise to those who follow this blog and remember the series on stages in the buying process or selling process.

Yes, the fifteenth stage in the B2B marketing process is to ‘rinse and repeat’. The fifteenth step is the first step. It’s back to the beginning, following the tried and trusted best practices that led to the successes of the previous plan or business period.

You have fresh battles to wage, new opportunities to milk, new challenges to address. They’ll all benefit from the same methodical approach I’ve outlined.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the fifteen steps, climbing to the peak that was the eighth stage of crafting strategy and getting down the other side to your destination and your objectives. Feel free to share the 15 steps with others, or with anyone who would benefit from them.

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Categories Marketing, Planning, Strategy

The Fourteenth B2B Marketing Step

September 4, 2015 //
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OK, you’ve completed all but 2 of your 15 B2B marketing steps to success. You’ve started executing your B2B marketing project or plan, so you’re pretty much there, right?

Wrong!

You need to test early and test often. Review the activities as you execute them and where possible measure as soon as you can. When a reasonable time has elapsed for each activity to flow through your business, measure the return on the activity and enter the actual results in the last few columns of your activity plan, so that you can see how you stack up against your target results. Then, over time, you can fine-tune your future targets with the benefit of hindsight and increasing experience.

Beware – not many companies close the loop. They do a plan for a project or period, execute, maybe measure the results, but they don’t then learn from the misses and incorporate the learnings into the next plan. Make sure you’re not one of the companies that misses, repeatedly.

Review, measure, learn, adjust and execute again. Until you’re done executing.

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Categories Marketing, Planning, Strategy

Two Years of Blogging

September 2, 2015 //
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Two years ago today I published my first blog post on ‘Paul Dilger’s blog – Musings on stuff I come into contact with.’ I committed to do 3 posts a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, going out between 7:30 and 8:30 am London/Dublin time, regular as clockwork. It didn’t seem worth the commitment to do one when I felt like it, since that would degenerate into one a month, and pretty soon none a month.

Two years later, and some 300-plus posts later, it’s still going strong, regular as clockwork. I like to think that I’m still true to the values from the early days: mostly sales and marketing stuff, posts that take a maximum of 2-3 minutes to read – rather than 10 seconds or half your morning – and posts that I hope interest and enable people.

It serves as the chief dollop of fresh content for my business web site, but it doesn’t feel like work. I really enjoy writing the posts, and I know the discipline of creating them is good for me.

I hope you enjoy dipping into them as well. Here’s to the next post :-).

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Categories Communication, Customers, General, Language, Marketing, Planning, Sales, Strategy, Technology

The Thirteenth B2B Marketing Step

August 31, 2015 //
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The number thirteen. Unlucky for some. But not for you. You’ve done the hard work on your B2B marketing, crafting your strategy, developing a plan for making it happen, working the detail, and getting it approved by your team mates and the powers that be.

Thirteen is a good thing for you.

The thirteenth B2B Marketing Step is execute, executing on your plan for your project or quarter or year. Go do that thing, make it happen! Turn your plan into reality and get it done.

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Categories Marketing, Planning, Strategy

The Twelfth B2B Marketing Step

August 28, 2015 //
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In our previous B2B marketing step, we costed out all of our activities to make sure that each activity and the sum of the activities give us a reasonable targeted return on our investment towards achieving our goals. Our plan is ready to go now, or is it?

Not quite. Now we have to socialise the plan among our colleagues, partners and superiors, get feedback, adjust the plan where necessary and get approval to proceed. This is our twelfth B2B marketing step.

Any draft plan will benefit from different view points. Specific subject matter experts and the people we report to can be a valuable sounding board for the plan and help give it more direction and shape.

Make sure you build in time for these iterations before you start to execute the plan. Sometimes the review and approval process can be quick and painless, but it’s usually more drawn out, since you’re eating into the time of other people whose priorities might be different to yours, even if they’re aligned in overall business terms.

Be prepared to make concessions and adjustments to your plan. It’s inevitable; you won’t get it right first time. Be sure to pick your battles and let go what’s less important, while being ready to defend what is important with evidence and numbers.

Once your plan is approved for execution, you’re good to go.

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Categories Marketing, Planning, Strategy

The Eleventh B2B Marketing Step

August 26, 2015 //
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In the tenth B2B marketing step we mapped out the specific activities underpinning our marketing strategy to hit our goals. We now have a list of specific measurable things we’re going to do.

We now need to cost them and budget for them. This is the eleventh step.

Many of our activities will have sunk or fixed costs against them. For example, sending an email marketing campaign is a function of the time of the salaried marketing staff to set up, test and send the email, and the cost of the email marketing software, both of which we have already committed to. Each of these costs can be counted as one amount that can be spread over a bunch of activities.

Then there are activities where we need to spend money, such as advertising, events, buying data and the like.

You need to estimate as accurately as you can – without it taking too long and becoming self-defeating – the cost of each activity. Then you can balance it against the return you’re targeting. This will help you see which activities you can’t afford or won’t do because you don’t see the return, and those that look better value than others. A balance of activities will help you spread your risk. Some will crash and burn, some will do OK, and the odd one might go gangbusters.

Totalling up all costs and estimated returns will give you a feel for what kind of return you anticipate from either your project or your marketing team as a whole, including any third parties whom you’re paying for their specialist expertise.

All of this helps you fine-tune your activity list – or seek extra funds – to the point where you’re happy to submit your plan for review.

 

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Categories Marketing, Planning, Strategy

The One Thing a Good Marketer Must Have

August 24, 2015 //
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The one thing a good marketer should have is – a good eye.

A good eye for what looks good. Good marketers know good design when they see it. They appreciate a well designed page, product, thing. They know what to look for and they know how to brief others to create ‘good’.

A good eye for detail. The devil is in the detail, which means he – or she – is in the data, the words, the images, the emotions.

A good idea for what reads well and sounds good – for which you probably need a good ear too. Remember that what reads well and what sounds good are not the same thing. You’ll find few good marketers who are not good communicators, not good at writing, not good at speaking, not good at listening.

You can learn to get a good eye, you don’t have to be born with it. But you must have this one thing to be good.

 

Categories Communication, General, Language, Marketing, Planning

The Tenth B2B Marketing Step

August 19, 2015 //
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In our ninth B2B marketing step we decided the marketing mix elements to execute our strategy and achieve our objectives. We have some momentum now. We know what we’re going to do, we have to get into the specific, measurable detail.

In the tenth B2B marketing step, then, you need to map out the specific marketing activities you will undertake for your specific project. If this is an ongoing marketing strategy, then I recommend you do it on a quarterly basis, as a quarter is a reasonable B2B timeframe for your efforts to bear fruit, and it’s the fruit you’re measuring. All of your specific activities should have measurable targets against them, which, when added up, get you to your overall target for the project or period.

I suggest you put together a table with each numbered activities listed down the left side, and the following 12 headings across the top. You then need to populate your table:

  • Campaign – that the activity relates to
  • Audience – the segment or sub-segment you’re targeting
  • Launch date – so you can work backwards and figure out when you need to start it
  • Call to action – the thing you want them to do
  • What – what are they getting for completing the action (eg registering for an event)
  • Medium – what do you need to build to allow them to complete the action, eg email, web site landing page and piece of content
  • Who – who in your organisation and /or partner ecosystem is on the hook for delivering this work
  • Target Leads – target number of marketing qualified leads for the activity (eg webinar registrations which marketing then qualify)
  • Target opportunities – of the target leads, the amount of sales qualified opportunities that you plan to generate
  • Target pipeline – the total pipeline this activity will generate
  • Total deals – the total deals or that should result from the activity
  • Total business – the total deal amount that should result from the activity

Leave extra columns for the actual leads, opportunities etc that result from these activities once the project or period is over, but that’s a topic for another post.

Make sure you build in buffer, so that you plan to exceed your target with the sum of your activities, even though you’re only promising or are being held to the target itself. Over time, and with successive efforts, you should get better at forecasting the results of your activities.

Notice too that these are all demand generation activities. You will do other activities that may not generate specific demand, like brand awareness initiatives, but you should still attempt to survey and / or measure the results. If a demand generation activity does not generate one SQO with a value that covers your activity investment by a multiple that you feel is appropriate, don’t do the activity.

Once you have an activity plan that looks reasonable, you need to cost the plan, which comes up next :-).

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Categories Marketing, Planning, Strategy

It’s Not About Starting Something

August 17, 2015 //
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It’s not about starting a project. It’s not about coming up with a great idea that could make millions. It’s not about deciding to walk coast to coast for charity.

Anyone can start something. Kids start new things every day, but how many do they finish before they get bored and move onto the next shiny metal thing?

It’s not about starting something.

It’s about finishing something. It’s about following through, executing, closing the loop, learning from the experience and moving on to the next thing.

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Planning, Sales, Strategy, Technology
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