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The Fourth B2B Marketing Step

July 29, 2015 //
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In the third step of our B2B marketing process we eliminated the customer groups we weren’t interest in pursuing so that we could concentrate on our addressable market. Now we need to understand more about that market.

The fourth B2B Marketing step is to profile your addressable market. Fortunately for us, we might have done some of this work already when we researched the whole market in our second step.

Now comes more homework. You need to find out and record the important things about the addressable market that can help you shape your offering to it. Here are some of the things it would be good to know:

– the obvious stuff, like location, industry, size, how the market operates

– any legal or regulatory aspects to the market that govern how it works

– pressure and drivers on the market. What are its players trying to do and where do they feel pain?

– the typical buyers in this market. Job roles, personas, other people of influence

– the decision-making process in general. Simple or complex, short or long, few hurdles and people involved or many?

– the cultural aspects to the market. Is it a good cultural fit for you to sell to? Do you think and work similarly to it?

You can find out much of the standard stuff from publications like annual reports and resources like the web or social media, but the more esoteric information can really only be gleaned over time by networking, personal experience and asking around. The better you can profile your addressable market, the better you can segment it and decide where to go first.

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Categories Marketing, Planning, Strategy

The Third B2B Marketing Step

July 27, 2015 //
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In our 15-step B2B Marketing process, we first covered defining what you’re trying to do, before researching your market. In the third step we start to home in on our target audience, over a series of steps.

You’re not going to be targeting the entire market; it’s too big. You should resist the urge to appear to be all things to all people. The third step, therefore, is to define your addressable market. To do this you call out not only the areas you’re going to address, but also the ones you’re not.

Areas you’re not to purse might be defined by region, vertical, size of company, size of deal, attitude to buying your products and services, and so on. Being strong and not going after business you’ve decided not to pursue is as important as is your focus on the areas you are going to pursue, and it’s important you stay true to this and don’t be tempted by stuff you know is either a poor fit or a tough sale.

For example, if you provide outsourced management services to a certain vertical, you might want to discount those companies who have an in-house manager for those services, or those companies who do not have a culture or a practice of outsourcing services, preferring to do it themselves.

Once you have stripped away the chaff from your market and eliminated the areas you’re not going to pursue, you’re left with the wheat – your addressable market. From then, it’s useful to try and calculate the size of your addressable market, so that you can start to think in realistic terms about what market share is achievable for you over the coming periods.

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Categories Marketing, Planning, Strategy

The Second B2B Marketing Step

July 24, 2015 //
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In our first B2B marketing step, I discussed how you start by defining what it is you’re trying to do. Once you’ve done that, the homework starts, and lots of it.

The second stage is research. You need to research your market throughly, since you can’t successfully market to it unless you understand it. If you’re taking a focussed approach and targeting a small number of large companies, then you’ll need to find out as much as you can about those specific companies. For now, we’ll confine ourselves to researching the market.

There are many dimensions to this. Here are some to think about:

– What is the industry? Can you define it? How does it operate?

– How many players are in it? How do they group or segment?

– How big is the market? Is it growing, flat-lining or shrinking?

– What legal or regulatory pressures are on the companies in this market?

– What power does this industry have and what pressures and margins is it subject to? Michael Porter’s famous Five Forces Model is a doozy for this.

– Is this a progressive or a traditional industry? What kind of things will it respond to?

– What are companies in this market trying to do? What are their drivers?

– What is stopping them getting there without your help? What are their challenges?

– Who are the typical buyers in these companies?

– What are the buyer ‘personas’? What kind of people are they? How do they like to become aware of stuff and research problems and alternative solutions?

– Do companies typically have budgets put aside for your kind of solution in this market? What other destinations for their budgets are you competing against?

– How do these companies usually make decisions on your stuff? Are they simple and quick or complex and drawn-out?

– What other job roles influence the decision?

– What’s the competitive situation for your solution in this market? Is it well established and saturated with competition, or emerging with few players to rival you?

Phew! Thats’s a long list, and not exhaustive, but the more detailed the picture of your market, the better your marketing in the subsequent steps. A word of caution: a lot of companies don’t bother doing this step…

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Categories Marketing, Planning, Strategy

The First B2B Marketing Step

July 22, 2015 //
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I recently introduced the idea of a 15-step B2B marketing process. It sounds like a lot of steps, doesn’t it? That’s because, as your grandma used to say, if something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well, or in this case, in 15 well-considered steps.

How to start any process? Well, the best place is the beginning.

The first step is to define what it is you’re trying to do. You can only define what you’re trying to do once you’ve identified either that you have a problem that needs addressing or an opportunity that you want to take advantage of.

The more accurately you can define what you’re trying to do, the easier it is to take the next steps, and the easier to stay focused through all the steps. If your definition is vague, woolly or hedges its bets, the chances are your marketing process will not deliver what you’re looking for, because – let’s face it – you don’t actually know what you’re looking for.

A good definition has the 5 W’s in it – who, what, when, where, why. The process or strategy in the subsequent steps covers the all-important how.

 

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Categories Marketing, Planning, Strategy
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