If you're like most B2B marketers, you diligently plan and execute campaigns to drive new opportunities and, ultimately, increase revenue. But unless you're ready to rethink marketing's role, you may be throwing precious budget dollars out the window and missing opportunities to drive real customer value.

Customer buying behavior is evolving, and demand management is evolving along with it. Today's B2B marketers can't focus only on generating leads and turning them over to Sales. They need a new process for creating effective, targeted programs that hit the right people at the right time via the appropriate channel.

Here are four key steps to ensure your B2B marketing evolves to meet today's challenges.

1. Develop a lead-management process

Marketing and Sales must work together to design a more integrated—and collaborative—process that addresses goals, metrics, and activities at crucial lead stages.

That process includes...

  • Identifying key business drivers to optimize demand generation
  • Mapping out the customer lifecycle (from suspect to prospect, lead, and customer)
  • Building marketing programs for nurturing and qualification
  • Defining a Sales-ready lead
  • Determining how leads should be passed to Sales and tracked

2. Master your customer data

Organizations might have thousands, or even millions, of contacts from tradeshows, partner events, and old website leads. And data from social media monitoring and capture have added to the volume of data that organizations have to sift through. Developing marketing initiatives for an unwieldy database results in wasted budget and resources—and, more important, missed revenue opportunities.

You need a data strategy to develop a comprehensive view of your customers and their interactions. That means starting with a clear understanding of what customer data you have today—from all available sources—and where there are gaps.

The sources of information that feed the database are critical; just as critical, however, is how that information is collected, stored, and managed... because that's what will help you make decisions about to whom you should market.

Define your customer

Who in your customer's organization is the buyer of the services that your company sells? Who influences the sale? Who approves it? A multilevel view will help you target messaging and better arm your sales force with the information it needs.

Cleanse and standardize your data

In B2B marketing, obtaining prospect information, such as company, title, contact name, and email address, is paramount. Use reference libraries to standardize domestic and international mailing addresses. Implement email address formatting and domain validation to ensure higher deliverability.

Match the data

Enter your email address to continue reading

The Evolution of B2B Marketing: Why Generating Leads Isn't Enough Anymore

Don't worry...it's free!

Already a member? Sign in now.

Sign in with your preferred account, below.

Did you like this article?
Know someone who would enjoy it too? Share with your friends, free of charge, no sign up required! Simply share this link, and they will get instant access…
  • Copy Link

  • Email

  • Twitter

  • Facebook

  • Pinterest

  • Linkedin


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

image of Michelle  Boockoff-Bajdek

Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek is chief marketing officer and chief sustainability officer at Skillsoft, a leading platform for transformative learning experiences.

LinkedIn: Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek

Twitter: @MichelleBB