Introduction
Evaluating marketing effectiveness can be complex, but it’s crucial for optimizing your investments. Start by understanding the broader challenges that businesses face in "Why CFOs Must Lead the Charge in Driving B2B Success". For insights into reclaiming your sales processes, visit "Reclaiming New Business Development from Marketing’s Hijack". To ensure your evaluation aligns with digital selling goals, explore "Building a Digital Selling Business Plan for Success".
You'll Discover:
- How to measure the ROI of your marketing campaigns.
- Practical methods for identifying gaps in your current strategies.
- Steps to ensure marketing aligns with broader business objectives.
- Tips for using data to drive informed decision-making.
Executive Summary
As a B2B CEO, understanding the current state of your marketing efforts is crucial for growth and success. This article will provide a strategy or guide to help you evaluate your marketing strategies, technologies, and processes to identify areas of improvement and capitalise on opportunities for growth. By incorporating digital selling, live streaming, and other innovative strategies provided by salesXchange, you can revolutionise your B2B marketing efforts and outpace the competition.
There's no point beating-around-the-bush - most marketing strategies are pretty awful. They are, in the main, cookie-cut from one SaaS business to another. Most CMOs have simply followed the heard and implemented demand-gen, lead gen, ABM and Pay-Per-Click. However, there is a fundamental flaw in these technologies and tactics, that the recipients, i.e. you and me do not, and will not, engage with these technologies as they demand we provide them with our contact details in exchange for content. We know from experience that it is simply a green light for cold callers to pester our staff - because we certianly won't answer a cold-call.
Table of Contents
- Assess Your Current Marketing Strategy
- Evaluate Your Marketing Technologies
- Analyse Your Processes and Workflows
- Identify Areas of Improvement and Growth Opportunities
- Develop an Action Plan
- Conclusion
1. Assess Your Current Marketing Strategy
Before diving into the specifics, take a step back and assess your overall marketing strategy. We both know it's not rocket science; you have a total addressable market (TAM). You went into business in the first place because you identified early on that you could provide a product to this market and make a profit. Consider the following questions:
- Of your total addressable market, what percentage are you communicating with on a weekly basis?
- What are your marketing departments objectives and goals?
- How do your marketing efforts align with your overall business objectives?
- Are your marketing strategies generating the desired results, engaging with your TAM?
Yes, of course, you can evaluate your digital marketing efforts, including your presence on social media, email marketing, and content strategies such as copywriting and podcasts. Identify any gaps or misalignments that may exist between your goals and your current efforts. However, that's what everyone else is doing.
Your strategy needs to be simple, sustainable, robust and engaging. You need everyone on-board with it as marketers and salespeople are somewhat weary of repeating the same-old strategies and 'ra-ra' everyone else is doing.
Consider this; If between 1% and 15% of your TAM are looking to start their buying journey each week, your marketing strategy needs to be aligned to these metrics so that you can make informed decisions for each necessary stage.
Take a look at this infographic below - you'll see that it all makes sense and is somehthing that can be set up and almost forgotten about. But you do need the content to be available, which we can help with if needs be.
2. Evaluate Your Marketing Technologies
Next, assess the marketing technologies and tools you're using. Consider the following:
- Is your marketing tech stack up-to-date and efficient? Everyone would like to think so considering how much it costs every month, let alone what the salaries are to pay people to 'drive the SaaS'
- Are you utilising Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager to track your marketing and individual content performance?
- Are your SEO and SEM efforts being effectively managed, are there any bottlenecks - We use www.seoAbility.com ?
Examine your use of visual content tools like Mid Journey, Adobe Firefly, and Microsoft Designer. Review your photography and video content, ensuring they're engaging and appealing to your audience. And most importantly ensure you are exploiting auto-posting technologies such as www.recurpost.com
3. Analyse Your Processes and Workflows
In addition to your strategy and tools, your marketing processes and workflows play a crucial role in your success. Ask yourself the following questions:
- Are your marketing processes streamlined and efficient?
- Is your team well-coordinated and working towards common goals?
- Are you effectively pivoting to digital selling?
Assess how your marketing team can manage live streaming events and evaluate how you can leverage low-cost live streaming technology from Blackmagic Design to improve your efforts.
Personally I believe too much emphasis is placed on project management tools like Monday and other SaaS suites, however, if the work can be set and forgewt, it begs the question, why all the additional software and people!
4. Identify Areas of Improvement and Growth Opportunities
With a thorough understanding of your current marketing landscape, it's time to identify areas of improvement and growth opportunities. I know you know the points below are pretty obvious, but the links I have provided (inline) demonstrate our unique strategies for each of these areas of new business marketing.
It sounds brutal, but I can assure you, you could probably 'lose' at least 50% of your marketing team if you adopt these strategies - and the point of the plan is to exponentially increase your profitability. The potential areas to focus on include:
- Enhancing your content strategy with engaging copywriting, photography, and video
- Leveraging live streaming and podcasts to connect with your audience
- Optimising your SEO and SEM efforts to improve your online visibility
- Implementing Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager to track and measure your marketing performance
- Streamlining your processes and workflows for increased efficiency
5. Develop an Action Plan
Once you've read some of these pages for improvement and growth, develop a comprehensive action plan to address these opportunities. Outline specific actions, timelines, and responsibilities for each identified area. Ensure your plan aligns with your overall business objectives (now taking into consideration your Total Addressable Market!) and incorporates your team's actual input.
That said, take a look at our Resources section. We have a page called Go Live. This provides all the necessary information and documentation needed to create a transformative Action Plan. We call it a Content Stack!
6. Conclusion
Evaluating your B2B marketing efforts is an ongoing process that requires continuous attention and adjustment. By carefully examining your marketing strategies, technologies, and processes, you can identify areas for improvement and capitalise on growth opportunities. By leveraging the innovative strategies provided by salesXchange, you can transform your marketing efforts, stay ahead of the competition, and drive your business towards success.
I can say, it's not a quick fix. Think of it along these lines; marketers have failed to review and adapt marketing strategies that are supposed to align with the behaviour of B2B buyers. Instead, they have adopted the technolgies and strategies the Big Tech companies have told them to adopt. This has resulted in consumer strategies being applied to B2Bs. You already know it doesn't work. Nor does cold calling.
Business need to be communicated in a certain way and that is the cut-and-thrust of this website. It has been developed expressly for business owners who need to hear and grasp an alternative strategy and set of ideas to get their businesses back on track. We all have a great deal of time to make up. Hope this all helps. Call me if you have any questions. Nigel Maine - Founder
The author and founder of salesXchange, Nigel Maine is a B2B marketing and sales expert with a proven track record in scaling up growth for Technology, SaaS, and Professional Services organisations. With 30 years hands-on experience and unique approach, Nigel has developed an effective strategy that dramatically increases exposure and profitability for B2B organizations.
