When your B2B marketing campaign doesn’t perform as expected, what do you do? How do you pick up the pieces and move on to build a better performing campaign? The answers to these questions might be more obvious than you think.
B2B marketers may know better than most – attaining marketing campaign success is easier when you have a solid foundation of critical building blocks. When one building block is missing, achieving your goals is an uphill battle, but when they are all firmly in place, victory is within reach. Knowing what those critical campaign building blocks are is the first step to clearing your path to performance success.
Use this checklist of 8 Mission-Critical Building Blocks to make your next B2B marketing campaign a winner.
Know your audience – understand what keeps them up at night and what motivates them to act. Then, determine how your solutions help them address their pain points. A good starting point may be to research your targets by looking at media they read and follow. Or you may want to talk to or survey your existing customers, so you understand their likes and dislikes. While it can be time consuming, doing your homework at the outset will result in a more relevant campaign and that will save you time in the long-run.
Use segmented, clean data – make sure you are targeting the right people at the right postal or email address. Work with your sales team to segment prospects into groups and to ensure information is up to date. If you are using traditional mail, NCOA and CASS processes as well as at least periodic First-Class mailings with Return Service will help you update physical addresses. At the same time, these automated methods won’t catch all the issues, so consider developing a yearly data clean-up process.
Devise a compelling offer – keep your audience in mind when you’re developing the offer. Consider options that will appeal to the broadest array of prospects. This may include a tangible gift ‒ tech gadgets, apparel, or more specialized gifts are popular options. Or, your audience may respond to content that includes tips, checklists, industry research, a white paper or other helpful information they can use on the job. You may find that a special discount or product/service promotion is of most value to your audience.
Include a clear call to action (CTA) – the first step to developing your CTA is to think about what action you want your audience to take. Once you have determined your goal, describe it in concise, action-oriented terms using strong verbs. Here are a few examples: Claim your free trial today. Discover the difference‒visit URL to set up a meeting today. Renew your membership now and save.
Design strong messaging and creative – talk to your targets in their language and consider using a catchy theme to tie your campaign together. You’ll want to create a look and feel that can be carried out across different channels to create consistency. Check out this example of a recent insurance marketing campaign that successfully incorporated a theme across channels to generate a 338% increase in quote volume over the previous year.
Develop a multichannel approach – sometimes clients come to us with one specific new channel in mind and overlook some of the more traditional tactics. It’s rare for a single-channel campaign to be effective. The cumulative effect of touching prospects multiple times in different ways almost always produces stronger results. But, finding the right mix of ongoing tactics and channels can be daunting when there are so many options. One planning tool that can be extremely effective is prospect or customer journey mapping.
Make your Internet presence your campaign hub – by putting your website or campaign-specific landing pages at the center of your campaign you gain several advantages. It is easy for prospects to access anytime from anywhere they are. You can change and update content to keep the campaign fresh. Plus, website analytics are incredibly insightful and may fuel all sorts of marketing-related decisions.
Track, measure, adjust – while measurement may seem like the last step in your process, you need to plan for it on the front end of your campaign. Think about how you will determine campaign success and what metrics you will monitor along the way. You may want to build regular tracking and reporting into your process and even incorporate some tests into your campaign. At a minimum, you should measure and analyze your B2B marketing campaign results at specific points during the campaign or at the campaign conclusion. Then, use those results to adjust your approach.
Looking for added inspiration for your next B2B marketing campaign? Contact us today for a free consultation.
