7 Easy Steps to Plan Your B2B Marketing Strategy

If you run a small business, planning your B2B marketing strategy may be one of those to-do list items that you keep procrastinating.  

But you'll be happy to hear that there are some easy steps you can take to make sure your marketing decisions are more strategic and align with your business goals. And you probably already have the information you need filed away in your head!

Set aside a little time to follow the steps below, and you'll have a strategic framework that lets you quickly decide which marketing opportunities are the best ones to focus on.

How to Develop a B2B Marketing Strategy with No Work

Well, there may be a little work... But I can promise you it's probably less painful than you think! Actually, if you're like most entrepreneurs, you probably already have a lot of the necessary knowledge about your market and your customers already hidden away in your brain - you just need a step-by-step process to pull it out.

In a nutshell, these are the seven key steps:

1. Understand your market landscape

  • Who are your competitors?
  • Who are potential customers?
  • Who are potential partners/influencers?

2. Segment your market

  • How can you group the market players?
  • What are the different categories of potential customers?

3. Develop segment profiles

  • How can you describe the various customer segments?
  • What other segments of companies or individuals are there (maybe not customers or competitors)?

4. Define ideal customer targets

  • Which of the customer segments are your most profitable targets?  Write a detailed profile for each.
  • What of the other segments may be the best target partners (ie, they can help your marketing scale)?

5. Understand pain points & sales needs

  • What are the main pain points of your target customers?
  • What information or material do they need to make a purchase decision?
  • Who is involved in the purchase decision?
  • What information or material do your target partners need?

6. Develop your elevator pitch & messages

  • What are the key talking points (to the target segments)?

7. Define your communications strategy

  • What are the best marketing strategies to communicate your messages to your ideal target customers and solve their pain points?
  • How can you communicate a win/win proposition to your target partners?

For each step, you just need to write down a paragraph or two to answer the questions. The critical end goal is that the process helps you really target your most profitable customer segment(s) and any partners who can really help you scale.  THAT is where your marketing communications must focus.  Everything else is noise!

If you need a little more help, and some useful worksheets and templates, to complete your B2B marketing strategy planning, then take a look at our ebook package "The 7-Step Easy Marketing Strategy Process - How to Maximize Business Results from your Marketing Efforts".

Use Your Strategy to Focus Your Marketing Efforts

Finally, give a copy of your communications strategy to anyone who is doing marketing for your company.  They can use it to evaluate each marketing opportunity or decision, making sure your marketing resources are truly focused on building your business and not on throwing good money after bad.