B2B Marketing Strategy Frameworks: is Agile Marketing an option?

Are there enough strategy frameworks for B2B companies?

With a B2B Marketing company there are few marketing strategy frameworks that work. As the market is constantly developing and these few aren’t enough to cover the request here are some more insights into the subject.

Some things that changed in the past 2 years need special focus, as they came with a different reaction of the same customers to the same marketing approach. Here is what made the need to change the approach:

• More people are involved now in B2B purchase decision, typically up to 10.
• The modern B2B customers tend to be well informed, doing this by themselves with online research, with no need of approaching the company just to get some information. Google shows that 67% of the buyer’s journey is digital, without interacting with a salesperson
• The buying journey isn’t a straight path anymore. 90% of B2B stakeholders have to repeat and turn back to multiple buying tasks.

This warns B2B marketers that many of their digital marketing frameworks are built on old facts that aren't available anymore. There is a need to think bigger than just understanding the buyer’s journey.

Why an all-in-one strategy framework isn’t enough anymore?

There are several reasons to quit the massive campaigns out of your strategy. Starting with the simple facts that each business is different, with certain and particular needs and many of them are now providing mixed services, which makes it hard for a single marketing framework fit it perfectly.

Every business is different, with a different set of needs that the marketing framework has to accomplish. In this case, the broader the framework, the more resources (both financial and human) are required to implement it successfully. Those resources are wasted when a standard marketing framework is meant to fit into any organization.

A marketing framework that works in the given context is one that focuses on 2 or 3 most important capabilities and takes the best out of them. However, there are some specific B2B marketing frameworks that we identified as valuable out of which you can extract different components in order to implement a successful campaign.

Our main focus, the customer, is in the center of attention of every service that needs to make a sell, and it gets bombarded with information that takes part of the rapid trend of evolution. The customer is also changing fast its perception and interest, which means that marketers need to be as quick as their switch in ideas in order to address the right needs.

Usually, those massive marketing campaigns take months to start and they end up as a patched plan that only required more resources to adapt to the market supply.  Those projects are known for postponed launching and exceeded budget, which brings unsatisfactory results. The approach of marketing teams needs to freshen up, and this means focusing on shorter period plans to implement with constant feedback from their target audience.

Times change, so does marketing- Get Agile

Today’s digital transformation allows each industry, including marketing, to approach innovative ways to bring more customers. Translated to marketing organizations, it means they need to become quick and approach short and effective campaigns.

Agile marketing means rapidly implementing data that is continuously collected, come up with solutions in real time, see immediate results and run through it again. Ideally, marketing companies can run multiple campaigns at the same time with fresh ideas and approaches every new week or month.

What it does is breaking big projects into smaller segments that can be revised, managed and implemented much easier with less effort. If the advantage is not obvious yet, let us name it: you do micro-campaigns which get immediate feedback, which allows you to adjust the strategy appropriately, addressing the right customer.

Agile marketing is an approach inspired by the IT sector and this is why the focus is on continuous testing and data pulling. It is also about multiple updates between the departments, which is great for maximizing the efficiency of the campaign, as all the departments deliver their results and findings and then establish together the next approach.

Implementing an Agile Marketing Framework

The process involved in the development of Agile Marketing is called Scrum and it is created to maximize the performance of short-period actions in order to deliver long-term results. Those actions include improved communication processes and increased responsiveness of marketing activities. By receiving constant feedback  you can rapidly react to changes in the market and to customer new needs, and this is only assuring the success and the high-performance of the campaign

Scrum is also a term implemented from software programs, and it proved useful in developing digital marketing strategies. Its methodology allows teams to work better together, returning high-quality results delivered by transparency and adaptability factors.

Are you considering switching to an Agile Marketing Framework? Get in touch with us to benefit from highly-performative digital marketing campaigns.