B2B Marketing Planning Tips: Maximize Effectiveness and Generate Leads with Your Marketing Plan

A successful business is supported by effective marketing. But how do you know if you get the most value from every dollar spent on your marketing efforts? To get this answer, start with your B2B marketing planning. A B2B marketing plan is essential to visualize what activities are taking place, when they are happening, who is responsible and more. In this blog, we dive into how to maximize your marketing effectiveness and boost lead generation with a powerful marketing plan.

Why Marketing Planning Matters

Marketing is about getting as close to the target audience as possible, truly understanding their needs and providing a product or service that meets those needs. Without a plan, marketing can be misguided and misdirected, leading to wasted resources and budget. Marketers who have a plan are 674% more likely to report success than those who do not. Businesses that have set goals, which a marketing plan is built around, are 429% more likely to report success than those without goals. Not only does having a marketing plan boost success, but organizations also have a 30% increase in customer retention. These stats stress the importance of having a marketing plan and we will tell you exactly what to include to ensure yours generates more leads and revenue.

Tips on What to Include in a B2B Marketing Plan

An integrated marketing plan outlines the marketing activities that will impact the target audience most and produce the maximum return on the investment. Before forming your comprehensive marketing plan, check out these tips for your marketing planning:

• Review Your Buyer Personas: Effective marketing is all about reaching the right audience with the right messaging using the right mediums and hitting them at the right time. While you can’t control all the variables, making sure you have a clear target audience is key! If you haven’t looked at them for a bit, don’t forget to refine your buyer personas. Fine-tune them to ensure they are updated with the most current information so your marketing can make the most impact. Once you have checked this task off the list, you can move into building your marketing plan. Here is what you should include.

• Plan Your Marketing Activities: Having a marketing plan helps you visualize what marketing activities are taking place within a timeframe. Organizations often create yearly marketing plans, but quarterly or something else also works, whatever is best for your team. It can seem overwhelming to outline every marketing effort, but it is necessary to have insight into everything going on. Here are a few activities to outline and tips for each to ensure your B2B marketing planning efforts cover every aspect to be successful.
  • Fundamentals: These activities are for anything that is foundational to the other marketing activities in your plan. This can include formalized messaging development, a brand refresh, product launch workshop and more. These are big-picture efforts that need to be established first before others are planned. For example, you can’t put together a campaign without having messaging to utilize.
  • Content Marketing: In your plan, it is important to have a line item for each asset type. Mark down when a blog will be published, when an eBook will be designed, when a case study will be created and so on. This gives you plenty of visibility into when and what content is due and what is ahead so content development responsibilities can be divided up as needed.
  • Email Marketing: Many organizations have different types of emails, such as nurture tracks, newsletters and customer news. In your plan, distinguish between the email types and note when each send will happen. Pay attention to any overlaps that come up. This might require some adjustments in responsibilities or more time set aside to complete them all.
  • Social Media Marketing: It is likely your organization posts on a variety of platforms. Add this to your plan. Are all platforms used every week? Are there gaps in posts depending on the platform? Whatever the case is, make it clear in your marketing plan so your team has enough content and images for the needed social posts.
  • Events: As events continue to be a source of lead generation for B2B organizations, it is just as important to include any events you will be attending or exhibiting at in the plan. For each event, include detailed pre- and post-event activities. Seeing the full frame of what is needed for the event gives team members an idea of how to prioritize their tasks and ensure deliverables are completed on time.
  • Campaigns: B2B marketing campaigns serve as a primary driver of leads and including them in your marketing plan ensures there is visibility into all campaigns. Whether it is a LinkedIn advertising campaign, Google Ads campaign, email promotion with a publication or an ABM campaign, document the timeframe, costs and team members responsible for the tasks. If you find that one team member is being overloaded with too many tasks, you can readjust.
• Map Your Marketing Milestones: Make sure your marketing plan helps keep your team on track by mapping out a blueprint for how and when you will accomplish the marketing activities in the plan. Having a timeline-like structure to your marketing plan ensures deadlines are clear, responsibilities are recognized and there is accountability across team members. Visibility into key milestones also helps you plan other activities and establish deadlines. Having too many projects due at or around the same timeframe can increase stress levels among the team, leading to low-quality or even incomplete work. Appropriately spacing out activities, dividing up responsibilities and pivoting as needed helps everyone stay on track.
• Establish and Monitor the Marketing Budget: As much as we would like to avoid discussing it, budget plays a huge part in a marketing plan. It is the resource that drives all activities, especially things like advertising. Start with knowing the overall budget. This can help you forecast how many marketing activities can be included in the plan. Of course, the more budget is usually the merrier, but even if your budget seems to be on the low end, you can still plan activities that maximize it and boost lead generation. Regardless, having a known budget and the costs for each activity included in the plan helps you visually understand where your money is going and allows you to identify where costs can be rearranged to save or redistribute the budget.  Being this organized also makes reconciliation easier for you and the accounting team.

What to Do If You Are Short on Time to Develop a Plan

If your team does not have time to plan or needs some additional support, you have options. One of those is to outsource your marketing efforts. Outsourcing your efforts can help you achieve several goals, that you might have or have never been able to meet, with the guidance of B2B marketing experts. Not only does outsourcing to a marketing firm take the task off your plate, but it can also help you grow your business and allow your team to focus on other business activities. And if lead generation is your focus, a team of marketing experts can make it a top priority. The marketing plan can be developed to meet your top priorities, like lead generation, and ensure every marketing dollar goes towards meeting those goals. Don’t stress, outsource your mess! An experienced team of B2B marketing experts can help sort out your priorities and form the most optimal marketing plan for revenue growth.

Want to create a marketing plan that focuses on generating more leads and growing your business? Then contact Launch Marketing today to discuss our marketing services in Austin and how we can put our marketing expertise to work for you! You can also request a free marketing consultation to get started and look at our B2B marketing success stories for more insight.