How to Implement a 360° Marketing Plan in Your B2B Business
Discover the steps to implement a 360° marketing strategy plan for your B2B business. This approach is crucial for your business. Follow our detailed 6-step guide to drive growth and efficiency or consider hiring a digital marketing consultant.
17 juin 2024
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Running a B2B business often feels like juggling flaming torches while riding a unicycle. You’re trying to balance lead generation, customer retention, brand visibility, and more all without dropping the ball.
Implementing a 360° marketing plan can be a good solution to this circus trick by seeing the long-term solution instead of focusing on the short-term outcomes. It will ensure every aspect of your marketing strategy works together, catching anything you might miss.
Why is a 360° Marketing Plan Essential?
Well you need first to understand what is this 360° Digital marketing approach we are talking about. In short, a 360° marketing strategy integrates all marketing communications and channels you are using into a cohesive, customer-centric narrative.
This approach ensures that every touchpoint a potential client encounters tells the same story. But it also makes sure those leads do not fall through the net. It is all about your customer, what he does and how to get them to the next step of the funnel, closer to you. That is why it is essential: it is about your relationship with your customer and making sure your efforts drive them where you want them to be.
What are the Benefits of a 360° Digital Marketing Strategy?
A 360° digital marketing strategy ensures that your customers have a consistent experience across all touchpoints. This approach often exceeds customer expectations, leading to higher satisfaction and loyalty. But it also makes sure your efforts are put into what matters to achieve your business objectives. In other terms, the benefits are the following:
Enhanced Customer Experience: Seamless interactions across all platforms improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Increased Efficiency: Consolidated marketing efforts reduce costs and improve ROI by eliminating redundant activities.
Better Data Insights: Unified channels offer richer data, enabling more precise targeting and personalization.
Detailed Customer Journey Mapping: Understanding and optimizing every stage of the customer journey to meet their needs more effectively. This holistic view allows for better targeting and messaging at each stage of the buyer’s journey.
Your 6 Steps Guide to Implementing Your 360° Marketing Plan
Step 1: Comprehensive Audit and Analysis
Begin by evaluating your current marketing strategies. What's working? What isn’t? This audit will serve as the groundwork for your strategy. Performing a comprehensive audit means diving into your analytics to understand your current performance.
Look at your website traffic, social media engagement, email open rates, and conversion metrics. Use tools like Google Analytics, SEMrush, Screaming Frog, and HubSpot to gather this data. Identify the channels that are performing well and those that are underperforming. For underperforming channels, determine whether they can be optimized or if resources should be reallocated.
You can ask yourself:
What are our current marketing channels and tactics?
How effective are these channels in reaching our target audience?
Where are the gaps or redundancies in our current strategy?
Are the current marketing efforts helping to achieve our business objectives?
Resources you can use:
HubSpot Marketing Audit Template
Image Description: A checklist with common marketing channels and metrics to assess their current performance.
Step 2: Goal Setting with a Twist
Set SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound), but ensure they're integrated across all channels for a unified presence.
For example, a short-term goal might be to increase website traffic by 20% over the next quarter, while a long-term goal could be to improve overall customer retention by 15% within the next year. Use KPIs such as lead generation, conversion rates, and customer acquisition cost to track your progress.
You can ask yourself:
What specific outcomes do we want to achieve with our marketing?
How will we measure success across different channels?
Are our goals realistic and aligned with our overall business objectives?
Step 3: Choosing the Right Channels
Not every channel is ideal for every business. Select channels that best meet your audience's needs and your strategic goals.
You need to identify where your target audience is most active. LinkedIn, for example, is a top platform for B2B interactions, while email marketing can be highly effective for nurturing leads.
Research industry benchmarks to see which channels your competitors are using successfully. Allocate resources accordingly, ensuring you have the right tools and personnel to manage each channel.
You can ask yourself:
Where does our target audience spend their time online?
Which channels have historically performed well for us?
What resources do we have to manage and optimize these channels?
Step 4: Crafting a Cohesive Message
Your brand message should echo across all platforms but also all stakeholders of your business. From the salesman to your decision-makers, make sure the message stays the same. Consistency is king.
Develop a brand style guide that outlines your voice, tone, and messaging across all platforms. Ensure that everyone involved in your business understands and adheres to this guide. Tailor your message to different audience segments by addressing their specific needs and pain points, but maintain a consistent core message.
You can ask yourself:
What is our value proposition?
How can we ensure our messaging is consistent across all platforms?
How do we tailor our message to different audience segments without losing coherence?
Step 5: Create and optimise your customer journey
This involves understanding each step the user takes in the funnel, from marketing qualified lead (MQL) to sales qualified lead (SQL), and ensuring there are touchpoints at each stage.
You can start by identifying the stages of your customer journey: awareness, consideration, decision, and post-purchase. For each stage, create content and touchpoints that address the needs and concerns of your leads. Use marketing automation to track and engage leads, moving them seamlessly from MQL to SQL. Analyze and refine this journey to improve lead conversion and customer retention.
You can ask yourself:
What are the key stages of our customer journey?
Do we have effective touchpoints at each stage to nurture leads?
How can we optimize each stage to improve conversion rates?
What type of content should we use for each touchpoint?
Resources you can use:
HubSpot’s Guide to Creating a Customer Journey Map
Step 6: Monitor, Measure, and Optimize
The job isn't done after deployment. Continual measurement and optimization are crucial. Adjust as you learn what resonates with your audience.
Set up a regular review process to assess your marketing performance, such as monthly or quarterly reports. Use dashboards to visualize key performance indicators and track trends over time. Implement A/B testing to experiment with different strategies and optimize based on the results. Continuously gather feedback from your sales team and customers to understand what’s working and what needs improvement.
You can ask yourself:
How frequently should we review our marketing performance?
What KPIs are most indicative of our success?
How can we use data to refine our strategies continuously?
Resources you can use:
Neil Patel’s Guide to Marketing Optimization
Hire a B2B Digital Marketing Consultant
We all have our own expertise and need help in others we don't know much about. With all you have on your plate, the journey to implement a 360° Marketing Strategy can be overwhelming. Consider partnering with a B2B digital marketing consultant. Here’s why:
Expert Guidance: Navigate the complexities of digital marketing with an expert who's been there and done that.
Customized Strategies: Get tailor-made strategies that fit your specific business needs and market dynamics .
Focus on Core Business: Let an expert handle your promotional needs while you focus on what you do best—running your business .
Guess what? That is what I do and what I do best. My focus is on creating and implementing 360° Marketing strategy that drive leads to you and grow your revenue. It is not just about posting on LinkedIn, you need a data-driven solution that actually correlates with what you wish to achieve for your business.
If you're ready to take your business to the next level, let's be in touch!