Five steps to high-performing B2B promotional campaigns
By Pete Winter

Five steps to high-performing B2B promotional campaigns

 Find out how to plan, manage and optimise B2B marketing campaigns for success with our new content series: The CMO’s definitive guide to high-performing promotional campaigns.

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Modern marketers have more accountability for the performance of their B2B promotional campaigns than ever before. According to research by the Content Marketing Institute, B2B marketers cite lead quality, sales, and higher conversion rates as their 3 most important metrics. To drive success and deliver performance, B2B promotional campaigns need to be well planned, executed, and delivered.

In a world of tight marketing budgets, an increasingly noisy marketplace and a culture of ad-blocking, this can be a daunting task. Marketers need to create the best campaigns they can with limited budget and resources, whilst retaining control of both. Marketing teams struggle to get buy-in or support from the wider business who – even in this day and age – still don’t truly understand the value of marketing. To build credibility and justify their place in the business, marketers need better visibility on how their B2B marketing campaigns are delivering value, driving performance against business objectives, and demonstrating ROI.

We understand the pressures marketers face when it comes to delivering B2B promotional campaigns. That’s why we’ve developed a series of content dedicated to high-performing promotional campaigns, shaped around a simple 5 step methodology, to help you deliver results every time.

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Over the next 6 months, we will be exploring each of the 5 areas that make up a high-performing promotional campaign in-depth. Here’s a taste of what’s coming up…Screen Shot 2016-11-03 at 14.42.02 (1).pngStage One: Research

41% of B2B marketers are prioritising better understanding of their audiences

Every successful marketing campaign begins with research. The fundamental question you must answer right at the beginning is, “who are we targeting and how do we reach them?”. Only once you have developed a full and detailed answer to that, informed by data, can the rest of the campaign planning begin to unfold.

Getting together with your team for a brainstorm to explore the following questions is instrumental in shaping your marketing campaign:

  • What do you know about your persona and their behaviour?
  • What are your personas saying online and to your sales team?
  • What challenges do your personas face on a daily basis?
  • What have your personas engaged with in the past?
Read more

How to run a successful B2B marketing brainstorm [SlideShare]: What you put in to a B2B marketing brainstorm defines what you get out of it – read about three key factors in successful idea generation

How to develop buyer personas for B2B marketing: Learn how to research and create B2B buyer personas that will take your inbound marketing campaigns to the next level.

{{cta(‘5e9b3ba6-b742-47db-a51c-a961bb602936’)}}Stage Two: Planning

49% of marketers do not have a clearly defined content strategy in place

Once you understand who your B2B promotions are targeting, you can develop a well-defined campaign plan. From setting objectives through to how you plan on measuring your successes, planning is the most important stage of your campaign process.

Without a strong promotional plan, you are likely to go over budget, out of scope, and fail to generate any leads. Good planning will help you to manage the expectations of your wider team, getting their buy-in and support to help boost your efforts.

Read more

How to budget for promotional marketing activity: Building a budget for a promotional marketing activity is vital to ensuring you get value for money and a return on investment.

How to brief a marketing agency [SlideShare]: Getting the most from your marketing agency comes down to one thing: a strong campaign brief. Find out what you need to write an awesome agency brief in this SlideShare.

Stage Three: Implementation

64% of marketers admit repeating the same content marketing mistakes

Implementation is where the fun starts, but it requires just as much hard work as the research and planning stages. A successful campaign relies on a mix of marketing across paid, earned and owned media, as well as across different channels, including mobile.

Mobile has grown so fast that it’s now the leading digital platform, with total activity on smartphones and tablets accounting for 62% of digital media time spent. Not engaging with your audience on the right channels, at the right time, is a common implementation mistake and can cost you potential leads generated from your promotional activity.

Coming up on the blog

Five common implementation mistakes and how to overcome them [SlideShare]: Once all your planning and research is in place, it’s time to double check if your promotional campaign is ready to meet the world.

How the best B2B client & agency teams implement successful: campaigns  Successful campaigns are built by strong teams – learn how to get the most from your marketing agency partnership

Stage Four: Optimisation

A/B testing of landing pages can generate up to 30-40% more leads for B2B sites

The modern era of marketing still encompasses creativity, but the onus of your B2B promotional campaigns is performance. How can your assets and efforts achieve high performance? The answer is test, test, and test again! A/B testing can help you to optimise your activity and run the perfect campaign.

“A/B testing has revolutionised marketing because the results are real, and the data is actionable. A/B testing provides businesses with enormous amounts of data on audience behavior. The more tests marketers run, the more robust their understanding will be, which allows them to make more intuitive choices in their marketing.” – Marketo

Coming up on the blog:

Key symptoms of poor B2B marketing campaign performance: Measuring performance once your campaign is complete will probably be too late – look out for these performance red flags.

What to do when your B2B marketing campaign isn’t performing: Learn how identifying and diagnosing problems whilst your campaign is in progress can help you save – and improve performance.

Stage Five: Reporting

40% of B2B marketers are not sure how their campaigns are performing

Reporting is the final stage in your promotional journey. It’s time to stop and look back on the campaign as a whole, assessing what worked, what didn’t, and what could be improved in the future. It’s important to report on the valuable metrics such as conversion, rather than ‘vanity metrics’ such as brand awareness. The metrics that really matter are the ones that relate directly to your campaign objectives and your bottom line. Reporting will increase your visibility and understanding of successes and failures of your marketing activities, as well has helping you to justify your activities to the board.

Coming up on the blog

Campaign pains: How to learn from B2B marketing failures: Failure shouldn’t be a dirty word in marketing – find out why identifying weaknesses is a valuable part of your campaign reporting.

Key questions to ask your marketing agency about performance [SlideShare]: Are you getting the full story from your marketing agency? Find out what you should be asking about performance.

 



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