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Four Things to Add to Your Marketing Plan

by Jennifer Beever

Now more than ever B2B marketers must focus on their existing and prospective customers. Here are four key things you need to focus on your customers in your marketing plan for next year.

Know your customer. Find out what makes them tick. Write a creative marketing persona that describes each type of customer that buys your product or service. Distribute these personas to everyone who touches customers in your company and make sure they understand what they mean. This will help everyone, from marketing to accounts receivable, understand the best media, words, tone, look and feel to use when communicating with each type of customer.

Fix broken customer touchpoints. Have you analyzed all your customer touch points to find problem areas or points of friction? Get your employees involved as this empowers them to make their work better and the customers they deal with on a day-to-day basis more happy. Don’t hold back – it may be challenging to admit problems, but sometimes the solutions are very simple.

Don’t sell, tell your compelling story. Create a new or share your existing brand story with prospects and customers. (Check out my previous posts about great brand stories: Do Customers Have a Tattoo of Your Brand? and Are You Going to Be B2B Boring?) Stand out from the crowd because of the way you package your product or because of the customer experience you create. Or, maybe your story is about the way you started your business or who you are (a family business, a business started by a single mom) or . Today’s buyer and customer – especially the millennial generation – want interesting, not boring.

Engage your prospects and customers with valuable content such as helpful tips, user guides and how-to’s. Vary the content (webinars, videos, eBooks, whitepapers, infographics) so that you reach different audiences and appeal to different learning styles. Make sure the quality of your content is high – consistent with your products and services and customer experience with other touchpoints. Follow your prospects and customers and engage in conversations and dialogues on LinkedIn discussion groups, on Twitter and Facebook (and on Vine, Pinterest, Instagram and others as appropriate).

I’m seeing many businesses that are failing in their marketing because they are selling, not adding value for prospects and customers and not being interesting. You can add value by listening to and understanding your customer, providing valuable content and information that they need, removing any friction or irritants in the buying or customer experience, and engaging prospects and customers with compelling and frequent communications. What’s in your marketing plan for next year? How much of your plan focuses on engaging with and adding value for prospects and customers?

If you need help with your marketing plan, contact New Incite today. We facilitate marketing brainstorming sessions, write strategic and tactical marketing plans and provide implementation of the plan.

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