A B2B marketing framework forms the much-needed foundation for any business of any scale. 70% of business-people believe that an effective strategy is essential for a business’ goals. In this article, we take a look at what is b2b marketing framework and how you can formulate your own framework.
What Is a B2B Marketing Framework?
A marketing framework outlines how you intend to increase consumer awareness of your brand, your goods, and your services. It entails deciding on the resources you'll need to make that journey as well as the tools and channels you'll utilize to get your product out to the audience.
How Do You Write a B2B Marketing Framework?
Here is a step by step process to design your own framework, no matter what your business is.
1. Divide your market into segments and concentrate on the target
Let us understand this with a case scenario. If you are expanding a software business and you have chosen to invest in CRM, you might settle on two variants of CRM after studying the various types . One of these CRMS could help organize your sales option is a customized CRM that aids in managing your sales and keeps track of recurring income and churn rates. Which one are you going to pick? Obviously the second one, thanks to its wide customizability.
The strength of marketing segmentation lies in this very clarity. When we concentrate on a certain market sector, we may tailor our offer according to the demands and difficulties faced by the businesses that are a part of that segment. Higher conversions, ROI, and income are pretty much guaranteed with efficient segmentation.
Steps to take:
1. Start by asking yourself these 3 basic questions to determine your segments:
2. Who would be a possible customer for my goods (your target market)? Why do they purchase goods or services similar to mine?
3. What types of issues or tasks are they hoping to resolve?
2. Establish an ICP for each market category you wish to target.
What distinguishes an ideal customer profile (ICP) from a straightforward customer profile? This is a fantastic question since it highlights a typical marketing blunder. A lot of businesses try to construct average personas from their data by just looking at all of their clients from various client categories. As a result, they attempt to develop a generic product pitch rather than customizing their products, proposals, and lead generating marketing strategies.
An ICP focuses on obtaining high-quality leads who are comparable to your important customers rather than prospecting everyone who could buy your product, which is the largest distinction between an ICP and a "basic" customer profile.
The steps to generate an ICP are as follows:
- Pick one market sector.
- Choose the top 10 clients in this market.
- Assemble all of your information about them.
- Assemble more information on these clients using social media
- Survey your target customers
- Using the information you have collected, create a perfect customer profile.
3. Conduct a competitor analysis
How do you decide which marketing channels to prioritize? This can be quite easily answered when one thoroughly surveys one's customers and understands their competitors' strategy.
Next steps:
To figure out where your competitors' traffic originates from, try using tools such as SimilarWeb, Ahrefs, and BuzzSumo. With this information, you'll have a better sense of which channels to concentrate your efforts on rather than putting your efforts in every channel. Learn more about the sales process, strengths and weaknesses, USP (unique selling proposition), pricing strategy, etc. in secondary competitor analysis.
4. Create a USP for every market you wish to target.
Many businesses believe that positioning and a USP are interchangeable. That is completely untrue. The customer's perception of your business, brand, or product is known as positioning. In layman terms, it's what you do, how you vary from your rivals, and how you might assist a potential customer.
The following five steps would be good starting point in developing a USP:
- Speak to your regular consumers. Inquire about their preferred qualities.
- Choose the top ten features, then order them according to significance.
- Compare your product's key attributes to those of your top three rivals.
- Pick the criterion where you outperform your competitors.
- Consider some of these elements when you create your USP, such as effect, feature, necessity, target market, etc.
5. Walk your customers through the buyer journey
Hubspot estimates that just 3% of your market is actively buying at any one time. 40% are prepared to start, but 56% are not. Another statistic is that 20% of those who request information about your business today won't make a purchase for at least three months, and 63% will wait more than 12 months.
Therefore, if you simply concentrate on bottom-of-the-funnel (BoFu) activities, 97% of your audience will go untapped.
Begin here:
Recognize that the customer journey includes more than just the sales funnel. You must first attract ToFu clients, qualify MoFu clients, and nurture prospects at the BoFu.
6. Specify your B2B marketing strategy's objectives, distribution methods, and available resources.
You now know what you truly have to offer and where you can outperform your rivals after going through that studying procedure. Now, what's next?
- Clarify the objectives and goals you intend to attain.
Thanks to the preceding analysis you have conducted, you are aware of the market categories you should concentrate on and the message you should provide to them. You need to determine what you think your business can reasonably achieve based on the study of you and your rivals. What phases must each stage of your marketing strategy pass before it is successful?
- Choose the materials you want to use
Depending on how successful you believe you can realistically be, determine how much resources you will devote to your marketing strategy. You should expect a lot of back and forth as you decide on the ROI you hope to accomplish. Of course, you should start with all of the marketing initiatives that have the best return on investment and continue doing so until the cost of gaining the next consumer becomes prohibitive. - Choose the marketing channels best for you
You must choose the channels you're going to employ at this point after determining which media your ideal customer profile is active on and the tools that will have the most success contacting your ICP.
Design your B2B marketing framework for all your business goals
B2B marketing framework is very similar to a map to the treasure of all your business targets. Design and follow your framework to the T and see your business transform for the better.
