“How much should we spend on our marketing?” is a question almost every business has asked themselves.
With big brands often reportedly spending millions, even billions – whilst many smaller and established business state they rely solely on existing business or reputation – the right amount can vary.
However, when it comes to B2B marketing, there are some common ways in which you can optimise your return on investment (ROI) and results:
Improve your targeting
A critical component of the return on investment for any B2B marketing is making sure you’re marketing to the right businesses – and the right individuals within them.
For almost every B2B product or service – unless what you do is very new and innovative – there is a choice of either using ‘push’ or ‘pull’ marketing.
Push marketing is when you attempt to educate an audience about what you do. However, convincing businesses they need what your company delivers is challenging.
Pull marketing is when you satisfy the proportion of the market already interested in what you deliver. For most products or services, there are business customers already in the market for what you’re selling.
As such, your return on investment from marketing is typically increased by using pull marketing to target those who’ve already identified a need for what you deliver. Sometimes, all you need is to become a familiar name so that businesses turn to your product or service.
Once you have converted customers, you can again increase your return on investment in marketing by using it to encourage them to become ambassadors – spreading the word about the good things you do!
When it comes to setting your marketing budget, whilst targeting the right business customers can significantly decrease your costs, be careful not to under invest, particularly if you are in a competitive sector.
Even the most effective marketing is a numbers game (to some degree) and you’ll need to invest enough to have a genuine opportunity for the return you hope to achieve.
Understand your buyers
To improve the return on investment from your B2B marketing, it’s important to not only target the right business – but the right people within it.
Time taken to identify the location, job role and even name of the decision maker or influencer within the company you wish to work with is time well spent.
A successful tactic is to create a ‘buyer persona’ which details the common attributes of those you wish to target. It can help you zero-in on the personal, logical and emotional side of your clients so you can more effectively influence their buying decisions.
Most B2B businesses have more than one distinct type of buyer, so more than one persona may be needed. Whilst a director or senior manager may complete a purchase, it could be someone more junior or technical who first identifies your company as a potential supplier.
To maximise your return on investment from B2B marketing, focus your budget on reaching the buyer personas which will most help you achieve your objective.
In addition, you can modify your tactics to target individuals depending on where they might be in the buying process:
- Awareness – Make more people aware of your business and brand. Social media, PR and networking could be effective.
- Interest – Use marketing to make it clear what you do and what you deliver. Advertising and content marketing may feature.
- Desire – Use marketing to turn interest into leads. PPC, SEO and marketing materials may be important.
- Action – Use marketing to encourage sales. This might include the use of a timely offer through direct marketing.
Set a budget
Many businesses don’t physically set a marketing budget. As a consequence, the amount they spend can be susceptible to current pressures, including only investing in marketing when sales have already started to decline!
A marketing budget helps set parameters and expectations. It also encourages a business to invest in marketing to ensure the good times, as well as guard against the bad times.
One of the mistakes which contributes to a low return on investment from marketing is setting a budget too low to realistically achieve the results needed.
A common cry from B2B businesses is ‘We tried marketing but didn’t get any return!’ The reality is often that the marketing wasn’t of significant enough volume (and wasn’t given enough time) to bear fruit!
One way to begin the budgeting process is to work backwards:
- How many sales or new clients do you need each month?
- What is your conversion rate of leads to sales?
- How many leads do you need to create?
- Historically, how many leads has your marketing generated?
- What are the anticipated response rates from the marketing you use?
If you’re new to active B2B marketing, you may need to research the norms for your sector – but be careful as the internet is full of opinions (just like this)!
When budgeting, you also need to consider the value of each potential enquiry, client or sale.
Some B2B businesses need many customers, as each sale is relatively low-value. This is particularly true of those who sell products and consumables. Your budget-per-customer may be relatively low and channels such as PPC, advertising and social media may help.
Other B2B businesses, including ongoing services or high value technology, can extract higher value from each client. Attracting such clients typically takes longer and the budget per customer is higher. Direct marketing, exhibitions, PR and content marketing may be effective over a sustained period of time.
Your budget needs to not only be realistic to achieve the number of sales you need but to achieve them in the time frame you set. Though B2B marketing is best if it is highly targeted, it is a numbers game and swift results typically mean more marketing to reach enough businesses ready to buy right now!
Where possible, avoid simply setting a ‘try it and see’ or ‘what we can risk’ budget as they rarely deliver a return. Risk and reward are linked!
Track as much as you can – including asking new enquiries how they discovered your business – and set periodic reviews to alter your budget as the data deems fit.
Develop your website
A quick trip around the internet will find many business websites which have not stood the test of time! Though still functional, they look old or outdated.
Within B2B sectors, it is rarely a website alone which generates sales. However, in an increasingly online world, a poor website can certainly deter sales!
For most B2B companies, most potential customers will visit their website at some point in their buying journey. Social media, PPC, PR, direct marketing, networking and exhibitions will all likely result in a potential client glancing at your website.
As such, it’s wise to factor website development into your marketing budget.
Invest in your brand
Branding and brand awareness are terms often over used and misunderstood. Your brand is your name and reputation. The more widely your name is recognised, the more likely you are to be successful.
A strong and identifiable brand can increase your return on investment by making businesses more likely to react to your marketing.
Content marketing in particular can help build a strong B2B brand by demonstrating your expertise and capabilities through blogs, social media, press releases and other content.
Nurture every lead
The return-on-investment from B2B marketing is diminished if you don’t make the most of every sales opportunity!
Many B2B businesses have accused their marketing of being ineffectual – when it was actually a poor response to enquiries that failed to create sales.
To maximise your return on investment, your sales and marketing teams need to work together. Marketing can sometimes create the wrong type of leads and sales teams can be under resourced, slow to respond or lack motivation to make the most of every opportunity.
Customers don’t differentiate between sales and marketing. So, if you’ve invested wisely in creating leads, it’s important to go the extra mile to make the customer feel valued through the final stages of the sales process.
Support to improve your return-on-investment from B2B marketing
As East Anglia’s leading B2B marketing agency, we work with businesses across the UK – in sectors including manufacturing and technology – to help them establish the right marketing budgets and get the greatest return on investment.
You can find out more here