Siddharth Taparia
, Vice President of Marketing
juice
, explains how to improve the marketing mix to increase profits.
With limited budgets, B2B marketers struggle to optimize the marketing mix to increase buying engagement and ultimately profits. One thing is for sure: the old ways of investing a large percentage of your budget in trade shows/events, advertising and PR don't work. In this post, I will share with you a proven seven-point foundation.
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Align marketing mix with corporate strategy:
Alignment is the cornerstone of any B2B campaign, ensuring that the marketing mix aligns with the overall strategic goals of the company. For example, if growth in the cloud is a key part of a software company's strategy, the marketing mix will reflect that. -
Invest heavily in growing segments:
Most large B2B companies believe that 80% of their revenue comes from proven products, in which they have a significant stake. However, they share marketing costs with revenue and continue to invest in these proven segments. Additional marketing investments in high-penetration segments bring diminishing returns. Instead, spending should focus on future growth, not past performance. At SAP, for example, our marketing priorities align with our growth ambitions every year, which means we have to invest in new or even future products. -
Focus on building a strong brand:
When adjusting the composition, it is tempting to allocate money primarily to short-term initiatives that continue to generate sales in subsequent quarters. However, they do not affect long-term customer brand loyalty, which is the result of activities that promote ideological leadership. Companies must ensure that their blended models are capable of managing marketing effectiveness across both time horizons. -
Create your mix based on customer behavior:
Where are your potential customers looking for information? Were they at the webinar? Can they find information through search? What impact do professional publications have? For example, if you're selling an IT management tool, webinars, key industry events, industry magazines, and surveys should be part of your marketing mix. If your product category is still evolving, consider incorporating leadership and management training into your marketing mix. -
Put the customer journey first:
Investments in exhibitions and content distribution open up new sales opportunities. In addition, webinars and referral programs continue after leads are generated. It's important to create a marketing mix that captures a lot of relevant leads at the top of the marketing funnel and then quickly moves them down the funnel so that the sales organization has the right mix of opportunities to close. -
Make sure marketing and business economics are integrated:
Before putting together the right marketing mix, start with business economics. For example, if your product costs $10 per month and your typical customer is 20 users, and your conversion rates are: a) 35% lead to transactions; b) 10 percent of qualified prospects; Then, in order to break even in the first year, the raw lead value must be less than $8. If a company wants to buy expensive keywords, it needs to balance this with cheaper programs that pay a total cost of $8 per lead, but still meet the quality (conversion rate) and lead size metrics. -
Place analytical methods at the heart of the organization:
Marketing analysis should be a central part of marketing mix optimization. It is also important to identify the right metrics and measure program success against them. When used correctly, analytics streamline your marketing processes by comparing your results against your plan, allowing you to quickly adjust your recruitment and budget on an ongoing basis.
Ultimately, the effectiveness of the marketing mix comes down to management skills, processes, and talent. The above seven points will help you add new organizational opportunities to improve your processes and streamline your advertising and marketing mix.
