When marketing a new B2B service, we’ve seen companies take a couple of years to get to a stage where they’re in front of the market, producing REAL results, in a world-class way. That’s way too long for any serious business owner.
The reason it takes so long: they don’t have a tried and tested methodology. When they don’t have a system or process to build their marketing effectively, companies (or their marketing agencies) tend to just try random tactics here and there. A lot of trial-and-error guesswork.
At Visionary, our methodology for going to market for a B2B service – or reinventing a current B2B offer – brings it all to life within three months. With world-class growth results. But it’s not esoteric magic – it’s just that we’ve been building and refining the system with very similar companies for years now. We’ve spent well over 7 figures of ad spend testing, fine-tuning and learning – all of that experience is infused into our client projects from day 1.
So we had one of our key advisory board members and long-time Visionary partners, Scott Lee – the Founder of legendary design firm “The Unspoken Pitch” – facilitate a conversation with our Director, Sanjay Shah to talk through the methodology.
Here’s the video – be ready, we’re really going deep into how world-class B2B operators think (we’ve also provided a table of contents in case you want to skip to the most relevant section for you):
(0:00) How the methodology is different to what you’ve experienced
(1:30) 1 – Visionary B2B Roadmapping Process
(4:38) 2 – Client Avatar
(8:20) 3a – Strategic video production
(10:19) 3b – Website pages that power the buyer’s journey
(11:33) 3c – B2B-specialised advertising
(14:07) 4 – Best-in-class CRM configuration & monthly insight reporting
(17:10) 5 – Thought Leadership content
(17:52) 6) 4-Month “Proof Of Value”
Or, we’ve detailed below if you prefer to read…
It’s a 6-step process. The first step is what we call the “Visionary B2B Roadmapping Process”…
1 – Visionary B2B Roadmapping Process
This is essentially a vision alignment. I know that kind of sounds a bit “wishy-washy high level”. But this is arguably the key part of the project that a lot of B2B teams simply miss. Even marketing agencies tend to skip over this critical step:
Documenting a really clear vision.
Of course, there’s going to be a “value vision” where you document where the company’s heading, who you want to serve, what value you want to bring.
But more importantly, breaking that down into a proper commercial vision.
And then breaking that down further into “campaign economics”.
What sort of digital assets are required to achieve those economics? What sort of production schedule would be required to achieve that overall vision?
This is such a key starting point that a lot of teams tend to miss. They tend to just go straight into building Facebook ads and see what happens.
But when you have a documented vision for the company, broken down into a documented vision for the campaign, and documented ECONOMICS for the campaign… Then you can align the whole team on that agreed mission right from the start.
So rather than:
- The marketing team just trying to bring in as many leads as possible as cheaply as possible without thinking about lead quality…
- And the sales team then running their own show, just trying to close as many deals as possible, no matter what they are.
- And then the executive team, only looking at the numbers and not really thinking about the long term…
… When you’ve aligned that roadmap, that vision, and everyone is clearly aware of it, it means that everyone’s working together, tailoring their strategies to meet one agreed set of unified KPIs and one set of economics – rather than each siloed team working on their own agenda.
When you don’t have a clear vision, documented, everything SEEMS good in that first month. But then as you get a few months into the campaign, that’s when the arguments start happening:
Marketing says they’re bringing in lots of leads.
Sales says no, those are crap leads.
The executives say, “we’re seeing money go out and nothing’s really happening”.
And the reason is that there’s no clearly defined set of KPIs and an agreed-upon vision. Learn more about The Visionary B2B Roadapping Process here.
Once you’ve got that right, the next step is also a CRUCIAL strategy stage – the “Client Avatar” or the “persona”.
2 – Client Avatar
This step is about understanding the target market at an extraordinarily detailed level.
The mistake we see a lot is marketers jumping straight into just putting ads up as quickly as possible. No real understanding of the audience. That leads to very lukewarm advertising.
But when you understand your audience at a really deep and specific level, you’re in a much better position to communicate your unique value (and serve them better) than your competition.
The way we’ll do it is:
- We will interview a lead salesperson
- Interview your perfect customers
- Go through CRM call logs and emails
- Read through reviews and feedback they have provided
One example of what we’ll research is to understand your perfect customers’ pain points.
But typically, when you ask someone, “what were your pain points”, they will give very surface level answers.
So we’ll always go much deeper:
How would you express that? What was that leading to? What sort of other behaviours was that causing? What was everyone else in the office saying about that particular pain point?
It doesn’t stop there. Here is some more important intel to find out:
Why did they see you as different? Why did they choose you? Why did they trust you? Benefits they’re getting from your service, short term and long term? How do they explain your service?
When you understand your target market in that much detail, you already have such a profound advantage over the rest of the market. Most of your competitors will be marketing at a surface level. You’ll be the only one that understands in absolute detail what your audience is thinking.
And the beautiful thing is once you’ve got that documented. Everyone in the team understands. So your sales team can now have conversations that have true depth and true meaning. All of your marketers produce very aligned content. And then even your delivery team understands your audience so well. So they create new product features specifically for that audience, not just random ideas.
Learn more about the Client Avatar process in our thought leadership article here.
Once you’ve got your Client Avatar, now it’s time to build. The next step is for us in our process is strategic video production.
3a – Strategic video production
This one’s also soooooo important with advertising now getting super competitive in most industries.
Generally, in B2B, there’s going to be some larger competitors with large marketing budgets and expert level marketing departments. Since advertising is an auction – you are directly competing with their marketing.
One of the ways you can do that powerfully is by producing really polished, really strategic videos.
Especially if you’re going to be spending tens of thousand dollars on ads in the long term, you should be powering them with really polished videos that give you better bang for buck.
And, a video can give absolute clarity on what your service is, how much you understand the audience, why you are different, and why they should trust you.
Typically we’ll produce one or two videos, sometimes more, and typically Live-Action videos are the focus. We’ll have your sales team or key leadership team looking amazing on video, so that by the time a prospect gets to the sales call, they feel like they know that salesperson. They already feel like they trust that salesperson.
Often, we’ll produce an animation as well, just so that the audience doesn’t feel like they’re seeing the same thing over and over again. When you add a few versions of an animation into your advertising mix, suddenly the audience feels like they’re seeing different content all the time.
It keeps them awake when they’re viewing your content.
See plenty of excellent examples of B2B video content here.
The next thing to do is to create website pages where prospects who want to learn more can be taken on a buyer’s journey.
3b – Website pages that power the buyer’s journey
Almost anyone can build a good quality website page these days. But the real difference in B2B marketing specifically, is that you’re often marketing 5 – 7 figure deals.
So you need to really give those decision-makers enough information, enough content, enough trust triggers for them to feel like it’s worth giving an hour of their expensive time to book a discovery call or to book a demo.
Typically, when we’re producing website pages or landing pages, we add a lot of content and a lot of client reviews. Of course, we’ll feature your videos as well.
We really give them almost way too much information so that they can skim through, work out what’s best for them, and by the time they’re ready to book a call, get to the sales call very well educated and very well convinced.
Learn more about some of the “hidden” techniques behind B2B websites here.
From there, the next thing is to make sure that the exact right people in your market are seeing those digital assets at the exact right time.
3c – B2B-specialised advertising
So that’s where we start putting all of that content in front of the exact right people at the exact right time, using either LinkedIn Ads, Meta Ads or Google ads.
We call it “B2B-specialised” advertising.
Advertising in B2B is almost the exact opposite of advertising in B2C. A big mistake that we’ll see commonly is marketers who are really good at B2C marketing come in and they’ll try and market for B2B.
Typically with B2C marketing, you are marketing to less intelligent people. They’re not as focused; they’re not really making a big decision. So you’ll tend to use more entertaining content or more shorter form content or simpler content with more “clickbait”.
But it’s the exact opposite in B2B.
You want to make sure that you have enough content for intelligent decision makers who are making 5 – 7 figure decisions to be able to really get educated, really get inspired and make that decision.
And you’ve also got to be speaking to the entire buying committee.
A director, for example, isn’t going to be making that decision themselves. They’re going to get inspired, then they’re gonna send it to their team. So you‘ve got to make sure that your advertising convinces everyone.
This takes real-world experience marketing similar services to similar audiences. Watch our video on the 4 Layers Of B2B Advertising below to learn how this all comes together:
OK, now it’s time to measure like a pro. What gets measured gets managed, right?
4 – Best-in-class CRM configuration & monthly insight reporting
The next step is CRM configuration and monthly insight reporting.
Most companies have a CRM. And most companies have some sort of monthly reporting.
But you’d be very surprised, even the most successful companies often have terrible reporting from their marketing team.
That then has the executives making the exact wrong decisions. Not because of poor decision-making. It’s just because of poor data.
The CRM is actually the driving factor behind the success of a B2B marketing campaign. Not many people realise this.
Putting your ads in front of the exact right people at the exact right time is largely a factor of what data you have in your CRM. Here are some quick examples:
- If you have data that shows the prospects that have just hit the proposal stage, you can start showing them a certain type of content.
- Or, if you have data that shows the 500 best customers that have ever come into your business, you can tell Meta or LinkedIn to start bringing in more people that are exactly like that.
- If you have logged sales notes and emails in your CRM, you can start understanding the language patterns of your absolute best customers, and then you can start mirroring that back to them in your content and your ads.
So your data is one of the biggest differentiators of a B2B company.
Learn the details around how we configure a CRM so it optimises a B2B marketing system here.
OK, now that we can measure accurately, let’s super-charge the whole system with thought leadership content!
5 – Thought Leadership content
Now we’re adding fuel to the fire. We’ve got our ads running. We’ve got world-class videos produced. So step 5 is thought leadership. We want to create long-form thought leadership posts, articles and case studies. But one thing that is so key:
Everyone has access to ChatGPT. So you can’t just put simple rubbish that is straight out of ChatGPT, and onto the newsfeed!
It has to be very deep, very specific, highly based on that Client Avatar. The audience should see the content and feel:
“Wow, I’ve never been understood so well”.
Now they’re being educated at a more profound level than they’ve ever been by one of your competitors. You’re giving them clarity. You’re making a real impact in their thinking and their results.
(btw, in case you didn’t pick it… this exact article is an example of “thought leadership” content designed to show we understand your situation and give you clarity on your challenges – whether you choose to work with us or not)
OK, beautiful. Now it’s time to run it.
6) 4-Month “Proof Of Value”
Based on everything we’ve built, we run that campaign for 4 months. 4 months is enough time for at least us to get some solid leading indicators of success:
- Qualified pipeline into your CRM.
- You can see the system working as opportunities come from everywhere: current customers requesting more work, investors, partners, motivated staff. And… more revenue.
- Ideally, you’ve closed a few high-ticket sales, so you can actually have the campaign pay for itself. If not, you should at least have enough qualified pipeline where you’re confident, “I know this is gonna pay for itself”.
Our motivation is to build a 5-year partnership with you.. But we can only go into that longer-term partnership based on a position of proper data, real results produced and a world-class digital system creating tangible impact in your business.
So that’s it: the 3-month go-to-market and then the 4-month Proof Of Value.
Check out some examples of how it all looks in the real world here: