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Where to start when creating a B2B marketing campaign
First up, let’s talk about what a ‘campaign’ actually is. By definition, it’s “an organised course of action to achieve a goal”. So when we think about that from a marketing point of view, it’s a set of marketing actions that we implement to achieve business objectives.
What problem are you trying to solve?
The start of your campaign process is undoubtedly the most important. It can be tempting to run straight to the ‘fun’ stuff (the visuals) but actually there’s a bit of work we need to do before we get there. Try starting with this.
What is the customer’s problem?
Keep this brief, and only try to solve one problem. When we try to answer every problem our customers have, our messaging becomes muddled. We also need to make sure the problem we put down is a customer problem, and not our businesses problem. Here’s an example, using a shop that sells headphones.
Customer problem example ✅
There are so many headphones out there, there’s too much choice and I don’t know which to buy.
Business problem example ❌
We sell so many headphones, but struggle to sell our top ranges.
The customer problem looks at a real issue that they have, that we can solve with a marketing campaign. The latter is a business problem, the customer doesn’t really care about it, and are unlikely to respond to messaging that focuses on this.
How will you solve it?
You’ve got your customer problem, how are you going to solve it?
Just like you did with your customer problem, try to keep this concise. Only try and solve the problem that you’ve outlined.
This part is the simplest, it’s what your business does. Let’s use the same example that we used above.
Customer problem example
There are so many headphones out there, there’s too much choice and I don’t know which to buy.
How will your business solve it?
Our expert support team are on hand to find the right headphones for what you need.
Once you’ve got these two points figured out, write them down. You’re going to come back to these a lot throughout the B2B marketing campaign process, so print them out and get familiar with them.
How are you going to get your message out there?
A key part of any great B2B marketing campaign is making sure you’re putting your message out on channels where your audience are active. That could be email, LinkedIn, Facebook, mail etc. Wherever your audience spends time, that’s where you should be speaking to them.
Channel effectiveness changes over time, so if you try a channel and it doesn’t give strong results, don’t write it off forever. Revisit it in time and see if audience behaviours and responses have changed.
Creating the visuals
For a lot of people, this is the fun part. It’s the bit that everyone sees and where all the prep you’ve done comes to life.
Having the skills in house to create compelling visuals is ideal, but not always a reality. Outsourcing this part, or using tools like Canva can help.
This part of the process takes time. So remember to be patient, great ideas don’t happen in one meeting.
Taking a look at what is out there is a great way to get your creative brain in action. Look at marketing messages around you. Billboards, bus stops, emails, social ads – which ones stand out to you? What is it about that particular ad that grabbed your attention? This could be the messaging, the font, the imagery, the animation. Think about all the elements that make it work and try to replicate those in your own creative work.
Once you have your creative assets ready, take a look back at your problem and solution that you wrote down at the start of the process. Does the creative answer the problem? If yes, then you’re good to go!
How do you know if your campaign has been a success?
This is where you need be obsessive with campaign reporting. Set goals right at the start of the process that you can track against. This might be number of leads generated, number of forms completed or number of new email sign ups. By setting these out from the get go you can continuously track against them.
Be transparent with your findings. Not every message is going to work right away. If something doesn’t work, consider that progress. You now know it’s not working and that’s something that you can remove from the plan next time.
Ready to create your own B2B marketing campaign?
Navigating B2B marketing is tricky. With constantly changing channels, and customer behaviours it can be hard to know how to get started. Hopefully this article helps.
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