If the world were a logical place, men would ride side saddle. — Rita Mae Brown
All B2B marketing campaigns follow a particular logic. It may or may not be a sound one. This might or might not invalidate your efforts. But there is no denying that all marketing campaigns adhere to some fundamental logic. Call it a marketing logistic or a B2B marketing campaign management methodology.
Whatever you call it, there are 5 logistical aspects that determine campaign management success. If you have an answer for each of the following 5 questions, you will be set to apply a sound methodology to manage any B2B campaign.
1. How do you deliver the B2B marketing campaign offer?
An offer may capture the attention of your target audience. But youve better provide a reliable offer delivery service. These may include a standard order form, on-time offer delivery, zero errors and an offer exchange that accurately meets expectations.
In other words, dont ask for more than you said you would in exchange for the offer.
If you said, Just give me your email address, dont ask for industry, birth date and shoe size. Keep to expectations. But all this will only get you to par.
If your competitors, like you, are delivering offers in a standard manner, youre not progressing. Innovate your offers to gain a campaign management advantage over your competition.
2. What information do you want in exchange for the B2B campaign marketing offer?
What you want from a respondent in exchange for the offer is that offers price. Prices are driven by a variety of factors, but the most important one is customer preference. It determines what the offer consumer will be willing to pay in exchange for that offer. Respond accordingly. Dont charge more than the market can bear.
Dont ask your respondents to create a login account to access content that your competitors, by comparison, would make accessible on their public web sites without need for a password. Dont ask for referrals in exchange for a data sheet. If you do, dont be shocked to find your response rates incapable of bearing the cost of your campaign effort.
3. How do you attract attention to your offer?
There is a purpose why a respondent would consider trading for your offer. Have you aligned the promotion of this B2B marketing offer to your respondents objectives? You must secure input from the respondents to improve your communications to them, to fine tune the way you promote your offers.
Is your timing appropriate? Are you attractive? Are you top of mind and innovative? Have you been flawless in your execution? It may seem counterintuitive to have to plan how to promote a promotion. But it really isnt, because youre not promoting a promotion.
Youre promoting an offer, in exchange for which you want information from the respondent to continue a dialogue that may turn into a sales and, thus, into a future relationship with that client. So you must know how this potential client likes to be contacted.
Learn what this person finds interesting and attractive, and what objectives the contact wants to fulfill by adopting what you offer. Then you can align your promotional efforts to attract that individuals interest precisely to the very offer youre making.
4. Where will you deliver the offer?
You may have a unique offer, a sleek delivery mechanism, an affordable offer price and a spot on promotional approach, but where will your respondent need to go to retrieve this offer? If the offer pick up process is too visible or requires the respondent to do extra work just to ensure that the right offer is delivered, then you got a problem.
Have you made the information that the customer needs easy to access and immediate through a very visible single point of contact? If you make a mistake in delivery, have you a backup plan to show your respondent how you will correct the error to keep from repeating it?
Flawless performance is what the customer expects. But most clients are forgiving, provided the service provider is humble enough to admit a mistake and make effort to restore the loss that it caused the customer. Make the place where your respondents pick up their offers a most convenient location for them that minimizes their effort and time of delivery. Keep it simple and well supported.
5. Who is the right target audience for your offer?
It goes almost without saying that no B2B marketing campaign will succeed if you present the offer to the wrong audience. So much goes into building a compelling offer that often its only too easy to underestimate how significant it is to test it against a controlled vs. an experimental group to evaluate how effective it will likely perform per audience.
Remember that both groups must be identical in every ways except for the one thing that you wish the offer to provoke in the experimental group. If, based on your knowledge of the target audience, your offer does not perform any better with the experimental group than it did with the controlled group, then you will need either a new offer or a whole new audience.
In conclusion, all aspects of B2B marketing campaign management are important, but these 5 are crucial. They make or break your campaign. Start with an understanding of each and avoid short cuts, or you will soon short-circuit your entire campaign.
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