TL;DR:

In this article I dive into modern B2B marketing strategies, emphasizing simplicity in GTM approach, understanding buyer personas and buying committees, and aligning sales and marketing. I underscore the importance of personalized content, collaboration between teams, lead generation, and effective tracking tools. Key points include the evolving buyer’s journey, sales multithreading, and personalized engagement to navigate the complex B2B landscape successfully.

Roundup from part 1 + 2

A common misconception among B2B firms is the belief that an effective marketing strategy must be encapsulated within an extensive document, filled with discussions on missions, values, and other less impactful corporate rhetoric. My approach champions simplicity and clarity. Essentially, a GTM (Go-To-Market) strategy should be perceived as a streamlined roadmap, guiding you from your current status (Point A) to your desired outcomes, including revenue goals (Point B), all while highlighting the essential resources required, such as personnel and technology infrastructure.

There are many pitfalls that sales and marketing can walk into – if you want to read about them, checkout part 1. If you want to know why classic models like AIDA cannot be mapped to a B2B environment or why you cannot apply a strategy on your own, then checkout part 2.

1. How Sales & Marketing usually works

In the realm of B2B marketing, the synergy between sales and marketing is essential for success. Traditionally, the relationship between these two departments has been akin to a relay race, with marketing passing leads to sales, who then take the baton to close deals. However, the landscape has evolved significantly in recent years, demanding a more integrated approach.

Understanding the traditional Model

• Lead Generation: Marketing generates leads through various channels such as advertising, content marketing, and events.
• Lead Qualification: Once leads are generated, they are passed to the sales team for qualification.
• Sales Process: Sales representatives engage with qualified leads, nurturing them through the sales funnel until conversion.
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM): CRM tools are used to track interactions with leads and customers, ensuring effective communication and follow-ups.

Why the traditional approach is doomed

• Misalignment: Misalignment between sales and marketing goals and strategies can lead to inefficiencies and missed opportunities.
• Lead Quality: Without clear communication and collaboration, marketing may generate leads that are not aligned with the sales team’s criteria.
• Data Silos: Siloed data between sales and marketing departments can hinder insights and hinder a holistic view of the customer journey.
• Changing Buyer Behavior: B2B buyers now conduct extensive research online before engaging with sales representatives. They are more informed and expect personalized experiences tailored to their needs.
• Digital Transformation: The rise of digital technologies has transformed the way businesses operate and interact. B2B buyers now prefer self-service options and digital communication channels.
• Content Saturation: There’s an overload of content available online, making it challenging for traditional marketing messages to stand out. B2B buyers are overwhelmed with information and seek authentic, valuable content that addresses their specific pain points.
• Rise of Social Selling: Social media has become a powerful tool for B2B sales and marketing. Building relationships, engaging with prospects, and providing value through social channels have become essential for success.
• Increased Competition: The B2B landscape is more crowded than ever, with new entrants and disruptive technologies constantly emerging. Traditional marketing approaches may struggle to differentiate a company from its competitors.
• Demand for Personalization: B2B buyers expect personalized experiences tailored to their unique needs and preferences. One-size-fits-all marketing messages no longer resonate with today’s discerning buyers.
• Focus on ROI: B2B buyers are more focused on the return on investment (ROI) of their purchases. They require tangible evidence of how a product or service will solve their specific business challenges and deliver value.
• Shift to Account-Based Marketing (ABM): ABM has gained popularity as a more targeted approach to B2B marketing, focusing efforts on high-value accounts rather than casting a wide net. This requires a deeper understanding of individual accounts and personalized engagement strategies.
• Emphasis on Customer Experience: B2B buyers prioritize the overall experience with a vendor, from initial engagement to post-sale support. Traditional marketing approaches may overlook the importance of building long-term relationships and delivering exceptional customer experiences.
• Data-Driven Decision-Making: Advances in data analytics and technology enable marketers to gain deeper insights into customer behavior and preferences. Data-driven strategies allow for more precise targeting, measurement, and optimization of marketing efforts.

In summary, the changing landscape of B2B marketing requires a shift towards more personalized, digital, and customer-centric approaches to effectively engage and convert today’s empowered buyers.

2. Get a clear picture of your B2B customers

Most companies I worked for already had a predefined buyer persona. Only little of them had ICPs. None of them had defined buying committees. But it’s essential to know exactly who you need to adress and how.

Knowing when to use buyer personas versus buying committees

Knowing when to use buyer personas versus buying committees depends on the nature of your B2B marketing and sales efforts and the complexity of your target market. Here’s a breakdown of when each approach is most appropriate:

Buyer Persona

Use buyer personas when:

1. Individual Decision-Makers: Your product or service typically involves individual decision-makers within the target companies.
2. Personalized Marketing: You want to tailor your marketing messages, content, and sales pitches to resonate with the specific needs, preferences, and pain points of different types of buyers.
3. Segmented Target Audience: Your target audience consists of diverse individuals with varying roles, responsibilities, and goals.
4. Content Strategy: You need to develop a content strategy that addresses the unique challenges and interests of different buyer personas, guiding them through the buyer’s journey.
5. Lead Nurturing: You want to create targeted lead nurturing campaigns that engage prospects at different stages of the sales funnel based on their buyer persona.

Buying Committee

Use buying committees when:

• Complex Purchasing Decisions: Your product or service involves complex purchasing decisions that require input and consensus from multiple stakeholders within the target organizations.
• Cross-Functional Decision-Making: The decision-making process involves stakeholders from different departments or functional areas, such as finance, IT, marketing, operations, and procurement.
• Strategic Account Management: You’re focused on building relationships with key accounts and navigating complex organizational structures to secure deals.
• Consultative Sales Approach: Your sales approach involves understanding and addressing the diverse needs, concerns, and priorities of multiple stakeholders within the buying committee.
• Relationship Building: You need to establish trust and credibility with all members of the buying committee, demonstrating the value proposition of your offering to each stakeholder.
• Longer Sales Cycles: Complex purchasing decisions typically involve longer sales cycles, requiring sustained engagement and relationship-building efforts with the buying committee over time.

In summary, use buyer personas when focusing on individual buyer preferences and needs, while leveraging buying committees is crucial for navigating complex B2B sales environments with multiple stakeholders involved in the decision-making process. Both approaches are valuable tools for understanding and engaging with B2B customers effectively.

As I cannot cover all possible scenarios in this article, I’ll focus on B2B scenarios where you need to work with a buying committee.

3. The power of raising a hero

Asking SDRs (Sales Department Representative) on who closes the deal, they will (most of the time) answer with „Me“. But they are wrong. The decision is made behind closed doors when no SDR is around. It’s discussed with legal, finance, decision-makers and experts at a time no SDR is around. You could remove the SDR and still get the deal. With removing the customer, you won’t.

Not SDR closes the deal, your customer does

Once you start understanding this, you understand that you have to change the way you market. In most projects I have been involved, there’s usually one person in the project (on customer’s side) that’s responsible for the project. It’s your first (in-depth) contact with your potential buyer, and usually remains until the deal is made or declined. Consider this person being your hero. When you start building a relationship with heroes, you not only gain valuable insights into the goals and needs of your target accounts, but you also secure a loyal advocate who can push your deal forward in places you cannot enter.

These heroes will be selling your solution internally and will receive a lot of questions from either a specialist department, CEO, CFO or other parts of the buying committee. These questions might contain:

• Budget justification / ROI
• Risks when selecting you as vendor
• Vertical use cases and results they can expect
• Migration
• Integration
• Legal / Data protection
• Security
• Onboarding
• Support
• …

Many companies being in the business for a while have been confronted with some, all or more questions like these. But in most companies with classic approach, the answers are usually given individually by your SDR to the contact without having good content testifying them. It’s like every hunter is going alone for the deer. This behavior is deeply integrated in DNA of – yes.. Men (which are still a majority in sales, though changing). Every man wants to solve problems on his own and claim the reward. Best sales employee of the month – does this ring a bell?

Acting like this will keep you within a circle-of-doom. Each SDR has to come up with the same (slightly modified) answers again and again. The customer won’t be able to find answers on his own, cause there’s no valuable, pain-point-addressing content available online on your website or other channels. But guess what – you’re not alone on the market, and chances are high that the content can be found on your competitors side. Who wins that trust-point?

Instead of talking only about numbers or potentials in Sales meetings you need to start talking about the questions and issues your buyers have and include marketing to create good content to address these pain points in any stage of their buying journey. Start building your thought-leadership by creating a content hub. But keep in mind: This cannot be done by marketing alone, as they do not understand pain points as clearly as SDRs do, and they cannot come up with valuable answers alone. Building up good and valuable content requires cooperation between Sales and Marketing, not delegating tasks.

Critical point
This means sales has to invest time and effort. Time they cannot use to go on another solo deer hunt. Therefore, it’s important to convince your CEOs before so they can lower the sales number pressure to build things up that will pay out with better and more effective leads and future pipelines. If you don’t convince them, your doomed as no SDR will give you 10 minutes as they might „fall behind“ their goals.

Start building up content hubs with content addressing specific pain points. Here’s why:

4. Content hubs and why you need them

As mentioned above, sales won’t be engaging directly with the decision-makers, but rather with the heroes. They will sell for you internally while being confronted with a lot of questions (see 3.)

Create content to address all of these points. It’s not always possible in details because questions are too individual to be answered in broad, but still try to create valuable content as others might have these questions too an then they are able to find you with search engines. Therefore, it’s important to write content also based on SEO guidelines. This is where good Marketing and Sales work together:

• Sales delivers pain points and answers
• Marketing creates content, building up a content hub (integrated in a SEO concept)

Content hubs are not only a great way to support heros and convince buying committes during the buying journey but also to gain thought leadership and visibility in search engines.

But there’s another advantage: When heading out to the hunt, sales can use this content directly to address companies, that might struggle with these pain points. Or they can use freely offered content to gain a level of trust and connect in social media channels like LinkedIn. And it’s an essential advantage to use this content to fill up landing pages, create retargeting campaigns and to nurture your leads while they are in the buying process. This way you can still keep in touch with your lead without calling them too often. Additionally, you can see who and how often engaged with your content, what exactly they have consumed – priceless insights for precise and timely follow-up (you might want to use marketing software for that e.g. HubSpot marketing hub and a connected CRM). If your contact did spend 15 minutes on reading articles about a specific issue, then sales can use this information precisely.

A lot of light, but where’s the shadow? Building up a content hub takes time, and time is money. Money that you cannot use to work on old-fashioned lead generation. This includes a potential risk of a temporary revenue cut. Therefore, it requires a C-level that agrees to invest time both in marketing and sales and knows about the risk. It’s like developing a new product – it’s an investment in your future (-pipeline). It’s an investment in your thought leadership and the first step towards modern marketing and sales – just watch your successful and bigger competitors, they most likely work like that. To reduce the revenue cut or keep it to a minimum, the best is always to do a project pilot.

5. Focus on the buyers journey

It’s important that you cannot map every strategy on every kind of business. These examples are just a rough comparison and far from being complete:

Example 1:

You have a software with a subscription model, focussing on B2B companies and selling seats for 5$/month. The total cost for 10 users is 600$ a year. This sales cycle can be very short, beginning from a few days to weeks and include only the decision maker.

Strategies:

• Demand generation (Ads, Social Marketing, Networking…)
• Content hub creation (Why is your solution best and what problems does it solve, Value adding articles around all topics your software covers … tight cooperation with sales required)
• Proof (webinars with demos, videos, personal 1:1 sessions with SDR)
• Comparisons (comparison reports, transparent pricing, rating platforms G2 Capterra etc.)
• …

Channels to target should always match your buyers‘ behavior. In this example, they could be:

• YouTube
• Social media where your Buyer Personas are in e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram
• Influencers
• SEO
• SEA
• Website

Example 2:

On the other hand we have a ERP software, also subscription model. The market is settled (99.9% already have an ERP), so it’s all about changing the software, cause of issues and problems with the current ERP. Pricing for implementing and migrations are insanely higher with 100k+ as well as high running costs. Sales cycles are from 1 to 5 years. A whole buying committee is involved and lots of questions are asked during the buying journey.

For this business case, you won’t be able to generate a demand as demand rises from inbound issues with the current software.

Strategies:

• Content hub creation (focus on problems that trigger buyers to start their search – tight cooperation with sales required). It’s crucial for this strategy to also focus on problems and questions that the whole buying committee might have during the buying journey. Starting from your hero up to legal and CFO.
• Networking
• Building a hero
• Campaigns to focus on solutions based on those initial problems
• Build thought leadership and start gaining trust
• Personalized content and highly focused on your clustered accounts
• Proof (webinars with demos, personal 1:1 sessions with SDR, workshops)
• Comparisons (comparison reports, transparent pricing, rating platforms G2 Capterra etc.)
• Guest posts

Channels to target:

• Social media where your Hero and/or your buying committee is located. E.g. LinkedIn
• SEO
• SEA
• Website

Its often better to reduce to a few core channels instead of wasting budget in places your buyers aren’t present in.

How the buyer’s journey has changed

Each buyer journey is different – and it’s not linear anymore. Gartner provided an Article „B2B Buying: How Top CSOs and CMOs Optimize the Journey“ of longer sales cycles, and they came up with this intense graphic. But once you dig in, you feel there’s truth in it.

The buyer’s journey is not linear, it feels more like an ant nest.

Why?

The way businesses buy things has changed because of how buyers behave now. Today’s business buyers:

• Work with more people in their company to make buying decisions
• Are less likely to talk to Sales because companies focus more on their products
• Read a lot of online reviews before making a decision
• Have less money to spend than before

The procedure includes using different digital tools, holding internal meetings, gathering input from colleagues, and conducting thorough online research. The B2B buyer journey is now more complex and no longer follows a linear progression from awareness, consideration, decision, to purchase.

Instead, Gartner recommends that B2B companies think of the buyer journey as a set of jobs to be done: 

Buyers are likely to be handling multiple tasks simultaneously throughout their buyer journey, rather than moving from one task to the next in a sequential manner.

This is the reason why you need answers to all questions asked in every job that is about to be handled by your buyer’s committee.

The buyer’s journey starts when you still don’t know the prospect

The process of a B2B buyer starts before any contact is made. A survey by Bain & Co. found that most B2B customers already have preferred vendors in mind before looking for solutions, and most end up buying from this initial list.

With the rise of product-led growth, the distinction between prospect, buyer, and customer has blurred. Nowadays, a prospect may use a product (like a free trial) before becoming a paying customer.

Customer support now deals with inquiries that were once handled by sales. Digital resources are crucial.

Sales and Marketing must work together as the B2B journey is now online, with buyers relying heavily on research.

Your digital assets should support your Sales team, as many buyers start by visiting your website. Buyers also check industry publications, influencers, and reviews. The success of sales often depends on the effectiveness of product demos; many decisions are influenced by them.

B2B buyer journeys now involve more decision-makers

Research shows that today’s buyer journey includes 11 to 20 stakeholders, up from five a decade ago. Bain identified three groups in the B2B buying committee: final decision-makers, the core buying committee for research and evaluation, and internal influencers providing insights. Engaging with all groups is important, but convincing the core committee is key to closing deals successfully. I’ll get on that later.

6. Match your sales process to your buyers

Given the non-linear nature of the modern buyer’s journey, it is unwise to presume the stage at which a prospect finds themselves.

It is possible that a new prospect has already gathered significant information about your product, having dedicated time to online research or even being a current or former user.

Therefore, during interactions like inbound sales calls, ask the prospects what they already know about you.

Since your buyer will make purchasing decisions privately behind closed doors, rather than through discussions with an account executive, your role is to assist them in comprehending the decision-making process and how to proceed.

Instead of bombarding them with sales materials, concentrate on offering educational content to assist them in understanding the market, comparing different options, and making a well-informed decision.

Mutual action plans can be helpful in this situation. These are joint checklists that allow you to collaborate with prospects and guide them through different stages of the buying process:

1. Initial call
2. Stakeholder Meeting for a demo (with an option to book one)
3. Meeting with IT (Environment checking, Installation requirements, Migration possibilities …)
4. and so on

By using a mutual action plan, you can guide them on the appropriate questions to ask, the issues they should discuss internally, and the tasks they need to complete to prepare for a purchase.

“If you think about what we are as sellers, we’re educators. We provide buyers with information so they can make an educated decision for themselves.”

Stephen Ruff, Co-Founder of Champify,

7. Make use of sales multithreading

Many sales teams are focusing on only one or two stakeholders within the buying committee.

Rather than solely aiming for the most senior person, the approach should target various individuals such as decision-makers, the core committee, and internal influencers.

This strategy, known as sales multithreading, is crucial for successfully selling to current B2B buyers, as buying decisions now involve multiple players.

Big deals consist of more than one stakeholder

How to do it?

Information, information, information. Make sure to spend enough time in your first conversation to find out everyone who has a say in making the decision, even those the person you’re talking to might not think about. For example, they might not realize that other people, like the ones who will actually use the product, could influence the decision. Here’s a list of questions to ask:

• „Who would be upset if they weren’t part of this decision?“
• „How did you buy things before, and who helped?“
• „Who else was involved?“

You can also ask the person you’re talking to introduce you to the right people. In addition, here are some guides to find out about your buyers committee during the buyer’s journey:

• Who was the main person you talked to and who got copies of all the emails → Hero
• Who came to the meetings with the main person → Influencers
• Who put their name on the papers → Decision-makers
• Whose money was spent → Decision-makers

To address multiple persons with matching content directly, it’s important to identify them. Use your CRM to make the data available for others and enrich it:

• What titles do they hold?
• What do they do, and what are their main tasks?
• What words often show up in their bios and job descriptions?
• Do you know anyone they know who could introduce us?
• Who has experience with our current customers?

These informations will massively help to choose the right content to target your accounts. Always keep in mind:

The bigger the accounts you are targeting, the more people are involved in purchasing decisions.

Build relationships

Develop numerous connections. Just having buyer personas won’t be enough. Spend quality time getting to know as many of those stakeholders as you can.

Reach out with matching content through various ways like email, phone calls, and social media such as LinkedIn.

Utilize the details you collect while forming these relationships to guide you in determining the content you require. Afterward, ensure that you deliver pertinent, tailored content to the different prospects within the account.

For instance, your buyer hero might require sales materials to support their internal selling efforts, while end users might be more interested in case studies or technical guides.

Try to get different people in your team connected with different people in theirs. For example, have your CFO meet theirs or introduce your top developer to theirs.

8. Collaborate with your marketing team

Instead of Marketing and Sales working separately, they should collaborate as one team focused on generating revenue. Together, they should develop content that assists buyers in each step of their purchasing process.

Your content strategy should produce useful resources for sales, like:

• Guides and comparisons for software, so buyers can understand the market
• Case studies and testimonials from various customers, making the buyer experience personal
• Legal & security documents on data protection, ISO certificates or whatever is relevant to convince your customer’s legal department
• Technical white papers to help the buyer hero gain support from tech staff
• ROI studies and calculators to reassure buyers as they decide to make a purchase

9. Personalize

In today’s landscape, buyers often prefer not to engage directly with sales representatives. Consequently, there’s a narrower window to establish a connection with them. To bridge this gap effectively, leveraging personalized content becomes important.

For instance, during the initial discovery call, precise note-taking is essential. These notes can then be transformed into a personalized report outlining their specific challenges and how your solution can address them. The report should encompass details such as:

• Their primary objectives
• Current challenges they face
• Priorities regarding a new solution
• Key stakeholders influencing the decision
• Insights into their decision-making process
• Available budget and resources

By incorporating these details into personalized content, you can effectively engage buyers and demonstrate a deep understanding of their needs and circumstances.

10. Lead generation

Knowing your buyers, knowing their paint points, having a solution and having the content to address these pain points are fundamental. Once you have that, you can start targeting your buyers in platforms they use by addressing these pain points. You can do this, either buy ad-campaigns (e.g. LinkedIn, Facebook), focus specific keywords (organic SEO, paid SEA) or use the content to build (new) connections on Social Media platforms like LinkedIn. As you already know – this is just the beginning of the buyer’s journey and not yet a Sales qualified lead. But once tracked (see chapter 11) you can follow your prospect alongside its buyer’s journey and focus a deeper connection.

11. Tools & Measurement

Centralizing tracking across multiple platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, your website, and contact forms is essential for gaining a comprehensive understanding of your marketing efforts and audience interactions. It won’t help you to address single platforms, cause you most likely won’t be able to consolidate that data.

If you are just starting: Do not spend any money before your content is ready. You wouldn’t by a car if there are no roads to drive on, or would you? And these tool can heavily impact your budget.

Implement a Unified Analytics Platform

Choose a robust analytics platform that supports integration with various channels and provides a centralized dashboard for tracking and analyzing data. Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, and HubSpot are popular options that offer features for multichannel tracking. Depending on the country you’re located at, make sure to take data protection regulations into account.

Implement event tracking codes on your website to monitor specific user actions, such as form submissions, button clicks, video views, and downloads. This allows you to attribute conversions and interactions back to their source channels accurately.

Set up UTM Parameters

Utilize UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) parameters to track the performance of your campaigns across different platforms. By appending unique UTM parameters to your URLs, you can identify the source, medium, campaign, and other attributes of incoming traffic in your analytics platform.

Consolidate Contact Forms

Integrate your contact forms with a customer relationship management (CRM) system or marketing automation platform. This enables you to capture lead information and track form submissions in a centralized database, providing valuable insights into lead generation and conversion rates.

Now that we understand the theory and the how-to’s, we dive into clear objectives (budgeting, targets …) in part 4 of this series (will be linked here).

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