B2B Marketing Fitness
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B2B Marketing Experts Share Top Tips for Better Performance
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Warm Up
01
Goals
In It to Win It
Let’s Get It Started
Data Fuels Performance
02
Nutrition
03
B2B Best Practices Make Perfect
Exercises
04
Just Do It Better
Optimize
05
Get Pumped Up at MarketingProfs B2B Forum
Break a Sweat
06
Let's Get it Started
Lets Get This Workout Started
In a world where shiny object marketing and weight loss fads equally distract us from reaching our potential, there are many parallels between improving physical health and optimizing B2B marketing effectiveness. Just like world-class athletes, top B2B marketers focus on key areas for improvement, starting with goals and then including the right mix of data insights, tactical best practices, and ongoing performance optimization. To help B2B marketers achieve record-breaking levels of marketing fitness, we've tapped some of the industry's top B2B marketers for their best advice to help you on your journey.
Warm up
Too often B2B marketers treat content as a process versus a competition for the time and emotion-driven attention of customers that drive marketing ROI. Oversized goals are often lost to distraction and the wrong metrics. For optimal marketing fitness, start with long-term goals broken down into short-term goals that are relevant to audience impact and business outcomes, not just the content.
Set Fun-Sized Goals
If you want to run a marathon, you don’t step out of your front door one day and run 26.2 miles straight, do you? No. The first day, you’d lace your shoes, step outside, and walk around the block. The challenge for a lot of B2B marketers is that the goals we set tend to be big and long-term, when they should be small and short-term. We try to sprint the marathon. Deep breath. There’s a better way. The answer: Fun-sized goals. Fun-sized goals are like a fun-sized Snickers bar in a Halloween bucket. Except in this case, fun-sized goals are smaller chunks of bigger goals. Map them weekly, or even daily. This is how you run a marathon. This is how you hit your goals.
The challenge for a lot of B2B marketers is that the goals we set tend to be big and long-term, when they should be small and short-term. @MarketingProfs
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Ann Handley
Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs
Pro Tip
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Click Below to Learn More About Goals from Ann Handley, Pam Didner, Robert Rose and Matt Sutton
Fun-Sized Goals Drive B2B Success
Pam Didner
Robert Rose
Goals: In It to Win It
Consultant, Relentless Pursuit
One critical factor of measuring marketing goals is to be able to talk about the progress of the goals honestly, without sugar coating. @PamDidner
I am a yoga type of girl. Although people may perceive yoga as a relaxing and passive exercise, that's far from the truth. Some yoga poses require years of practice to master. I set up a goal to conquer 1-2 challenging poses every year. Having long-term and short-term goals are equally important in the business world. Your long-term goal can be general, but your quarterly and monthly goals need to be specific and measurable to support your long-term goals. At the same time, it's critical to use a tool or set up a process to monitor the progress against your goals. One critical factor of measuring goals is to be able to talk about the progress of the goals honestly, without sugar coating.
Think Big, Take Small Steps
Chief Strategy Advisor, Content Marketing Institute
True content marketing starts at setting specific, concrete goals on what we believe audiences who engage with our content will do vs. those who don’t. @Robert_Rose
Businesses often launch content marketing initiatives, and just begin to produce content and measure it against things that have no relation to the content or the audience. We produce a whitepaper, and then measure its value against how well the social media campaign to promote that whitepaper did. True content marketing starts at setting specific, concrete goals on what we believe audiences who engage with our content will do vs. those who don’t. Will they close faster? Will they stay longer? Will they buy more? That’s the benefit of content marketing. And it starts with setting measurable goals not for the content — but for the audience we want to impact.
Measure Toward Your True Objectives
Matt Sutton
Global Brand Marketing Lead - Economic Impact, Facebook
More Insights From
We need to rethink our "Business to Business" strategy more as a "Business to Business People" strategy to remind ourselves that the person, not the business, is ultimately behind the driver's seat. - Matt Sutton of @facebook
"Business to Business" marketing is a misnomer. An entire industry has been built around business folk reaching out to other business folk to inspire interest or investment. While the categorization of "B2B" is technically accurate, it often leads to massively inaccurate assumptions, investments, and goal-setting where audiences are concerned. Our business audience is driven by just as many emotional decision-making factors as a regular consumer audience, because at the end of the day, they are consumers. People buy on emotion and justify with logic, and most of their decision-making happens in the subconscious. We need to rethink our "Business to Business" marketing strategy more as a "Business to Business People" strategy to remind ourselves that the person, not the business, is ultimately behind the driver's seat.
Speak to the Person, Not the Business
MorE Insights From
Monkey bars
Hiking
Bicep curls of 1.5 ounces of tequila
My Favorite Exercise
Back To Top
Feed Your Program What It Needs to Succeed
You are what you eat. If you're feeding bad data like sugary vanity metrics and high-calorie fluff into your marketing engine, your results will suffer the crash that follows. No regimen for getting your B2B marketing in tip-top shape will work without a balanced diet of audience research and insights, industry benchmarks, and measurements of bottom-line impact.
Vice President of Influencer Marketing & Communications, SAP Ariba and SAP Fieldglass
Amisha Gandhi
When it comes to B2B influencer marketing, don’t just look at popularity metrics and social media following. Look at deeper engagement metrics. @AmishaGandhi
Healthy marketing requires a mix of data, tools and insights to make better decisions. The better the marketing insights we have, the better our results will be. When it comes to B2B influencer marketing in particular, don’t just look at popularity metrics and social media following. Look at deeper engagement: • Who influencers are engaging with • How many comments they receive and from whom • How long they’ve been engaging • Where they’re speaking as experts To be effective with influencer marketing data at scale, take a lesson from the roles that fitness apps like Apple Watch or Fitbit play: Look at tools that can bring together influencer data, insights, identification, tracking, and measurement. That way you can make smarter choices about where to focus and achieve the best results.
The Right Metrics Serve as Fitness Trackers
Nutrition: Data Fuels Performance
CEO, TopRank Marketing
Lee Odden
B2B marketing fitness requires a proper diet of data about customer preferences for: Information discovery, content types and topics, and triggers to take action. @leeodden
In fitness there's a saying: the path to impressive abs is not through the weight room, it's through the stomach. What you eat has as much to do with physical health as data insights do to fuel successful customer experiences. Great B2B marketing fitness requires a proper diet of data about customer preferences for: • Information discovery • Content types and topics • Triggers to take action With those insights, marketers can feed the kind of personalized, relevant, and compelling marketing programs that energize buyers to action, instead of adding pounds to their collection of unused marketing materials.
Focus on Data that Moves the Needle
Christopher Penn
Michele Linn
Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer, Mantis Research
If you publish research, you’re sharing something new and meaningful that is backed by numbers instead of opinion. @michelelinn
Working out and eating right makes all kinds of sense. I love the extra energy, strength and confidence they give me. Including original data in your content marketing can give you the same type of benefits. Talk about strength! If you publish research, you’re sharing something new and meaningful that is backed by numbers instead of opinion. And data-backed research is a great way to get continual, positive results (so much energy!) This type of content gets website traffic, backlinks, media mentions, leads and subscribers for months, if not years. Like working out, it’s ideal if you make this type of content a habit. It can lead to some unexpected benefits — and confidence!
Add Original Data to Your Content Regimen
Co-Founder & Chief Data Scientist, Trust Insights
Clean. Complete. Comprehensive. Chosen. Credible. Calculable. Adhere to the 6 C’s of data quality and you'll be well on your way to B2B marketing fitness. @cspenn
Using data effectively for B2B marketing doesn't require a Ph.D. in data science or artificial intelligence. Follow 6 simple rules, what my company calls the 6 C’s of Data Quality: • Clean: Free from errors • Complete: Not missing critical parts • Comprehensive: Answers the questions asked of it • Chosen: Does not contain irrelevant information • Credible: Collected with as little bias as possible from reliable sources • Calculable: Usable by both people and machines Data that follows these 6 rules is data you can use for maximum impact as a B2B marketer, the equivalent of health-giving food. Data that breaks these rules is equivalent to junk food, food that steals from your wellness. Adhere to the 6 C’s and you'll be well on your way to B2B marketing fitness.
Build Your Data Diet Around the 6 C’s
Click Below to Learn More About Data from Amisha Gandhi, Lee Odden, Michele Linn and Christopher Penn
Soul cycle
Running
Japanese sword fighting
Look Beyond Popularity Metrics
Tighten Up Your Core Strategy
Focusing on only one marketing muscle group isn’t the path to total marketing fitness or a great beach body. It’s about a holistic and varied workout plan that accounts for all the tactical elements — from social media to influencers to analytics — that are important for delivering a great buyer experience.
Allen Gannett
Konstanze Alex
Ashley Zeckman
Ty Heath
Director of Global Enterprise (B2B) Influencer Relations & Digital Storytelling, Dell Technologies
If your brand’s value proposition increases the health or endurance of your influencer and your brand, you’re setting yourself up for a long and enjoyable run. @Konstanze
It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon. There’s merit in sprinting when your goal is making one large splash. Big splashes are not bad… when the time is right. But my experience in B2B marketing has taught me the value of building long, lean marathon muscles. I’ve worked on building communities of influencers in the high tech space for some years and it takes a long-term approach. Why? Because trust is not built by sprinting past a person or by having them eat your dust. You have to jog alongside each other for a while to get to know a person. In other words, if your brand’s value proposition increases the health or endurance of your influencer and your brand, you are setting yourself up for a long and enjoyable run.
Strive to Build Relationships For the Long-Run
Exercise: Best Practices Make Perfect
Chief Strategy Officer & EVP of Corporate Development, Skyword
Marketers should continuously revisit the results their best practices are driving, and evolve them to raise the bar. @Allen
In B2B, and in the gym, good form is everything when it comes to efficiently achieving results. Operational chaos, competing personas, and complex buyer journeys can easily contribute to wasted content efforts. That’s why it’s key to establish best practices that keep your team focused on the right methods for achieving success. Best practices should hit all the major muscle groups of your marketing org: • Market intelligence collection and application • Content planning • Content creation workflows • Publishing cadence and amplification • Conversion measurement and attribution Just like the same exercise routine week after week eventually leads to a fitness plateau, it’s critical to never set and forget your best practices. Marketers should continuously revisit the results their best practices are driving, and evolve them to raise the bar.
Practice Perfect Form
Senior Director of Digital Strategy, TopRank Marketing
One strategic exercise that never goes out of style is keeping a constant pulse on who your audience is and what they need. @azeckman
A fit B2B marketing strategy is more than a healthy mix of tactical best practices. It’s a regimen that builds upon best practices to continually improve marketing performance. That said, there are some strategic exercises that never go out of style — namely, keeping a constant pulse on who your audience is and what they need. Regularly ask yourself: • What keeps my target audience up at night? • What questions is my audience asking? • Who are the people my audience looks up to and trusts? • What does my brand offer that no competitor can? This exercise keeps your audience’s needs front and center, allowing you to optimize your strategy and tactical mix to deliver better content for them and better results for your brand.
Keep a Finger on Your Audience’s Pulse
Global Lead of The B2B Institute, LinkedIn
We need to invest in branding alongside our lead generation. It maximizes marketing efficiency, strengthens pricing, and increases profitability. @tyrona
When it comes to achieving your fitness goals, it's best to take a whole-body fitness approach. Is it always leg day for you? What about your arms?! The whole-body approach applies to B2B marketing as well. Specifically, for growth, we need to invest in branding alongside our lead generation. It maximizes the efficiency of marketing, strengthens pricing, and increases profitability. If you’re the brand that everyone talks about, and that springs most readily to mind, then you have a serious advantage over any less familiar competitors. You are always an obvious answer to the question of what to buy. Add in branding to support activation activity focused on generating leads and closing deals. Tomorrow, it's arm day!
Exercise Every Muscle Group
Click Below to Learn More About Best Practices from Konstanze Alex, Allen Gannett, Ashley Zeckman and Tyrona Heath
Weightlifting
Yoga
Interval Training
Improving Every Day Is Essential
One-size solutions do not solve fitness or marketing problems. While the right goals, data insights, and best practices can improve any B2B content marketing program, it's ongoing performance optimization that develops beach body results. Optimization comes in many forms, from stepping back for big picture analysis to daily performance review and adjustment.
Tom Treanor
Click Below to Learn More About Optimizing with Tom Treanor, Jon Miller, Keith Reynold Jennings and Kathleen Booth
Jon Miller
Keith Reynold Jennings
Kathleen Booth
Global Head of Marketing, Arm Treasure Data
There are no silver bullets. Gains from gimmicks will often be short-lived (just like that fad diet!). @RtMixMktg
Is your marketing team looking for an “Easy Abs” solution or a consistent, high-impact marketing strategy? Like fitness, marketing performance takes hard work and discipline! What do best-in-class marketing teams do?
Avoid Chasing the Easy Fix
Optimize: Just Do It Better
Goals. Marketing teams need to develop a plan, including specific actions, deadlines, and metrics.
Consistency is key. Like fitness, you often won’t see immediate results.
Mix it up. Avoid plateau and dependence on one channel. Testing and measuring are ways to keep learning.
Progress. Track your leading metrics, as well as results against your bigger goals.
No silver bullets. Gains from gimmicks will often be short-lived (just like that fad diet!).
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CEO & Co-Founder, Engagio
B2B marketing is a team sport. Just like in a soccer game, it takes every player on the field working together to win. @jonmiller
B2B marketing is a team sport. Just like in a soccer game, it takes every player on the field working together to win. Whether your goals are new business, expansion or advocacy, if you want optimal performance from your team, sales and marketing must work together at every stage of the journey. Complex B2B deals don’t progress linearly. Sales reps are getting involved earlier in deals, and marketing is staying involved longer. If you want to orchestrate success like a championship-winning team, here are three things you can start doing today: • Market to accounts AND people • Orchestrate plays across channels and departments • Measure the impact of marketing and sales on long revenue cycles Success doesn’t come overnight. Just like a team, it takes constant practice.
Don’t Take the Journey Alone
Vice President of Community Impact, Jackson Healthcare
Like a good personal trainer, successful B2B marketers must serve the deeper jobs that motivate prospects to commit. @keithjennings
A good personal trainer must dig two-to-three layers down to uncover the deeper motive driving someone to commit to a system of diet, exercise, rest, etc. The first level is functional. For example, “lose weight.” The second and third levels are emotional and social. “Why lose weight?” The deeper answer to that question is what actually drives a person’s commitment and action. Clients don’t merely buy the functional job a product or service does. They “hire” solutions that do emotional and social jobs, like protecting themselves or feeling in control. Like a good personal trainer, successful B2B marketers must serve the deeper jobs that motivate prospects to commit. And, like fitness, this can’t be achieved sitting at a desk!
Find a Deeper Drive and Purpose
Vice President of Marketing, Prevailion
One of the most impactful things that any marketer can do is block off time to step away from their day-to-day work and do some deep thinking. @WorkMommyWork
In marketing as in fitness, performance is about more than showing up. For top performers, the toughest thing to master is the mental game. With the world of digital marketing evolving at a lightning-fast pace, it can be easy for B2B marketers to get distracted by new tools, tech, or strategies. One of the most impactful things that any marketer can do to immediately improve performance is block off time to step away from their day-to-day work and do some deep thinking. Make a regular habit of this and you'll see the big ideas start to flow.
Clear Your Mind of Distractions
Tennis
Biking
TRX
Now that you're warmed up with a workout plan to get your B2B marketing strategy into shape, it's time to learn how to put it into action! There's no better trainer for that than MarketingProfs B2B Forum in Washington, D.C., Oct. 16-18, 2019. Along with the expert B2B contributors in this guide, be sure to see our CEO Lee Odden present "Content Marketing Fitness - 10 Exercises to Build Your Marketing Beach Body", Thursday, Oct. 17.
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Along with the expert B2B contributors in this guide, be sure to see our CEO Lee Odden present "Content Marketing Fitness - 10 Exercises to Build Your Marketing Beach Body", Thursday, Oct. 17.