Marketing your B2B business isn’t easy. In fact, it can feel downright exhausting. Long purchase cycles, busy audiences, a crowded, volatile market, and too much generic marketing advice that simply doesn’t suit smaller B2B businesses.
But when you ‘get’ it, when you understand HOW to market for your B2B business successfully… the results speak for themselves. You know how to find, attract and retain the RIGHT clients for your business – because your marketing works.
I’ve spent the last 20 years helping SME owners do just that. And, in an easy-to-understand format, here’s the approach I’ve been using.
Introducing the 3 B2B Growth Pathways
We begin by taking a step back and looking at the big picture. Take some time to look at the first diagram below. Notice how your Clients are in the centre. Notice how each ring has gaps in it.
Now, let’s work through what all this means.
Your Marketing has one purpose: to help you have the RIGHT clients in your business.
The ‘Right’ clients are ones that you’re best placed to work with profitably – it has to be a mutually beneficial relationship.
Every marketing activity you do has to contribute to this one goal.
Once you’ve got them there, you want to keep these right clients at the centre of your business. So, your marketing must reinforce your excellent customer service and delivery and encourage them to be loyal clients, ones who give you repeat business, recommendations, and referrals.
But before they become your happy, loyal clients, they hover around you. This next orbit is full of people who like what you have to say, are keeping your company in their sights, and some are considering buying from you.
They’re your fans, and you know who they are. You have their names, email addresses, phone numbers, etc., because your marketing has ensured that.
Your marketing needs to keep these fans engaged and encourage them to walk through those gateways and become happy, loyal clients. If you don’t keep them engaged, when they’re ready to buy, they will go to someone else. Not you.
Let’s move to that outer ring. Because before anyone becomes your company’s Fan, they’re in your Outer Orbit.
They know you and your company exist and are watching. They’re enjoying your marketing material, but they haven’t yet revealed themselves. They are hidden from you – you might know numbers, e.g., how many people have viewed your content, visited your website, etc., but you don’t know who the people behind the numbers are – yet.
Here in the Outer Orbit, your marketing has two different roles:
- To keep the RIGHT people engaged (those who can become the RIGHT clients for your business)
- To encourage the RIGHT people to walk through a gateway and become a Fan.
When I deliver my 12-week B2B marketing course, I ensure everyone clearly understands this framework, as it forms the core foundation of the B2B Marketing Strategy we build for their business.
We’ve got the overview
As you can see, you need different types of marketing that are doing different things for people based on where they are in your orbit. And you need to pull together all your marketing activities to create paths that lead to becoming the right, happy, loyal client.
And that’s where the Growth Pathways come in.
Path 1. Perfect Fit
Your marketing needs to create this Growth Path for the people who are ready, right now, for what you offer. They’re ready to buy, and when they come to you, you need to be ready too. It’s the perfect product/market fit situation.
Example:
Last Autumn, I had a Zoom Coffee with someone just as part of my regular networking with new, recommended contacts. I asked them what they did. They provided EXACTLY what I had been looking for. I told them that.
I asked for more info. They had that to hand. They clearly and easily answered my questions. Within an hour of the call ending, I sent a follow-up email with all the right information. I clicked the right links. The webpages told me what I needed to know and what to do next. I checked them out independently. I thought about it. I decided.
Within 72 hours of meeting them, I had paid them £3000 to have my problem solved. This was possible because they were ready for me.
There was no: “Let me dig out some info for you”.
No, ‘Oh, I’ll need to get that to you’. Their marketing was there. Ready.
Their Perfect Fit Growth Pathway is clearly laid out for me to walk on and easily become a client.
Your marketing has to find, attract and then be ready for those Perfect Fit clients – because they are out there. It’s your job to create the path for them to walk along.
Path 2. Almost fits
These are the people that aren’t ready to buy from you – yet.
They’re really interested in what you offer. They know they need your product or service, but… but…but…
Their Growth Pathway is longer.
Your marketing needs to attract them into your outer orbit, normally with interesting, valuable or informative pieces. Things that make them think, “That’s worth a look”, then they stay for more.
Because they’re very interested in what you have to offer, they should move quickly from hanging out anonymously in your Outer Orbit to being a Fan and enjoying your deeper marketing content. This could be e-books, webinars, LinkedIn Live streams, newsletters… all things they get in exchange for shedding their anonymity.
But having fans isn’t enough. You want to make sure your marketing consistently reminds them what they can buy from you and how. You don’t want just to be a useful, free resource for them.
So, make sure your ‘Fans’ marketing content always signals the gateway they can walk through to become a client.
Example:
On one of my Marketing Courses, I worked with a Business Owner who was putting out cracking content – engaging, useful – and getting sign-ups from people who could become clients. But they didn’t.
When we looked at their content, much of it lacked a clear Call To Action (CTA) that encouraged people to take a step closer to buying. Even when people were probably ready to buy, they weren’t being shown what to do next.
12 months after the Course finished, with all her new marketing material containing clear ‘Step this way’ signs, her client numbers for her focus product have doubled – and continue to grow.
Putting clear, next-step CTAs is crucial to this Growth Pathway. Especially ones that remind them what they can buy from you and what the next step is.
Path 3. Not there yet
These are the folk whose business isn’t ready for your solution and might not be for a while.
It could be they’re too small. Or money is tight. Or they need to ‘Sort stuff out first’.
For many reasons, they’re your long-term prospects. (You need to know what these reasons are, by the way, so your marketing can address them. We cover this in depth in Module 2 of my 12-week B2B marketing course.
Their Growth Path is a long and winding one to becoming a client. I’ve had people wait YEARS before becoming a client, wending their way on this path. But they stay on it. They don’t choose someone else.
Your marketing here is about playing the long game. At any one time, you should have lots of people on this path who you don’t even know about yet.
They’re the people who’ve spotted your socials and watch – but never engage. They know your name, spy you across the room at networking, but rarely talk to you about anything consequential.
Your marketing must keep them in your outer orbit, consistently serving them interesting, engaging tidbits, enticing them to come and get the chunkier stuff by revealing themselves, and heading into the Fans orbit. Two of the five modules we cover on my 12-week Marketing Course are all about figuring out what your marketing here has to look and sound like, so they stay in your orbit.
And, often, because they have been hanging around for so long, once they become a fan, it can seem like they have moved quickly. But they haven’t. You just haven’t seen them for all that other time they were quietly milling around your Outer Orbit.
Example:
One of my clients had a ‘sudden’ sale from someone they’d known a long time but who’d never expressed an interest in buying their services. They had a call with them, were asked for a Quote, and 4 weeks later the work had been done, delivered and paid for.
When they dug a little deeper, it turned out that the ‘sudden’ sale wasn’t so sudden.
This person had clocked two years ago that they’d like to work with them. But they weren’t ready yet. So, they waited until they were. Then, one of my clients’ LinkedIn posts made them go, “That’s it. I need to get this sorted.”
The ‘sudden sale’ had actually been on the ‘Not there yet’ Growth Pathway, and it was a relevant, timely piece of marketing that made them walk through the Gateway and become a Client.
You never know who is watching, keeping an eye out, and waiting for the right time. Your B2B Marketing has to keep them engaged while also encouraging them to take that next step.
Purposeful Design beats busyness
When it comes to your 3 B2B Marketing Growth Pathways, clarity and purposeful design are essential. It makes your marketing easier and more effective.
Purposeful Design beats busyness that doesn’t find, attract and retain the right clients in your business.
Most businesses are busy with marketing activities, but they haven’t intentionally designed their marketing. Purposeful design helps you choose the right marketing ideas, place them in the right orbit, and use them at the right time.
That’s why, on my 12-week B2B Growth Optics Course, we map out and plan your Marketing Growth Pathways on the fifth module (out of five).
Because first, you need crystal clear clarity about:
- WHAT your Business needs – so your Growth Pathways deliver that
- WHO your Business needs as Clients – so you design the Growth Pathways they will walk along
- HOW your business shows up – so the right clients are attracted to it
- WHY the right people stay in your orbit
Once you have this clarity of vision, achieved by working through the Growth Optics, then you can pull it together to create a Marketing Plan that builds and maintains your 3 B2B Growth Pathways.
Find out more
If you’d like to know more about the Growth Pathways and how they can transform your B2B marketing, bringing and keeping the right clients, then get in touch. Let’s make this happen for you.
