The Guide to Marketing Planning for B2B Businesses

1. The key signs that your Marketing Plan isn’t right

Sometimes, we’re under so much pressure to keep ‘doing’ marketing and get those marketing results, we ignore the warning signs that our Marketing Planning isn’t quite right.

Sign 1. You’re getting results – but painfully
Achieving marketing results takes time, but if the process feels arduous, it’s a sign that your marketing plan needs adjustment. 

While patience is required with marketing, it’s a fine line between allowing enough time and realising that this isn’t working. This example explains more.

Real example

One of my clients had a clear marketing plan, had successfully launched a marketing campaign, and were getting results… but slowly. Interest was slowly creeping up, with a drip of sign-ups for the ‘free’ stuff, and a drip of sales.

But to get those few sales, they had to do a lot of personal selling, which they hadn’t planned for. This was costing them and their business in time, effort, and money.  The pain and how hard it was to get results was the key sign that their strategic marketing planning wasn’t right.

My advice? To refine their strategic market proposition i.e. focus on fewer customer segments (rather than trying to market to many groups) and charge a higher price (so their effort was rewarded).

This improved their results, reduced the effort required, and meant that the effort they were still putting in was suitably financially rewarded.

Sign 2. You dislike your marketing

Yes, business is meant to be objective, but if you’re delivering a marketing plan you dislike, it’s essential to explore why.  The reason that I am looking for that tells me they are doing the ‘wrong’ marketing for what their business needs is when they use the word, ‘should’ and can’t explain to me ‘why they should’.

Real example

One of my clients was doing marketing based on what they felt they ‘should’ be doing. 

They’d sensibly done several marketing courses and kept up their marketing learning up to date. They came away with a strong sense of they had to be on socials three times a day, writing fresh content for their website weekly, and going to networking events weekly. 

The problem was, doing all this left them with no time, feeling exhausted, and not seeing any real results from it all. They were starting to hate doing marketing. Huge problem.

My advice? Adapt what they had learnt to fit their business. I showed them successful businesses that do marketing on their own terms.  I found business owners with no website, just a social media presence. Businesses that only accept referrals and recommendations, so their marketing is all about keeping clients loyal and attending a few choice networking events.

Once I showed them what was possible, I helped them build a marketing plan that they could and wanted to deliver. They’re now fully booked – and have stopped hating their marketing.

Sign 3. It’s overcomplicated

Hands up if you’re guilty of the ‘overly complicated’ marketing plan? 

With so much marketing we could be doing and so many tools to choose from, if you’re ambitious, competitive, or fearful that you’ll not get enough customers, it is really easy to add to your marketing until it is like some crazy monster all pieced together with glue and stitches—think Frankenstein’s monster.

Whatever size your business, you should be able to map out how people move from being ‘Unaware’ your company exists to ‘Loyal’ customers (known as your Buyers Journey), dropping in all your key marketing activities at each stage of the funnel.

It shouldn’t take you long. 

If you’re sat there, trying to remember what piece of marketing collateral you offer them at the Interested stage, or whether you have marketing automation in place when they download that free item, or if you still run Google Ads on a Wednesday, then it’s probably over-complicated.

Overcomplication leads to mistakes.

It means your marketing and sales activities fail to join up. This is felt by your prospects who should feel like they are on a seamless journey with you, carefully guided from one step to the next.

Keep your Buyer’s Journeys clear, uncluttered, and easy to follow. 

Real example

I worked with a client whose marketing had elements that were working really well, but they were hidden behind a load of ‘clutter’.

When they mapped out their Buyer’s Journey, it was instantly obvious there was too much going on.

The behind-the-scenes processes were a chaotic nightmare. It was hard to find who had been sent what marketing emails and when. This was because they used different marketing technology with many manual workarounds, relying on someone remembering to do them each month. This was great until the person responsible was off sick or on leave.

I asked them to map out the route to purchase, one that they knew worked.

I then helped them determine what they needed to do to replicate this journey, mapping out the steps to implement and how to build them. This formed the basis of a strong Marketing Plan and allowed them to build an efficient marketing and sales pipeline that could be scaled up or down, with the right marketing technology.

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Now you know why you have a problem with your Marketing Planning, let me show you how to do a Marketing Health Check.