Knowledge of the buyer and how they buy is the marketer's not-so-secret weapon in strategic planning and budget negotiations. It's also your primary contribution to the organization. What if you don't have it?
Building a B2B Marketing Strategy Without Market Data
Oops. It's strategic planning crunch time and you don't know anything about the law firm market in Sweden - but will be launching a new product there in March. You have no idea why your biggest customers in Florida aren't renewing, but you have to help sales turn it around.
You don't know enough about the buyers and how they buy to create a marketing strategy you can defend, but it's not like you can learn everything you need to know in the next four weeks. Which is when you'll be presenting your plan and asking for a hefty budget increase. What now?
Shame on You. Bad Marketer. Bad Marketer!
I have to say it - this is on you. It's your JOB to know this. It's also your best bet to justify budget and resources as well as sticking to whatever plan you put in place. Without it, you have no defense against ongoing "squirrel" moments that end with you building one-off sell sheets and videos that get you nowhere. And worse - you'll be the first on the block for budget cuts because you have no market data to justify the spend.
Enough said - what are we going to do about it NOW? Here are a few practical tips to get you through this strategic planning cycle, and to prepare so it never happens again.
Start Where You Are. Use What You Have. Do What You Can.
This quote by tennis player Arthur Ashe is one of my favorites for centering myself in any emergency. In this case: if you have four weeks to build your marketing strategy, spend three of them gathering the most critical market data in an efficient way. First, make a list of knowledge gaps for each goal you have in the new year. Second, prioritize those gaps based on what worries you the most, and how hard it would be to know them. Use criteria you can explain to others. Here's an example of how you could visualize this prioritization:
Don't Make Up Market Data
The olfactory sense of most executives is finely tuned - they can smell BS on your slides before you even share them. If you put forward proposals with broad statements and unsubstantiated "data" about buyers and how they buy, you'll get picked apart and eaten alive in a way that makes the average Walking Dead scene seem tame. More importantly, you'll leave the planning session empty handed and with a reputation as a lightweight.
If you don't know something critical about the buyers, admit it. AND . . .
Telegraph Market Data Confidence with a Scale Everyone Understands
It's important to make sure everyone knows the risk level they're operating under, and anecdotal market data is more risky than validated market data. Be upfront about your relative confidence and make it easy to build this into your marketing strategy and even day-to-day decision-making by creating a Confidence Scale. I use "red, yellow and green" to describe how actionable (read: validated) my market insights are. For example, "we believe our large Florida customers aren't renewing because we skipped their conference last year, but that's Yellow Data and we need to validate it by . . .." Create a scale that works for you and use it consistently. Here's an example:
Fix the Problem: Embed Knowledge Gathering in Your Marketing Strategy
You can't just tell execs "hey - we're going to spend the next three months doing round tables to learn about these buyers and THEN we'll have a plan!" What you CAN do is illustrate how you're going to use strategic marketing programs to not only achieve the corporate vision, but also to fill the gaps in your market knowledge. For example, you could say that you're going to measure response rate to early marketing on the Swedish launch to hone messaging and choose the best channels.
You should also, however, have a section of your strategy dedicated to learning about buyers and markets, prioritized by what worries you the most, that you know the least about. Put goals, resources and metrics of success against these initiatives and measure them as you would other strategic goals.
Writing a marketing strategy without buyer knowledge is too challenging to do twice - put these steps in place to get through this cycle, and make sure it doesn't happen again.
About the Author
Diane Pierson is the Founder and Chief Market Strategist of Innovate on Purpose, a consultancy enabling successful product commercialization for B2B tech companies. Order her book, How to Innovate on Purpose or contact Diane at dpierson@innovateonpurpose.com.
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