The path to B2B Digital Marketing Growth: from Foundation to Acceleration

A successful path to B2B Digital Marketing growth starts from enabling three pillars: customer, business and technology. Discover how to achieve digital maturity in B2B.

How do you achieve digital maturity in B2B?

Achieving higher levels of digital maturity means your organization’s marketing capabilities are growing. For digital marketing, there are three pillars: the customer, the business and the technology that have to work together and be enabled for growth to happen. In practice, there are two stages of digital marketing maturity through which B2B companies go: the foundation and the acceleration. These define the type of challenges, goals and focus they should have. In which stage is yours?

Digital marketing starts with the customer. You want to understand them so you can best match their needs with your products or services. The better you do that, the more value you create as a company. Technology should be seen as the enabler between business and customer and shapes this entire process: from collecting and analyzing customer data, to effectively and conveniently delivering your products, and services.

Digital maturity is about the interplay of the customer, business and technology pillars. Where is the weakest link? For example, do you understand the customer well but are not on the right channels? Or is your service not coming together because of the many silos that create friction in the customer journey? The challenge may be that outdated technology limits the team, lacks alignment within the organization or there is no clear customer view. In practice, there are two phases in which the digital maturity of B2B companies can be: foundational and acceleration. For each phase, I name the common problems, the necessary solutions viewed through the three pillars and give a customer example from daily practice.

Phase 1:

Building the foundation when “basics” are missing

Your marketing team is ready to take the first big steps to develop your digital marketing capabilities. However, there are limited resources available and digital B2B marketing is complex and time-consuming. You don't really have time to properly mentor people. The big question at this stage is: what should you focus on to make sure you get a handle on your digital marketing? How can you grow results and opportunities? In practice, you mainly encounter the following challenges:

  • Marketing and sales are not well aligned. Lead generation is difficult for the organization;
  • Current customer data is not fully utilized. They are not centralized, or they are of low quality which slows down progress;
  • You're struggling to convince management to invest in new marketing resources;
  • You want to provide data-driven, customer-centric experiences but that seems too complex;
  • You struggle with internal silos that get in the way of organizational change.

How to build a solid foundation

The starting point in this case is to build a solid foundation. Translated into the three pillars of digital maturity, here are the objectives:

The customer

  • Get to know the customer better and understand customer needs. Build and gather customer data and analytical capabilities. In doing so, focus on data quality over quantity;
  • Find the right channels on which to reach your customers. Expand through different digital channels and test their potential.

The business

  • Break through organizational silos to enable customer-centricity through a CRM solution; Enable every department around the CRM;
  • Create an agile marketing team that collaborates optimally, a small team that has the capabilities to drive marketing initiatives from end-to-end.

Technology

  • Deploy all relevant channels optimally;
  • Deploy or further leverage CRM as the basis for all marketing and sales communications.
  • If you’re comfortable with CRM, you may start moving into the first use cases to enable a Marketing Automation solution.
  • Deploy analytics and data gathering solutions to start getting to know your customers.

Example: a mountain of valuable data, unused

Because of the traditional way of working in the apparel industry, an international B2B manufacturer was struggling to connect with their different customers. The manufacturer used a CRM system to collect customer data but then barely utilized it. The valuable customer and account data accumulated and did not generate added value for the company. The necessary quality and consistency were lacking, making it difficult to leverage this data. The company was not yet using digital marketing channels to reach customers such as social media, paid advertising or email marketing.

As a digital partner, SQLI conducted an audit of the current customer database to see how quickly key audiences could be reactivated. We then designed a strategy to reach these customers through a combination of digital channels. Through a marketing automation platform, manual work was minimized, and scalability increased. With this, campaigns were developed with the goal of reaching key target groups on a specific part of the customer journey. The integration of lead management rules, scoring and routing helped lay the foundation for scalability and growth of their marketing initiatives

Phase 2:

Focus on acceleration to drive scalable growth

Other situation: your B2B company is already doing digital campaigns and using a CRM solution to align the organization internally, but further traction with the customer is lacking. There are internal constraints that make it difficult to optimally meet customer needs. The big challenge here is gaining the ability to move efficiently as a company along with the changing customer and customer needs. In practice, this manifests itself in the following scenarios:

  • The much-needed move from third-party data to first-party data proves particularly difficult;
  • Sales and marketing departments are working together but the customer is not getting a seamless experience across all channels;
  • Some marketing automation is already taking place, but it is limited to segmented campaigns. Not enough personalization is possible;
  • The Martech stack is not well connected, creating operational challenges around data, processes and deployment of the CRM and other marketing tooling;
  • There is no holistic 360° customer view with which to effectively connect your marketing efforts and results. Customer data is not converted enough into actionable insights.

How to accelerate your digital marketing growth

Acceleration in your digital marketing becomes possible only when the three pillars are optimally fulfilled:

The customer

  • Generate more value for the customer with a seamless and smooth customer experience.
  • Differentiate yourself from the competition by looking at end-to-end customer journeys, not just individual touchpoints.

The business

  • Further break down organizational silos to make the customer experience across all channels truly omnichannel and seamless.
  • Implement continuous improvement as a foundation to grow the way your team works.

Technology

  • Look outside the CRM solution to collect and analyze customer data. This can result in a sophisticated data architecture and solutions such as data warehousing or a customer data platform.
  • An integrated Martech stack that allows data to be centralized in (near) real time for subsequent use and activation across all channels for a personalized, seamless experience.

Example: moving from B2B to D2C

An international B2B manufacturer in the sports industry was struggling to get to know the end customer because of its reliance on dealers and distributors to position the brand at the point of purchase. While the strong brand and effective marketing channels helped, the manufacturer lacked a centralized 360° customer view and the kind of modern architecture that enables a direct to consumer (D2C) strategy. The big challenge was defining and prioritizing the next steps to enable growth to a new level.

We supported them by defining a pragmatic roadmap for digital maturity. Central to this was modernizing the architecture that allows the manufacturer to learn about and then reach the end customer digitally. This new architecture includes Martech solutions used by a B2C organization rather than a B2B organization, such as a CDP and an advanced marketing automation platform. We are taking the first steps to help them implement that roadmap.

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Bring our experts your digital marketing challenges and start to overcome them

One of the biggest changes for B2B companies is the relationship with the digital partner. Digital partners can no longer hide behind the role of software vendor or SEO specialist. To really help B2B companies advance in the maturity of their digital marketing, new roles are needed. Such as that of guide in a complex marketing landscape for companies in the foundation phase, or that of sparring partner who dares to challenge existing business processes in the acceleration phase. The starting point should not be the digital partner's usual solutions, but the specific challenge of the B2B company. Only then can a digital partner offer a holistic view and think along about capabilities, organizational design and the shape of the customer relationship.

SQLI is the end-to-end digital marketing partner that will help you bridge the gap between your organization and customers by unlocking the full value of your digital channels with the right technology, data and strategy. We take a holistic, pragmatic and outcome-driven approach to your digital marketing challenges to create impactful solutions. By working closely together with your digital marketing team as an agile blended team, we are able to create real value across all your digital touchpoints. Learn more about our B2B Digital Marketing approach.

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