How We Develop Effective Marketing & Sales Strategies

Are you a marketing professional in a B2B company? Are you always asked by leadership to show results of what you are working on, but unsure how? Are you burdened to keep up with all of the latest marketing trends while also doing everything else that is thrown at you: RFP’s, leadership presentations, etc.? We see this all the time. We have been helping marketers for years to innovate and show that marketing drives company growth.

How? We have a proven process to do just that. Read on.

We begin with our proven process to ensure our partners' success. The first step is a discovery meeting. During this session, we learn about a company—their industry, audience, and overarching goals. We take a deep dive and truly understanding what sets that company apart, what challenges they have, and who they're trying to attract. We also dig into who is not a good fit for what that company offers.

Research

We then move onto the research and goal-setting stage. At this point, we conduct persona research to understand who is buying from the company. We capture this through interviews, surveys, ride-alongs, and pair it with online research. We seek to deeply understand what buyer motivations and watering holes are.

Then on to industry and competitor research. We seek to understand what competitors are doing and what’s happening in the industry. We also look outside of that industry. There's a lot to be gained by observing what businesses outside of the target sector are doing to be successful. Often, there are ways to weave those strategies into our ongoing plan. 

After we’ve done our research and goal-setting, we move on to technology tool & process mapping. Here, we review existing tools and processes and research additional options. Often we find companies are using antiquated systems or no systems/tools at all. Putting the right tools and systems into place is a crucial step in executing and measuring effective marketing and sales plans. 

Strategy Planning

After the technology and process mapping, we move into strategy and campaign planning. Here is where we identify the campaign key performance indicators (KPIs). We assess which assets exist and which assets need to be created to hit the desired goals. We do additional research into what tactics and avenues are most effective. This is based on trends, industry data, and any current data we have access to from that company.

We then build a comprehensive campaign that takes everything we learned in the discovery, research and goal-setting, technology and process mapping phases and we put together an actionable roadmap. This roadmap identifies timelines and execution details to define how the tactics will get done. How will our team be involved? How will the client leverage their own internal resources?

Campaigns often specify tactics like: social media marketing, SEO/SEM, content creation, video creation, paid media, account-based marketing, website updates, automation, conversion strategies, and more. 

Tactic Execution

After the plan is built comes the cyclical stage: execute the campaign tactics and train our clients (this is something that sets us apart - we are very much in partnership with the clients we work with so we want to ensure they are trained and empowered to work alongside us).

Then the critical component: reporting on the work. We provide a monthly snapshot through reports that shows a high-level view of what’s working, what’s not working, along with recommendations on how we’re going to change it to impact our goals. Then we do a quarterly deep-dive report. We present and share those with you, so you can share with leadership. It’s at that point where we understand if we need to change anything we are doing to hit the goals set out. Reporting is the glue that helps show your marketing and leadership teams the impact of marketing and sales efforts.

The Value of a Proven Process

We know that this proven process works, regardless of the industry or business size. We follow this process because it consistently generates results for our clients. We don't shortchange any step, knowing that to do so would, in turn, shortchange the results. Now you might be thinking “OK, that sounds like a lot of steps. How long does that usually take?” Generally, to go through this entire process takes between 30-60 days, after which we move into the execute & report phase. Campaign strategies are typically spanned over a 6-12 month period. 

Setting a strong, research-based foundation for your sales and marketing plan will set you up for ongoing success. We aim to end "random acts of marketing" and be very intentional about how we allocate resources on behalf of our clients. 

Need help creating an effective sales and marketing plan to hit your goals? Let's see if Vye is a good partner fit.