Technology is often a double-edged sword. In many cases, it makes life easier. But in other ways, it doesn’t.
Marketing is suffering a nasty case of this right now.
The digitalization of marketing and the proliferation of marketing technologies has opened the door to bountiful new marketing opportunities.
It has turned marketing from a specialist-only domain into something accessible to everyone.
And there’s the rub.
Fueled by tools requiring limited user skill or experience, a firestorm of low-quality content has ignited on every marketing channel.
It’s easier than ever to “do marketing” but it’s harder than ever to stand out.
Moreover, as we’re getting sucked into the tornado of technology, it’s easy to forget about the underlying basics.
As we look forward to 2025, why not pull over for a second and take stock?
Let’s spend some time on the basics so that we’re employing technology for the right reasons, not just because it’s the latest thing or “what everyone else is doing.”
Here are nine basic concepts that we’re going to cover in this post. You will likely think of others that apply to your specific situation.
Let’s remind ourselves why each of these concepts matters and ask whether we’re doing the basics right.
A little simplification can do a lot of good in an increasingly complex environment.
- Audience: Who is this for?
- Delivering Value: How will they derive value from it?
- Channels: Are we publishing in the right places at an appropriate frequency?
- Database: Is my CRM fit for purpose?
- Tactics: Are all my marketing tactics adding value?
- Tools: Do we need to be using each of the tools in our tech stack?
- People: Are the right people involved and are they communicating effectively?
- Processes: Can I simplify my marketing processes?
- Analytics: Are we measuring the right things and acting on what we see?
We get so busy churning out content—on topics that we’re anxious to write about—that we sometimes forget about who we’re writing it for.
Successful content marketing doesn’t necessarily equate with publishing the most content.
More often, it’s about publishing the right content in the right places at the right times.
To figure out what, where, and when to publish requires understanding your target audience.
Who are you producing content for?
Where do they go to find relevant, helpful information?
How frequently do you need to meet them there to earn their trust and establish credibility?
Basic action #1: Remind yourself (and your team) who your target audience members are and review—or construct—buyer’s journey maps to confirm what to write, where to publish it, and how frequently.
Returning to the point made earlier on topics that we’re anxious to write about, it’s important to remember that customers care mostly about information that’s relevant and helpful to them.
This picture gets muddied by the constant clamor for “thought leadership,” which many interpret to mean showing-off your knowledge on the technology, sector, or industry associated with your business.
True thought leadership involves contributing unique ideas to the conversation and guiding others in your area of practice in a new direction, either beyond or away from the status quo.
Meanwhile, delivering relevant, helpful information to your customers doesn’t have to involve thought leadership at all.
It requires publishing useful information in places where your target customer goes looking for answers.
It also requires making that information comprehensible, memorable, and actionable so that the customer can derive value from finding and consuming it.
Basic action #2: Ask yourself (and your team) what information your customers most need to discover to move efficiently through their buyer’s journey, culminating in a purchase decision that’s right for them.
Let’s zoom in on the “where to publish that information” component.
As you build a deep understanding of your target customer, you will likely discover that they visit a lot of channels in search of helpful information.
To maximize the effective reach of your content, which means it gets seen by people for whom it is most relevant, not just any old sets of eyeballs, you must focus your efforts on the channels where those customers spend the most time and are most engaged.
This requires an extra level of customer investigation and understanding.
Armed with that knowledge, you can decide how many channels to target, based on available resources.
If you’re an early-stage business with limited resources, we recommend choosing not more than three channels on which to regularly publish content.
Only once you’ve mastered those—or decided to drop one because it’s not performing well enough—should you consider adding more.
Much better to consistently publish high-quality content on a few channels than to spread yourself too thin across more.
Basic action #3: Review which channels your customers spend the most engaged time on and focus on the top 3-4. If you’ve been publishing content more widely, consider dropping less impactful channels so that you can publish higher-quality content more consistently.
At the heart of every successful B2B marketing operation lies a well-managed CRM (customer relationship management) system.
This doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be technically complex. A basic software tool used well outperforms a complicated tool used badly.
And, at the heart of every well-managed CRM system lies a clean and structured database.
This repository of contacts, companies, and opportunities is the single source of truth, where interactions and activities are routinely captured and referenced.
Unfortunately, database systems suffer badly from GIGO—garbage in, garbage out.
They require regular housekeeping to ensure their integrity.
This ranges from simple deduplication to more nuanced archiving of dormant accounts—for example, labeling individuals who haven’t interacted with your content in more than a year as “non-marketing contacts.”
Why does this matter?
For starters, continuing to send mass marketing communications to disengaged contacts is a breach of anti-SPAM laws.
Secondly, most marketing platforms will begin to penalize you for increased bounce and unsubscribe rates as your contact list becomes obsolete.
Things get even worse if you receive more than a handful of “unsubscribe” requests when sending out communications. Email providers will associate this with spamming and blacklist your account, something that can be hard to get reversed.
Basic action #4: Take a close look at your CRM database and implement good data hygiene practices to clean it up and keep it looking shiny throughout the year. Appointing a dedicated database owner/manager is usually a key step in this process.
Publishing content is, of course, only one aspect of a successful B2B marketing strategy.
Among other things, you need to get the word out.
Building brand awareness and driving traffic to your digital properties are equally vital to meeting many companies’ objectives.
Each aspect of your strategy requires tactical implementation. And there are a lot of ways to skin these cats, as the saying goes.
However you originally landed on the current set of tactics, it’s worth stopping to ask whether they are working, and whether there’s anything more effective you might try.
Tactics tend to ebb and flow in popularity, swayed by the latest trends on marketing social media and influencer channels.
Don’t let that be the way you prioritize your efforts.
Tactics should be chosen based on careful analysis of your customer, your team’s skills and availability, the receptivity of businesses in your sector to particular tactics, and what you’ve seen work best in the past.
By all means review those social channels for ideas on new things to try but try to tune out the “this is the only thing that’s working in 2024” nonsense.
Basic action #5: Review the marketing tactics that you’re employing to see which ones are working and which might be replaced by something more effective. Include the latest and greatest tactics in your analysis but choose objectively rather than based on what’s trendy.
Many marketing tactics rely on software for their implementation. It’s a simple fact of life in today’s digital world.
Even analog marketing—such as trade shows, printed collateral, and in-person meetings—is planned, designed, and coordinated online.
Consequently, we end up with a tech stack as tall as the paperwork that used to pile up at the end of an overwhelmed marketer’s desk.
Is it all necessary?
Are you making full use of each of those tools?
If not, can you consolidate or replace some of them with more effective products?
Sometimes it’s a matter of (gasp) reading the instructions and learning how to use a tool properly. Nowadays, this translates to having your team watch YouTube videos with tips and tricks on getting the most out of your software.
But occasionally, a rip-and-replace is required to migrate the team from something hardly anyone is using to a tool that’s fit-for-purpose and creates value.
Basic action #6: Make a list of all the marketing technology tools your team is using and evaluate which are being underutilized or might be replaced with something more effective. Create a plan for implementing any changes you decide are necessary.
While a bad workman blames his tools, a bad manager often blames his people.
Your goal is to get the right people involved, working on the right things, supported by the right tools and processes (more on those in a moment.)
Start from the top. Is the CEO and other members of your leadership team actively involved in championing the marketing strategy?
If not, they should be. B2B marketing requires buy-in and contributions from across the whole organization, which can only be achieved if the folks holding the purse strings are active supporters.
Then ask yourself who else needs to be involved within and outside the organization.
Are they fully engaged?
Have you effectively communicated marketing objectives, strategy, and tactics to them?
Are you listening to their feedback and working to debottleneck any issues they’re facing?
Are they communicating effectively with each other to ensure deliverables are generated efficiently, without things falling between the cracks?
Basic action #7: Review who is involved in your marketing efforts and how they are communicating. Identify others whose contributions would be valuable and decide how best to engage them.
Which brings us next to the systems and processes that regulate how your marketing ends are met by the people we’ve just discussed.
Systematizing marketing is a vital step in the growth journey of any business.
The sooner you can establish systems and processes, the better, since marketing complexity increases in lockstep with the expanding business and the amount of data involved grows exponentially.
Fit-for-purpose systems place a modest demand on your team—for example, to capture important information—while delivering significant benefits in return.
Likewise, fit-for-purpose processes help your team deliver work consistently and predictably, with clear accountability and visibility into when and where things go wrong.
Granted, too many systems and processes can stifle creativity, so challenge yourself to implement them wisely.
Similarly, outdated systems and processes can slow down your execution, to the point where people will actively work outside the system to get things done efficiently.
Basic action #8: Review the systems and processes your marketing organization is following and ask whether any need to be updated or any new ones added to aid execution.
Although this post is written primarily as a “stop and think” guide, we’d be remiss not to discuss ongoing monitoring of your marketing activities.
Analytics has become synonymous with web and social media traffic but should actually cover your entire marketing implementation.
While digital activities (both yours and those of your customers) are inherently easier to measure and track, it’s prudent to also measure analog activity whenever you can.
Building a complete picture can be complex and time-consuming, however.
We’ve seen marketing dashboards that cover half a dozen screens (or pages) with tables and charts.
Someone is probably interested in each of those measures, but it’s only helpful if the most important information is made available to those for whom it’s of value.
Critically, the value only emerges when actions are taken based on the data that’s being gathered, analyzed, and displayed.
If you’re measuring things that never contribute to action, ask yourself why they’re even being displayed. Many of them are vanity metrics—things like follower counts and website visitors—that matter a lot less than stats on engagement and conversion.
Basic action #9: Review what marketing metrics are being tracked and how they are being communicated to people who should care. Ask what actions are being taken based on those metrics. If no action is being propagated, question whether the metrics are relevant or if the problem lies with team members not paying attention to them.
As we head into the New Year, it’s worth taking a few minutes to take stock of our marketing efforts, focusing on the underlying basics.
If we get the basics right, the chances that we deliver a strong performance are greater than if we spend all our time on the headlines and flashy new tactics.
Here are the nine basic actions we’ve recommended:
Have a great end to the year and an even better start to 2025. Cheers!
Image credit: Adobe Stock
