With less than two months remaining in 2015, many marketers have already started planning their marketing efforts for 2016, and most others will begin their planning process over the next few weeks. To develop a successful marketing program for a B2B company, marketers must make several important decisions, and those decisions require answers to a number of questions. Some of the most critical questions are:
- What kinds of organizations will make our best prospects?
- How will our products or services create value for those prospects?
- What individuals in the prospect organizations will make or influence the decision to purchase our products or services?
- What “arguments” will we use to persuade potential buyers to purchase our products or services?
- How will we demonstrate the value (ROI) that our products or services will deliver to a prospective customer?
- What content formats and communication channels will we use to tell our story to potential buyers?
- What technological capabilities will we need to develop or acquire in order to effectively implement our marketing programs?
- What human skills and capabilities will we need in order to successfully develop and execute our marketing programs?
- How will we evaluate the effectiveness of our marketing efforts?
- What financial resources will we need in order to adequately fund our marketing efforts?
- The abundance of easily accessible information has shifted power to buyers and placed them firmly in control of the buying process.
- The abundance of information has also elevated buyer expectations and made buyers more demanding than ever before.
- The proliferation of content formats and communication channels enables buyers to obtain information in the ways they actually prefer, and this multiplies the volume and variety of marketing content resources that companies must develop and the number of channels they must use to effectively reach buyers.