Part 3 of our three-part series, highlighting main themes of Forrester’s 2024 B2B Summit.
One thing we often hear when we begin conversations with clients around their marketing technology strategy is that they are unsure where to begin. This is common because as technology has progressed at such a rapid pace, it can be difficult to determine what to focus on and what to defer, or even ignore entirely. With so many digital channels (web, push, SMS, email, paid, social, etc.), more data than ever before is at your fingertips (read part I of this series for information on how to sort and utilize it effectively). Not to mention with the surge of AI (read part II to learn about available AI categories) it is easier than ever to become overwhelmed, or slow to a standstill as you try to absorb and research all that is out there.
What Forrester posited at their B2B Summit was an alternative course of action. Develop goals first, rather than sifting through the results of every marketing channel and tactic to draw conclusions. This is much easier said than done, as identifying marketing goals is not a one-time thing. There is no one-size-fits all target for companies, especially complex, nuanced B2B organizations.
The best way to craft marketing goals that drive value is to dovetail them with your overall business’s goals. A lot of teams assume this means tying campaigns to revenue generation, and effective revenue attribution is certainly a worthy goal. But to stop there is to fall short of harnessing the full value that marketing automation can provide.
As your marketing teams will probably attest, there are many more uses for campaigns than simply driving revenue. When crafted correctly and utilized with the full range of martech tools at your disposal, campaigns can be created to achieve supplemental goals. This includes things such as brand awareness, customer satisfaction and engagement, and product enablement, to name just a few.
The beauty of expanding your marketing goals beyond revenue drivers is that they allow other internal teams like sales, customer service, and product development to collaborate with marketing to achieve cohesive success in their areas. Breaking down these silos can do wonders for internal team satisfaction, as well as driving a singular purpose throughout your organization.
Once you have your marketing goals aligned to overall business goals, the campaign construction will naturally occur. It’s much easier to design behind-the-scenes automation or multi-channel customer communications when the purpose is already defined, rather than starting entirely from scratch. It may also bring to light potential gaps or areas of improvement that may be considered for future investment and development. If you take time to document these needs and the potential enablement they can drive, you’re creating a plan for your marketing calendar and identifying future value-driving milestones for your roadmap.
Finally, once your campaigns are constructed based on your marketing and business goals, you can determine the correct signals within the campaigns to measure their success. Since each individual campaign can potentially serve a different marketing or business goal, the signals will differ as well.
Forrester recommends focusing on the campaign audience and your underlying intention to define these signals. These signals can be varied depending on the goals the campaign serves, as well as cross-functional. Marketing signals could be based on personas and engagement. Sales signals may rely on lead scoring and deal phases. Customer Service signals can be focused on sentiment and ticketing status. If the signals are quantifiable and measurable or enable subsequent action from you or your customers, they are purposeful.
If you need assistance to hit the ground running, our strategists at Smith are here to help. We can conduct visioning sessions to carve a path forward for your marketing teams to transform your processes from ad-hoc goal creation to overall business alignment and success.