Today, despite the prevalence of new-age managerial styles and marketing techniques, most businesses are unaware of how to frame marketing strategies ideal for their business and do not take account of psychology in business.
This lack of awareness and managerial fear of strategic failure prevents companies from taking the necessary steps to right their wrong strategies. Failure to take immediate action can result in loss of sales and goodwill. The impacts will be exaggerated in B2B companies, where long-term partnerships and trust-based transactions are the norms. It is the opposite of the P2P business marketplace where you usually offer your service for a short-term period of time.
To help managers recognize and work on their strategic failures, we’ve listed the top strategic mistakes that are most often committed in B2B companies and how to solve them.
Top 5 B2B failures and how to fix them
Not having a backup plan
A go-to marketing strategy is a must for every company, but it is even more essential for a B2B brand. Most B2B markets usually have slow (and sometimes seasonal) sales. Their sales cycle is longer and slower. It stands to reason that a single wrong decision can have long-term, devastating results.
Having a backup plan is a good way to protect yourself from failure. But, many companies fail to have a go-to strategy to fall back on.
How to fix it:
Create multiple plans in advance, each focused on specific markets, products and audiences. You can always borrow ideas from other plans, should your current strategy prove wrong.
Not aligning your strategy with your skills and capabilities
Say you’re a boiler manufacturer and you wish to forego traditional advertising and solely market your products on social media. But, to effectively promote your offers, you’ll need to hire people who have extensive experience marketing B2B products on social media.
If you don’t have the people or the technology to support your vision, it becomes a problem.
How to fix it:
Temporarily outsource new talent and technology. Have your permanent employees learn the skills of the trade from the contract employees and slowly set-up a new team for the new process.
Allowing the budget to override the marketing planning
It’s important to budget your marketing expenses to prevent overspending. But, it’s bad practice to limit your vision and your strategic implementation in fear of budget constraints.
Many firms start the marketing strategic process by deciding on a budget and then finding resources to fit that budget. This results in companies procuring low-quality talent and technology.
How to fix it:
Design a draft marketing plan and have a discussion with the finance department to estimate expenses before finalizing on the provisions. Use the inputs gained to understand where to get financers from and how the strategy can better fit the budget.
Not coordinating sales and marketing
One of the biggest mistakes B2B managers commit is not coordinating the sales strategy with the marketing strategy. Some managers fail to supplement their sales with promotion campaigns at the right time. It is only when there is synergy between the two that there will be comprehensive results.
How to fix it:
Brands should tie marketing and sales goals together and attempt to achieve both simultaneously. They can even partner with a marketing agency to chart focused marketing strategies.
Not understanding the target market
The worst mistake a company can commit is not understanding the characteristics of the target market. When marketers fail to analyze the demographic and psychographic characteristics of their target market, they waste precious time and money promoting their products to the wrong group of consumers.
How to fix it:
Create consumer profiles and identify the factors and the people influencing them. Today, there are marketing companies like Influenz, who specialize in influencer marketing and who help brands meet the people who influence their customers.
Wrapping it up
Identifying the problem is the first step to rectifying it. By recognizing the issues and actively working on correcting them, B2B firms will soon find themselves having a clean chit to their name.
Michael has been working in marketing for almost a decade and has worked with a huge range of clients, which has made him knowledgeable on many different subjects. He has recently rediscovered a passion for writing and hopes to make it a daily habit.