Why B2B marketing is essential for business growth
Public relations (PR) and marketing are effective and essential tools to help grow and expand a business beyond its existing scope and position it for better future success. However, there comes a time when you’ll need to scale your efforts to continue succeeding, no matter how successful your business has become. Failing to do this means your business will risk hitting its ceiling and plateauing, or even losing opportunities.
A strong business pipeline is essential for business-to-business (B2B) companies that sell high-value, complex products and services, such as high-end professional services, enterprise software, and commercial financial services.
This is often achieved through word of mouth, at least in the first instance. Effective business networking by senior executives and client referrals can be an exceptionally powerful tool to help grow a customer base. However, as your business grows, your executives will no longer be able to engage directly with every potential customer. Continuing to rely on this approach will make it difficult to attract customers from further afield.
Instead, your business will need to invest in marketing and PR efforts to help reach more customers at once with the right messaging. For the best chance of success, you’ll need to develop a comprehensive B2B marketing and PR plan that ensures you reach the right people at the right time and in the right channel. Often, organisations will already have invested in the skills of a dedicated in-house marketing manager. However, as the business grows and increases its need for marketing services, this can create challenges and put undue pressure on an under-resourced marketing person.
While it’s important to provide the necessary support that your marketing function needs as you grow, increasing the size of your in-house marketing team to scale with your business may not always be the most cost-effective option. Working with a dedicated B2B marketing agency can help you bridge this gap in one of two key ways: augmenting the role of your in-house marketing manager; or outsourcing your marketing function.
But how do you know which approach will work for your business?
Option 1: Augment your in-house B2B marketing
To get the most cut through in the market and continue to build a business pipeline that matters, your growing business needs a systematic, repeatable approach to B2B marketing. This will ensure that you can generate leads around the clock and move through a qualification and nurture process at scale.
Should you buy or build this capability? That’s the question. Many businesses see inherent value in leveraging in-house marketing capabilities. This is because it makes sense, at least on the surface; it often seems more cost-effective and manageable than using an external agency and lets the business build greater corporate competency. However, the effectiveness of in-house marketing often depends largely on the marketer you end up with along with the support and resources they have access to.
For example, businesses often elect to engage the services of a junior marketer. On paper, this can make a lot of sense. They’re often inexpensive and are typically digital natives that are IT-literate and good at making modern marketing tools work. They’re also often eager to prove themselves and will drive activity day to day. However, they also tend to lack the necessary business, industry, and customer experience. This can create significant challenges and cost the business more in the long term than hiring a more senior, experienced B2B marketing professional.
Comparatively, engaging an experienced senior marketing resource will deliver great value to most organisations. They will come with the necessary experience for a B2B marketing strategy that aligns with business objectives. They’ll also have the requisite knowledge and capacity to work with complex buyer personas, develop messaging, specify marketing technologies, and collect customer insights.
In addition, they’ll be confident to work on customer experience, run website redevelopments, and manage other important projects. However, they may feel they’re too senior to produce the tactical work they did early in their careers and may be limited in their capacity without the support of dedicated designers, copywriters, and developers. As such, they will likely expect to work with additional support, either in the form of a team of internal specialists (in bigger firms) or an external integrated B2B marketing and PR agency.
How an integrated marketing agency can support your in-house marketing
In simple terms, augmenting your in-house marketing person with the support of a dedicated B2B marketing agency gives you access to a full team of marketing professionals, with demonstrated experience and expertise, at a fraction of the cost of increasing your own headcount.
Often, businesses may find the sweet spot for their business is to leverage an experienced senior marketing professional in-house that works with a dedicated, integrated marketing communications and PR agency that acts as an extension of the in-house marketing team. This lets the business provide the necessary management and guidance from an experienced internal marketing manager who understands both the business and how marketing works, with the support of a full-scale marketing team at a fraction of the cost. It ensures that the business can achieve the repeatable, systematic approach to B2B marketing it needs when it needs it.
Taking this approach lets you enhance your in-house marketing, without losing access to a valuable resource in a marketing manager that knows your business intimately. They can maintain complete visibility and control over your marketing budget and campaign strategy to ensure it aligns with business priorities. At the same time, they’ll be empowered to focus on other valuable, business-critical activities, while your agency maintains continuous focus on marketing activities without being disrupted by other business priorities.
Enhance your B2B marketing with an integrated marketing agency
Many businesses may look at outsourced marketing as the solution to their marketing needs, and choose to engage the services of an agency without investing in an in-house marketing manager, especially if budget is limited. As with augmenting the role of an in-house marketing manager, leveraging the services of a dedicated B2B marketing agency can deliver significant benefits to your business.
There are two primary benefits:
- Scalability: outsourced marketing lets you seamlessly scale your activity up and down as needed to align with your business plans, including product launches, cash flow, and other business needs. Using an outsourced marketing agency also means your marketing team will scale as needed to meet your business requirements and marketing activities without increasing your costs exponentially.
- Simplicity: managing an outsourced marketing team can be easier than managing internal support services. Using a paid supplier means you can expect proactive, structured communication coupled with expert counsel and a great customer experience.
Above all else, working with an external B2B marketing agency lets your business access business, industry, and customer experience at a fraction of the cost of hiring a full in-house team. Agency costs are often variable so you can scale up and down as needed, and flexible policies ensure you’re not locked into a contract. You will be able to engage a dedicated B2B marketing agency on a retainer or project basis, which helps you keep your costs low, and only pay for the services you engage. It also means you’ll have access to additional services as and when you need them, such as B2B lead generation, designers, copywriters, and developers.
Working with an outsourced marketing agency gives you the industry and market experience you need without engaging an entire internal marketing team. You’ll have a team of marketing specialists on hand that work day-to-day with other B2B organisations, which means they have deep, industry-specific knowledge of what makes a marketing campaign work in the current climate.
Your B2B marketing agency will also typically give you a single point of primary contact, usually in the form of an experienced senior marketer, with the support of a fully-fledged marketing team. This will make managing programs and communications more efficient while also helping you reduce the risks and costs associated with expanding your team unnecessarily.
Enhance your B2B marketing with an integrated marketing agency
Whether you have budget for an in-house marketing manager and want to augment their capabilities, or your budget is limited and you need to do marketing without the headcount, it’s important to understand that not every outsourced marketing agency will meet the needs of your business. A more generalist marketing agency can only do so much, and they may not have the experience or expertise you need to communicate complex B2B IT concepts to your potential customers.
Partnering with a specialist B2B marketing agency that understands the ins and outs of your business and the industry at large will ensure you get the best results for your business. Additionally, working with an agency that offers Marketing-as-a-Managed Service will give you even greater scalability to build and run campaigns that meet your business needs while ensuring you maintain complete visibility and control over your marketing spend.
How IT Marketing-as-a-Managed Service can benefit your business pipeline
Marketing-as-a-Managed Service, also known as MaaMS, can be a cost-effective solution for your B2B marketing needs. Like other managed service offerings, this means you have access to the marketing service when you need it, without needing to invest in the salary of a full-time team. This is ideal for businesses that want to capitalise on their growth potential and invest in marketing that can scale and flex to meet changing needs and business priorities.
Working with a dedicated, experienced agency that offers IT Marketing-as-a-Managed Service gives your business access to strategy and planning that makes sense in a B2B market. This is supported by a full-service team that considers all appropriate omnichannel marketing platforms and tactics for B2B marketing and business success. Plus, it lets you achieve a continuous focus on marketing without being disrupted by other business priorities that can cause marketing to be put on hold.
Outsource—part of The Recognition Group, Australia’s leading group of B2B marketing and PR specialists—has more than 35 years of experience helping B2B professional services, IT, and financial services companies across Australia and New Zealand reach new audiences. Outsource offers Marketing-as-a-Managed Service complemented by cross-industry experience, the latest knowledge on marketing tools, trends, and campaigns, and an expert team that will ensure marketing remains prioritised for your business and doesn’t get forgotten when you get busy.
