It’s 2023, but I’m starting the year the same way as 2022.
And I’m not referring to the personal and professional goal setting that I’ll stick to for a few months until the excuses take over… 
(This is obviously George here writing this – Kevin is unrelatable-y consistent when it comes to goal setting)
… I’m talking about an exercise I do at the start of every year to make my life easier as a B2B marketer. One that answers questions like:
– where should I spend my marketing efforts?
– where should I spend our marketing $$$?
– who should we be collaborating with?
I share this in tip 3 of our 3 B2B Strategy tips below (so scroll down to check it out)
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3 B2B Strategy Tips
1) Stop saying ‘let’s test it’:Â When I worked at an agency, my response to anything I didn’t know the answer to was: “hmm, let’s test it!”. Sounds smart, right? With enough tests and iterations based on data, we’ll hit the hammer on the head eventually. And look – it kinda works in a world where you have a huge potential customer base and massive $$$ to spend.
But unfortunately, this response is now widely adopted by many marketers as a substitute to deep customer research. Even worse – it’s adopted by B2B marketers who don’t have big budgets or a huge customer pool to burn through. The fastest, cheapest, and easiest way to create something that resonates with your Dream Customers is to interview them and ask them. Want to know what topics they care about? Ask them. Want to know when the right time is to introduce them to sales? Ask them. Want to know what channels and groups they hang out in? Ask them.
Check out our episode on How To Conduct Customer Research Interviews Like A Pro on The B2B Playbook podcast.
2) Motivate your subject matter experts to help you make content:Â The best content comes from experts. And Marketers – unless you’re working in a martech business, that’s probably not you. It’s probably other people in your company. But getting them to help you make content is notoriously hard… because after all – “that’s marketing’s job!”.
But you can get them to do it, you just need to know how to get their buy in. We give you 7 Practical Tips on Getting Experts To Help You Make Content here on episode 29.
3) How marketers should start every year: Every B2B marketer should start by identifying who their best customers are, and updating their positioning and messaging accordingly. I do this in 3 steps:
(a) I pull a list of customers in the last year and run 80/20 analysis to see which fit us best
(b) I look for attributes to see what makes them such great customers. For example: company size, industry, location, tech stack, stage of growth, organisational structure etc.
(c) When I find customers with a bunch of overlapping attributes, I then define that as a ‘segment’. This then becomes my ideal customer profile, and a guide of where to spend all of my resources.
We show you how to Segment Your Market for Maximum Impact here.
 Doodle of the Week
You don’t need more leads. You need more opportunities.
3 Articles and Resources
1) Why your Google Ads isn’t scaling profitably: Google Ads can be tough to scale profitably. This is why (and how you can fix it).
2) Level up your content & creative with CRO & A/B testing: Is it worth your time to do CRO and A/B testing? If it is, how can you do it and where should you start? Kevin and I answer these questions in Episode 68.
3)Â Get better at storytelling:Â I just finished this book on storytelling, and absolutely loved it. If you want to get better at telling stories at the dinner table, bar, or in your marketing – give ‘Storyworthy’ by Matthew Dicks a read.
Thanks for reading!
P.S. Don’t forget to subscribe to The B2B Playbook podcast.Â
Strategy, Templates & Tools To Drive More Revenue With Marketing
Our 5 BEs Framework teaches b2b marketers exactly how to drive more revenue with your marketing.
We share our Framework step-by-step every week on The B2B Playbook.
There’s 3 ways you can learn and implement it in your own business:
- Listen to The B2B Playbook Podcast
- Subscribe to our Newsletter
- Apply for The B2B Incubator
(P.S. The B2B Incubator gives you strategy, templates and tools you need to implement this in your business over 12 weeks. Click here to find out more or apply now).
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