Marketing Planning for 2016 - How to Get Started

In my last post, I made the point that marketing planning for a B2B company has become a complex undertaking. I also argued that, while it's impossible to eliminate the complexity associated with marketing planning, you can make the job more manageable - and the outcome more successful - by using a sound planning process and framework. The diagram below presents a high-level, simplified view of the planning process and framework that I use when working with a B2B company on a marketing planning project.

The first step in your planning process for 2016 should be to review your company's overall business strategy for next year and identify the strategic business objectives that marketing will be expected to influence. For example, your company's business strategy will almost certainly include an overall revenue growth objective, but it may also include distinct revenue objectives for specific products or product line, geographic markets, or customer segments. Having a clear understanding of these strategic business objectives will enable you to align your marketing efforts with those objectives.

The next step in the planning process is to focus on three core components of any sound marketing strategy - the definition of the target market, the value propositions that you will communicate to organizations in your target market, and the buying group, the individuals within prospect organizations who will make or influence the decision to purchase your products or services.

Defining your target market, developing compelling value propositions, and identifying the buying group are critical for effective planning because these factors largely dictate the content of your marketing communications plan.

Think of it this way. If you've ever watched someone install a tile or hardwood floor on a home improvement TV show, you may remember that the installer spends a great deal of time making sure that the first row of tiles or boards is straight and square with the walls of the room. After the first row is in place, the rest of the installation usually goes fairly quickly. That's because as long as the rest of the tiles or boards "fit" with the first row, the whole floor is almost guaranteed to turn out right.

The definition of your target market, your value propositions, and your buying group are like that first row of floor tiles or boards. They provide the "landmarks" and reference points for the development of your marketing communications plan.

Target Market and Value Propositions

Defining your target market and developing value propositions is almost always a "back and forth" process. That's because it's likely that your products or services can create value for users in several ways, but it's also likely that they will create more value for certain kinds of companies. Therefore, the most effective way to deal with these two factors is to start by understanding and describing how your products or services will create value for users. From my experience, the best way to capture this insight is to answer a series of questions and record your answers in what I call a customer value map. Here are the questions:

1. What are all of the significant reasons that companies have for purchasing a product or services like ours? What problems or needs motivate the buying decision?
2. What kinds of organizations are likely to have the problems or needs that underlie these reasons to buy?
3. What specific outcomes are organizations seeking when they decide to buy a product or service like ours?
4. What specific features and capabilities of our solution will produce these desired outcomes?
5. What will the economic benefits be if these desired outcomes are achieved?

The Buying Group

Once you have defined the target market and identified how your products or services will create value for companies in your target market, it becomes somewhat easier to identify the buying group. When you develop your customer value map, you will identify the problems or needs that motivate organizations to purchase products or services like yours. A good way to identify the buying group is to add a question to your customer value map (after question 2 in the above list):  "Who within these organizations is most affected by each problem or need (who has the most to gain if the problem is solved and the most to lose if it isn't)?"

For most marketers, the primary output of the annual planning process should be a marketing communications plan that describes how you will tell your story to potential buyers. In a future post, I'll explain how to build and effective marketing communications plan.

Note:  If you'd like to learn more about developing value propositions and see an example of a customer value map, take a look at my white paper titled,"How to Create Irresistible Value Propositions."

How to Make Difficult Marketing Questions Easier to Answer

To develop a successful marketing program for your business, you must make some critical decisions, and those decisions require you to answer several difficult questions.

• What kinds of organizations will make your best prospects?
• What individuals in those prospect organizations will be the target audience for your marketing programs?
• What "arguments" will you use in your marketing messages and materials to persuade potential buyers to purchase your products or services?
• How will you demonstrate the return on investment that your products or services will deliver to a prospective customer?
• What marketing channels will you use to communicate with your target audience?

How you answer these questions will define the shape of your marketing program and largely determine how successful your marketing efforts will be.  These questions are never easy to answer, but you can make the job a lot easier if you will first take the time to thoroughly understand and describe how your products or services create value for customers.

If you've ever watched someone install a tile or hardwood floor on a home improvement TV show, you may remember that the installer spends a great deal of time making sure that the first row of tiles or boards is straight and square with the walls of the room.  After the first row is in place, the rest of the installation goes fairly quickly.  That's because as long as the rest of the tiles or boards "fit" with the first row, the whole floor is almost guaranteed to turn out right.

A clear picture of how your products or services create value for buyers is like that first row of floor tiles or boards.  It provides the reference point for the decisions you will make when designing your marketing program.  Understanding how you create value will make it easier to determine who your best prospects are, to identify the individuals you need to market to, and to craft your marketing messages.

To understand and describe all of the significant ways your products or services can create value, you'll need to answer another set of questions.

• What are all of the significant reasons that people have for purchasing a product or service like yours? What problems or needs motivate the buying decision?
• What kinds of organizations are likely to have the problems or needs that underlie these reasons to buy?
• Who within the prospect organization is affected by each problem or need?  Who has the most to gain if the problem is solved and the most to lose if it isn't?
• What specific outcomes are these people seeking?
• What features of your solution will produce these desired outcomes?
• What will the economic benefits be if these desired outcomes are achieved (lower costs, increased revenues, etc.)?

The best tool for collecting and organizing this value information is called a customer value map or a customer value matrix.  We have a customer value matrix template that we use when working with clients on new marketing projects.  If you'd like a copy of this template, send me an e-mail at ddodd(at)pointbalance(dot)com.

Getting Specific About Value

We now know that providing relevant content to potential buyers is essential for effective B2B marketing.  One key to increasing the relevancy of marketing content is to make it more specific.  Consider the following two statements:

• "Our new ProWidget can enable you to reduce equipment downtime and improve manufacturing efficiency."
• "Customers using our new ProWidget have reduced the cost of equipment downtime by an average of $100,000 per year."

Which of these statements is more compelling?  I think it's clear that the second statement is more powerful because it's more specific.

To make marketing content more specific, you need to have a thorough understanding of how your products and services produce value for customers.  In an earlier post, I explained how to build a customer value matrix that will provide detailed insights about this critical issue.

Now for a confession.  You may need more than one customer value matrix to get a complete picture of how your products and services produce value for customers.  This is likely to be true if you sell to more than one industry or type of business.

To understand why, we need to review a few principles about value.  All products and services have features and attributes that enable certain jobs to get done.  By providing ways to get things done, features and attributes produce benefits for the people and companies that use the product or service.  The value of any product or service depends on the value of the benefits the product or service produces.

The catch is that the value of any particular benefit can vary significantly from customer to customer depending on the nature of each customer's business. 

To capture these differences, you need to create a separate customer value matrix for each industry or major type of business you serve.  After you've created your initial "catch-all" matrix, think about one of the industries of major types of business your serve.  Go back through your catch-all matrix and create a separate version that is targeted to that industry or type of business.  What you are likely to find is that some benefits or sources of value become much more important when you're focused on one particular type of business.  This insight will enable you to develop content that is more specific, and therefore more relevant, to that industry.

Content Marketing Basics: First Understand How You Create Value

The first step in creating an effective content marketing program is to identify and describe all of the significant ways that your products or services create value for customers.  Creating buyer personas, describing the stages of your customers' buying process, and developing content for each buyer persona and for all stages of the buying cycle are all essential steps in building an effective content marketing program.  But I contend that it's critical to start with a thorough understanding of how your products or services create value for customers.

Knowing how your products or services create value tells you what issues and problems you can help customers solve and what benefits customers can gain by using your products or services.  When you combine this knowledge with good buyer personas and then apply good content marketing principles, you can create exceptional marketing content.

To develop a complete picture of how your products or services create value, you should assemble a cross-functional team and construct a customer value matrix for each of your product or service offerings.  The team should include both marketing and sales personnel and could also include customer service and other support personnel.

The first step in building a customer value matrix is to identify all of the reasons that people might have for purchasing a product or service like yours.  These reason-to-buy statements should describe a basic need, issue, or pain point and the logical explanation for the need, issue, or pain.  The best format for reason-to-buy statements is I or We want or need to do something because of some reason.  Be sure to include reason-to-buy statements for all of the people (or groups of people) in the customer organization who would be significantly affected by your product or service.  This broad-brush approach will help you identify the people who will make or influence the decision to purchase your product or service and the buyer personas you will need to create.

Once you have listed all the reasons to buy, add the following information for each reason.

Affected Parties - Who is affected by the need, issue or problem described in the reason to buy?  Who has the most to gain if the need, issue or problem is resolved, and who has the most to lose if it isn't?  Use job titles or job functions to describe the affected parties.

Desired Outcome - The specific results that the affected parties want to achieve with respect to the reason to buy.  The desired outcome will resolve the need, issue, or problem described in the reason to buy.

Solution Component - The specific features or functions of your solution that will resolve the issue described in the reason to buy and enable the desired outcome.  This can be an attribute or feature of the product or service, a characteristic of how you produce or deliver the product or service, or a particular capability that your company possesses.

Value Measure - The specific way that your product or service creates value with respect to the reason to buy.  Your solution can create measurable value by enabling the customer to reduce existing costs, avoid future costs, or increase revenues.  Your task here is to identify the specific kinds of costs that will be reduced or avoided or the kinds of revenues that will be increased.

Building a complete customer value matrix takes time and effort, but when it's done right, the matrix will provide a comprehensive picture of how a product or service creates value.  And understanding how a product or service creates value provides the foundation for an effective content marketing effort.