B2B Marketing Playbook – Introduction to marketing with a small team
Being a one-person (or very small staff) marketing shop in today’s marketing world is likely going to feel quite overwhelming. Just considering marketing technology choices alone, chiefmartec.com is now charting 7,040 different solutions available for you to evaluate (see Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic).
Even removing that daunting task, you, or your small team, are tasked with the responsibility of – take a deep breath – marketing strategy, market research, market segmentation, segment persona and pain point identification, value proposition identification, messaging conversation mapping, customer messaging, branding,
media research, media strategy and planning, media negotiation and purchasing, media execution and performance tracking, marketing automation, lead nurturing, marketing content creation, ad creative (graphics and content), demand (lead) generation planning, lead delivery, and overall marketing lead performance measurement to be accountable to sales and your business. Whew! – see, that’s all (well, may have missed a few things). And, you do all of that with what is likely not a huge budget to start with and limited support within the organization.
Did that stress you out? The good news is that the purpose of this series of articles is to offer specific lessons learned in my work assisting one-person or small staff marketing shops – and lower your stress and increase your value to your business!
The Truths you Face
With that said, unless you happen to be superhuman, you are dealing with these truths:
- Being a one-person department doesn’t allow you to short-change the full requirements of full-service marketing making major sacrifices in results (so you don’t want that!)
- Today’s B2B marketing execution environment requires a vast repertoire of knowledge and skills that span multiple marketing and marketing technology disciplines (and you likely can’t find time to learn them all!).
- You get bombarded with offers from agencies to do digital marketing, SEO optimization, paid search, lead generation, account-based marketing, marketing automation, creative, content creation, media buying, and so much more – and you are not sure how to even evaluate the service or the firm offering the service (i.e., what is the offering, who is good or bad, what will work best, where you should start given your budget).
- You only have so much money and you only have so much time you can invest (even with the commitment to work extra, you have to go home sometime!).
A Marketing Playbook for Success
This B2B Marketing Playbook (series of articles and then a real book) is designed specifically to cover the unique challenges that one marketer or small marketing staff face. The end goal is to accelerate the overall process enabling you to deliver all of the full-service marketing deliverables required to drive sales success for your business.
Here’s what I will be covering in the first few installments. I am honest enough to admit that I want to leave it a little open-ended in case I have a genius moment and remember something good I forgot to include. So, I’ll just say these are the chapters I have thought of so far!
- Taking inventory (inventory of knowledge, skills, expertise)
- Filling the gaps (e.g., knowledge, skills, time) to yield big results form a small staff (or just one of you)
- Defining what success will look like
- The non-negotiable stuff (that you cannot omit) – skip this stuff and it’s going to get harder!
- Starting with a small budget and then they offer you more because you show success
- Where does marketing, lead, sales technology really help you and hurt you?
Ready to Go!
The first chapter, Taking Inventory, is available for you now and you can watch for additional chapters posted here and on the GrowthPoint marketing blog.
Want to talk about how we can assist you in marketing, contact Growthpoint here.
About GrowthPoint Inc.
GrowthPoint is built on the promise that marketing is an investment that can be both measured and tied to business results. We offer services and tools that augment your existing capabilities and fill the gaps you need to deliver on your marketing mission. Whether it is marketing consulting, media planning, lead nurturing, marketing automation, or lead management, every service and/or tool we offer is purposefully focused accelerating success for you. We partner with you to deliver measurable results and provide transparency between marketing strategy/tactics and sales performance results. We partner with you to grow you, not us.
