3 Key Inputs You Need For B2B Marketing Planning

B2B marketing professionals often lack critical input when they start annual planning. This prevents their plans from being as efficient as possible and usually means that marketing activities will not support business objectives.

Marketing Planning: The Business Strategy

Marketers creating a plan must understand the company’s strategy, its implications for what it wants to be, how it plans on getting there, and how it will reach customers. The process must align with the plan year. It also indicates what marketing actions are required in the current year.

Your C-suite often has this information. It should be part of a well-constructed strategy, which coordinates vision, growth, and routes to market. This information is often not shared with the rest of the executive team. It is also aspirational and can span multiple years. This information may not be useful for planning.

Marketing leaders must translate this strategy information into brand, audience and value terms. Marketing executives need to understand how it will impact marketing priorities, team alignment and marketing goals for the following year.

Target Audiences and The Offering Portfolio are Inputs to Marketing Planning

Marketing plans must reflect a company’s target audience and how they will change over time. Marketing must be prepared for new product launches or competition.

Working with your product managers, marketing teams, and business unit leaders can help you find information about your audience and offer input. It is vital to establish a timeframe for product introductions and buyer personas. Also, it is essential to understand the buyer’s journey. Marketing can sometimes find it challenging to access this information. However, it can clearly communicate how it will impact near-term and intermediate-term marketing efforts.

A Business Revenue Plan Is A Input into Marketing Planning

Marketers are blind if they don’t understand the revenue plan. It is crucial to know the revenue coming from prospects and customers. This includes retention, upsell and cross-sell. It is essential to understand how revenue will be distributed by geography and route so that marketing programs that result from the marketing plan can be directed at the right areas, sales teams, partners, and marketplaces.

It is also essential to set expectations for the executive leadership regarding what marketing will accomplish to support the revenue plan. Forrester encourages clients to consider measuring marketing engagement to drive desired revenue outcomes. However, many companies still focus on revenue sourced from marketing. It isn’t easy to commit to certain contribution levels if you don’t clearly understand the overall revenue plan.

Next, you need to decide what to do with this information. It is used to align objectives, establish a general approach to interfacing with various audiences, establish priorities and quantifiable goals, determine action plans, and identify risks.

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Samatha Vale
Samatha a senior writer for HC's entertainment team. She is an entreprenuer, mother and an excellent writer. She's also an avid reader, music enthusiast and all around inquisitive person - which is just a nice way of saying she's nosy.

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