Auditing your B2B marketing strategy is a good idea to do every six months. Hopefully, you are already in the habit of checking on your marketing results every month to catch any obvious changes or fluctuations that may need attention. An audit, however, takes a bit more of a strategic look at the overall marketing strategy and metrics.
Below, we share 4 tips to audit your B2B marketing strategy, along with questions you should be asking. An audit can take anywhere from 2-3 hours to 8-12 hours, depending on the extent of your strategy.
Review 6 Months of Lead Generation & Lead Conversions
For many B2B marketers, the strategic goal is to fill the sales pipeline and drive revenue. As such, it’s crucial to take a look at what is generating leads and what is converting leads into new clients.
Questions to ask:
- What channels are driving leads?
- What is the lead quality like? (Quality over quantity is best for B2B.)
- Are certain campaigns driving more leads? Better quality leads?
- How long/many touches does it take for a lead to convert?
- How long does it take to sign a contract after the lead is generated?
- Are there any roadblocks to converting leads?
Read more: Creative tips to refresh a tired marketing strategy.
Estimate Your Brand Presence in the Market
A winning moment for any marketer is when the sales team tells them prospects “heard” about your company from a variety of different places. That’s a strong brand presence. As a B2B marketing agency, we recommend taking a high-level estimation of your brand’s visibility in the market. There are metrics you can determine, but for many companies, this will be more qualitative than quantitative.
Questions to ask:
- Are prospects familiar with our brand?
- What is the level of familiarity? (Sales often has good insight here, or you can listen to sales calls.)
- What increases brand awareness in our market?
- Is our brand present on all the necessary mediums? (Industry expos, social media, industry publications, etc.)
- If our brand is new or going through a rebrand, is branding consistent?
- Where can we actively expand our brand visibility?
Identify Opportunities
As you evaluate lead generation and brand awareness, you also need to think about opportunities. In some cases, opportunities are identified from failures. In other cases, opportunities are identified from small successes than can become big successes. Marketers need to take calculated risks. For example: Don’t allocate all your budget to an expensive video on a whim, but do set aside a small amount of budget to experiment with video marketing.
Questions to ask:
- Are there any gaps in our marketing strategy?
- Is there a campaign or channel we haven’t tried?
- What is working that we’d like to expand?
- What is failing that we’d like to rework or pivot away from?
- What do the metrics tell us?
- What do prospects and new clients tell sales or customer service?
- Is there a need in the market that our competitors aren’t addressing?
- Are our competitors excelling at something we haven’t even tried?
One approach that business leaders may take to evaluate opportunities in the market is by using the Ansoff Matrix. Essentially, it involves using a grid to visualize products/services, opportunities, and the associated risks. G2 has a helpful article that walks through using the Ansoff Matrix.
Read next: What to include in your content marketing strategy.
Identify New & Creative Ideas
It’s important to be consistent in executing your marketing strategy to get results and earn the trust of your target market. However, it’s also important to weave fresh, creative ideas into your strategy. During your audit, try to identify new and creative ideas to explore. This can vary widely, from identifying new blog topics your prospects love, to launching new campaigns that really strike a nerve with your target audience, to finding a new channel like email that decision-makers seem to prefer.
Questions to ask:
- What are the pain points of my target buyer?
- Has a new pain point/issue popped up recently?
- What do new clients absolutely love about our products/services?
- Did a particular blog or ebook perform well?
- The new salesperson is converting leads at a quick pace, what is her messaging?
- Are there new ways to share the benefits of our products or services?
Read next: How to create a human connection in digital marketing.
Although looking at the metrics for your B2B marketing campaigns is critical for evaluating the success of your strategy, avoid going down the analytics rabbit hole. A common issue with audits is marketers getting too far in the weeds and missing the bigger picture or the context.
