B2B Marketing Tools
Embedding B2B Marketing Tools And Skills To Retain And Win Business.
A global materials business had invested for a number of years in interactive training programmes run by Market Focus to ensure that all of its externally and internally recruited marketing and customer facing managers were skilled in the application of leading B2B marketing concepts and tools in order for the business to keep winning in key market segments. Customer needs and expectations change over time and winning requires the continuous articulation of outstanding value propositions. They also wanted to ensure that R&D spend on new products and services would be spent wisely and efficiently.
With the pandemic preventing these managers from attending training programmes face-to-face around the globe the company asked Market Focus to adjust the programme delivery concept and run the training online. They did not want important cohorts in the company to miss out on the opportunity to learn and develop these key skills.
Market Focus re-designed the programme so that it could be delivered online. There was a mix of online plenary sessions, team assignments on B2B case studies and both live and written feedback on assignment submissions. One of the benefits of remote sessions was that participants could join from Europe and Asia at the same time. Participants were very positive about the learning and skills developed. They said they would have preferred a classroom experience but under the circumstances it was better to do the training online than not at all.
Applying B2B Marketing Tools To Win In A Key Market Segment
A specialty chemicals business realised it needed to enhance its B2B marketing capabilities. The company’s current value propositions were at the market segment rather than the customer segment level. This meant that the sales force had to tailor each offer to each individual customer. This was inefficient and ineffective. It is hard to win against the competition when a product and service offer broadly addresses the needs of an overall market segment but not sufficiently enough to make an impact for different groups of customers with different needs in that market segment. The current approach often led to price dominated conversations with customers to secure the business. New product developments in the pipeline were also targeted at the market segment level which would lead to similar problems for the future.
A member of the leadership team had experienced the benefits of applying B2B marketing concepts and skills to key market segments in his previous roles and companies. Rather than providing marketing training for their managers he believed that they would learn faster and more effectively from engaging a professional B2B marketing coach to provide bespoke training and coaching for the leaders of each key market segment.
Due to the pandemic, all of the managers and their teams were working remotely. Market Focus designed an online coaching programme for the market segment leaders who were based across Europe and in the US. The leaders came together remotely for five sessions to learn key B2B marketing tools. They then applied the tools to their own market segments. This included linking up remotely with their function colleagues to build information, carry out analysis and make decisions. Before each session Market Focus provided a one-to-one coaching session with each leader to ensure understanding of how to apply the tools and to challenge their conclusions.
The result was insightful customer needs based segmentation, choices about which customer groups to prioritise and clearly constructed and articulated winning value propositions at the customer segment level to keep competitors out and achieve value based margins.
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