b2b business plan pdf

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B2B Business Plan Template

MAR.22, 2014

B2B Business plan for starting your own business

Dealing directly with customers is a hassle, right? Well, due to the integration of monetary chains and dependence of businesses on one another for manufacturing as well as services, the B2B businesses are getting high in demand.

If you also want to start a B2B business, you should do a little research, choose the areas in which you want to serve, make a business plan, and launch your startup. For you to understand how to make an accurate business plan, we are providing a B2B e-commerce business plan of a startup namely Networks.

While the business plan for investors developed for Networks can give you a detailed insight into B2B business, you should still consider hiring a professional for the purpose. It is because dealing with businesses involves complexities and strict adherence to principles with the agreements and contracts. A professional can take care of even the smallest details while making business plan B2B correctly.

Executive Summary

2.1 the business.

Networks will be owned by Max Clint. The business will be based in New York City which is considered the hub of businesses. The businesses will provide various services in the B2B niche including outsourcing, HR services, software services, and more. The business activities are expected to go beyond NYC because Clint aims at providing freelance services as well.

2.2 Management of B2B business

B2B business requires adherence to extremely strict standards and therefore, the management of B2B business can be a headache if you don’t follow a proper plan. Before entering the enterprise, you must make a proper B2B SaaS business plan that covers all the management aspects.

To help you, we will document the personnel plan and operational B2B business plan made for Networks. If you are getting a franchise you won’t be the all-in-all decision-making authority, and in that case, you will have to consult business plan for a franchise for an effective management plan.

2.3 Customers of B2B business

The customers as indicated in B2B e-commerce business plan of Networks are as follows:

• Small Businesses
• Established Enterprises
• Business Franchises

2.4 Business Target

The business targets of the Networks are given as follows in this B2B business plan sample:

• Increase the cost of our services by 3% after 3 years of the launch while retaining the customer base
• Earning a profit margin of more than $50k per month by the end of the first 6 years

Company Summary

3.1 company owner.

Max Clint, the owner of Networks, has worked as a business consultant for more than 5 years. He is known to be an expert in legal business matters and management.

3.2 Why the B2B business is being started

The B2B is started because of Clint’s experience and interest in the field. His qualification, co-curricular activities, and desire for excellence have driven him to start this business. 

3.3 How the B2B business will be started

Step1: Develop Business Plan for B2B sales

The first step to step into this business is to create a B2B business plan template. For that you should explore what is B2B startup and read some B2B business plan examples. In a B2B startup business plan you should include your strategic plan, financial plan, customer segments, and marketing analysis.

Step2: Create the Brand

Since many B2B businesses are already running in the United States. You have to come up with exclusive ideas and expertise to become renowned in the market. To create a brand image, you should have highly specialized employees and success stories.

Step3: Establish Web Presence

In the information age, services are searched for on the web rather than on paper. Therefore, you must ensure that your business comes in the top lists of searches. For that, you would need to hire SEO experts, a graphic designer, and a web developer.

Step4: Develop & Market

The last step is to establish your company’s physical presence and market your venture to reach a maximum number of customers.

Services of B2B business

The service sector of B2B businesses is multi-faceted. Therefore, while developing your B2B SaaS business plan template you should specify which services you plan to provide. You can study many B2B business plan examples for the purpose and explore their B2B marketing strategies examples for each service they provide.

You can also see the services given in this B2B business plan sample. This B2B business plan was created for Networks by professional business plan writers after probing several B2B business plan templates.

• Doing Outsourced Tasks

Our major service will be doing outsourced tasks such as hiring and training the workforce, maintaining the equipment, and completing some parts of a larger project.

• Business Consultancy

We will provide legal advice and consultation to businesses that come to deal with other businesses. We will also help writing business plan documents and making due diligence template . Moreover, our consultation will also be educational as we plan to acquaint our partners with the latest trends such as type of due diligence in use.

• Software Services

We will also provide software services but only in the domain in which multiple businesses are connected via shared database and management software.

• Freelance Services

We will serve as the middle ground between clients and customers to provide B2B freelance services.

Marketing Analysis of B2B business

Excellent work.

excellent work, competent advice. Alex is very friendly, great communication. 100% I recommend CGS capital. Thank you so much for your hard work!

Your B2B business can end in loss if you fail to attract the community that was supposed to buy from you. To succeed in the purpose, you have to explore the market for which you are making B2B sales business plan. you have to see which services are in demand and how much competition exists for which service. All these details must be included in your marketing plan for B2B business. 

Today, carrying out a market analysis is easier due to the online presence of B2B businesses. You will have to maintain a web presence and thus your marketing plan for B2B business should be devised accordingly.

To gain an insight into marketing plan template B2B, you should visit B2B marketing portals. Some sites even offer free B2B website in usa. Moreover, you can also find free guidance on B2B marketing planning from blogs like this on marketing plan B2B example. 

5.1 Market Trends

The trends for B2B businesses are going great. It is reported that more than 50% of B2B buyers are millennials. The industry is currently estimated at 6.7 trillion dollars. Moreover, 35% of the already-established B2B businesses are expecting a significant rise in online sales in the next years.

The trends provided in this sample B2B marketing plan are general. And while developing your B2B marketing business plan you should study the trends specific to your area.

5.2 Marketing Segmentation

Identifying the groups of target customers help you determine a focused strategy in B2B marketing project to target them. For a B2B company, customers can belong to various niches therefore it will be good to also explore some more business plans such as mobile notary business plan pdf .

In this example B2B marketing plan, the customer segments identified by Networks are given as follows:

5.2.1 Small Businesses & Startups

Our biggest customers will be the small businesses that are especially newly established. New startups find it difficult to undertake all the tasks and recruit a huge workforce. Therefore, they rely on other businesses. In addition, due to a lack of trust in financial stability, they find it difficult to enter into long-term contracts with large enterprises. With our B2B services, they will be able to develop their businesses.

5.2.2 Established Enterprises

The second biggest category of our target customers includes established enterprises. They would require our services to deal with their business partners. Moreover, they will also seek our services to maintain a skilled workforce at all times.

5.2.3 Business Franchises

Business franchises would also need our services to get business plans and to do successful contracts.

5.2.4 Industries

Industries whose inputs and outputs are procured and transferred to enterprises will also need our B2B services to conduct their business affairs.

5.3 Business Target

• Increase our prices by 3% by the end of the first 6 years
• Maintain a CSAT score of 95+ from the very first month of our launch
• Maintain a Customer Retention Rate of more than 80% from the very first year of our launch

5.4 Product Pricing

The rates for our services are a little bit higher than our competitors. However, due to our competitive advantages, we still expect to get more customers than them.

Marketing Strategy of B2B business

While developing marketing strategy in B2B, you must keep in mind that this time you are not dealing with a man in the street, rather you will be dealing with experienced professionals. Therefore, your sales strategy and advertisement techniques should be devised accordingly. In this B2B marketing strategy example, we are providing the sales strategy of the Networks.

Clint spent a whole 3 months devising his strategy in his B2B marketing template. Some parts of his plan are mentioned here in this B2B marketing strategy template.

6.1 Competitive Analysis

• We are using the latest tech for all our tasks. For instance, we present digital cards to our business partners to leave the impression that at Networks, we are acquainted with all the latest products and trends.
• We have hired the most competent and talented business experts in the town.
• We have pursued regular training programs to keep our employees up to date.

6.2 Sales Strategy

For advertisement, the Networks will do the following:

• Advertising the business on social media and through newspapers and magazines
• Arranging meetups among the business CEOs and our sales executives to let our competitive aspects known
• Providing a 40% discount on all our services for the first month of the launch

For more ideas, you can see law firm business plan and judgement recovery business plan.

6.3 Sales Monthly

6.4 Sales Yearly

6.5 Sales Forecast

Personnel plan of B2B business

The success of a B2B business depends on the ability of its employees to conduct affairs. To ensure you hire the right people, you should devise a measurable criterion in your business plan for B2B. In your business plan B2B you can assign measurable values to experience, interpersonal skills, and qualifications to make sure the recruitment remains impartial 

In this B2B business plan template the list of staff of Networks along with their salaries is listed below: 

7.1 Company Staff

• 1 Co-Manager
• 1 Web Manager
• 1 Sales Executive
• 1 Software Manager
• 3 Business Consultants
• 1 Legal Advisor
• 2 Project Managers

7.2 Average Salary of Employees

Financial plan of b2b business.

The B2B business has great prospects in the earning domain. The business pays a lot due to immense opportunities arising out of increased dependency on other businesses for completing a task. The modern world works on the principles of efficiency and for greater efficiency outsourcing a part of one’s business is becoming a must.

Therefore, the business is sustainable as far as finances are concerned. However, to ensure long-term smooth monetary flows, you need a business plan for B2B sales. Since you will be spending a hefty amount on salaries and maintaining a skilled workforce at all times, you need to be careful about the b to b sales strategies. 

In this B2B sales plan template, we are providing the financial plan of Networks. In addition to the profit profile, if you also want to know what is B2B marketing and sales, you can refer to the sections written above.

8.1 Important Assumptions

8.2 break-even analysis.

8.3 Projected Profit and Loss

8.3.1 profit monthly.

8.3.2 Profit Yearly

8.3.3 Gross Margin Monthly

8.3.4 Gross Margin Yearly

8.4 Projected Cash Flow

8.5 Projected Balance Sheet

8.6 business ratios.

• What is the B2B business plan?

A B2B business plan is a detailed document that explains the major aspects of your business, how you plan to start and run it, and where and how much you intend to spend to ensure long-term sustainability.

To get a better idea of what a B2B business plan template is, you should study some B2B business plan examples. For a generic idea, this B2B business plan sample is also good to go.

• What are the 4 types of B2B?

The 4 types of B2B markets are: 

• Institutions 

Download B2B Business Plan Template From Here

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Free B2B marketing plan template (+ tips and best practices)

Before we get started, here is the free B2B marketing plan template you're looking for, which you do not need to fill out a form to get. Really, it's yours:

You need to make a copy of the document to use it .

Now, let's dig into a few details you need to know before you get started building out your rockstar marketing plan for your B2B company.

A marketing plan is more than content

I think when people get started with content marketing , they think their content strategy is the entirety of their strategy. While a content strategy is, indeed, a large piece of the proverbial marketing pie, it is not actually the entire pie.

Mmm, pie. Now I'm hungry. Is it Thanksgiving, yet?  🦃

Your company's marketing plan should encompass so much more beyond your content — although your content is very important:

• Email marketing campaigns and newsletters
• Social media marketing
• Paid media and social advertising
• Events (virtual and in-person)

That's why you need to have a marketing plan, scoped out on an annual basis, with regular updates (as necessary). But your marketing plan isn't just a means to delineate what your campaigns are. It's so much more than that.

What is the purpose of a marketing plan?

The best marketing plans, no matter what industry you're in, all accomplish the same three things (based on a defined period of time):

• They provide a clear overview of what goals your marketing efforts will achieve over a specific period of time, across the entire company.
• Each objective has measurable, specific goals that correspond to your company's overall mission and purpose, with defined milestone points at each stage (activation, acquisition, and expansion).
• For every objective, at every stage, you see how each element of your marketing (social, content, email, etc.) all come together holistically to help you achieve your goals. 

Why is this B2B marketing plan template based on account-based marketing?

The free B2B marketing plan template above is based on the principles of account-based marketing . Account-based marketing takes the traditional B2B sales and marketing funnel and turns it on its head by going after “qualified” leads rather than letting them filter themselves. 

Whereas inbound marketing starts with organic lead generation, account-based marketing starts by identifying and targeting key decision-makers within accounts which have the potential to bring the biggest revenue to your business. 

That being said, we do not view the principles of ABM and inbound or content marketing to be mutually exclusive. In fact, create content that answers the most pressing questions of your ideal buyers (as you would in a content marketing strategy), is still critical to the success of your B2B marketing plan.

With an ABM approach, however, your content will simply be more targeted to what is called your ideal buyer profile . As a note, you need to create your ideal buyer profile first before you get started. And no, it is not the same as a buyer persona.

(It's an efficient exercise though, so don't panic.)

How do you create a B2B marketing plan with an ABM approach?

The best ABM-based B2B marketing plans have their efforts broken out into three specific stages :

• Acquisition This stage is for bringing net-new accounts into your pipeline. Most companies focus a lot of their efforts in this stage.
• Acceleration Once you have engaged accounts in your pipeline. You are either keeping them engaged or potentially reviving what was previously a dead deal. Techniques, such as personalization, is really helpful here. 
• Expansion Expansion is all about retaining, upselling, and expanding relationships and service agreements with your existing customer base. Like the old saying goes, it's easier to win business from existing clients than to attract new ones.

That's why each section of the B2B marketing plan template is broken out into those three phases, based on the specific service/product objectives you outline in the beginning of your plan. That way you see how, at each interaction phase, you are targeting your marketing efforts to meet your goals. 

What are the benefits of an ABM approach to B2B marketing?

In addition to going after qualified leads right at the start, instead of having them self-select and identify their fit for your products and services, there are four key benefits to an ABM approach to B2B marketing:

• It personalizes the experience for your buyers , because your marketing campaigns are less broad. Instead, they're more targeted and focused on the specific needs and pain points of your ideal buyers.
• You build trust and long-term relationships by networking with people within accounts and transforming them into advocates — a big deal since a 5% increase can lead to an increase in profits of up to 95% .
• It shortens and streamlines the sales process because you're already dealing with more qualified leads that require less nurturing. Your sales team will also waste less time with bad-fit prospects, because they won't be targeted in the first place.
• You'll align your sales and marketing teams because ABM is, simply put, a business growth strategy that holistically aligns your sales and marketing teams around the same goals and objectives. 

How to make your B2B marketing plan a winner

As the marketing leader at your company, creating a winning marketing plan is a unique challenge. When done right, your people will love you for helping to grow the business with a clear strategy.

When done incorrectly, however, you can find yourself in a very lonely place, with a big document and nothing much else to show for it.

So, how do you avoid the latter? 

• Do not write your marketing plan on your own. Talk to leadership, sales, and different segments of your business. Leadership will help you align on what your goals and objectives should be. Sales will help you with the finer details of your plan — realistic goal-setting, ideal buyer profiles, etc. Anyone you list as a stakeholder should be someone who gives feedback.
• Take your time to create your marketing plan. A great marketing plan isn't written overnight by candlelight. It takes time, requires lots of collaboration, and is too important to be rushed. Instead, make it a four- to six-week initiative, with a clear delivery date. Then, have specific milestones, such as a first draft for leadership review, a draft for cross-department collaboration, and so on.
• Be as thorough as possible the first time you write it. From experience, I know how writing massive, 20+ page documents can feel tedious and draining — even if you're totally bought in on the outcome. Don't cut corners. For example, you may be tempted to say, "Oh, I'll note exactly what happens in this nurturing sequence when it comes time to do it." Don't do that. Do it now.

Again, yes, it is a ton of work. But trust me when I say you'll thank yourself for all of the effort you put into it. Instead of scrambling at each stage — "What should this workflow include? What social media campaigns do we need to run? Crap, did we even think about paid media?" — you'll simply be ready to execute

On top of that, you'll know already that your logic is sound and vetted by other teams, including your leadership. Which means, more buy-in for the work you're doing.

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Highly Effective Business Plan Template For B2B Startups

Julie Williams

• September 14, 2022

Why Should You Download This Template?

• You can think about every single step of your business.
• Identify the right opportunities and deal with challenges.
• Get an overview of your business and understand your target market
• Plan your startup's future and make a roadmap for its success.
• Get a structured way to organize your business ideas and goals.
• Help entrepreneurs find weaknesses in their upcoming product or service ideas.

What is a Business Plan Template? 

A business plan template is the secret behind starting a successful B2B company. It serves several purposes if you plan to create a startup. A well-planned business plan will help you convince investors or lenders to finance your business. Startup business plan templates act as a step-by-step guide to building your startup and get concrete examples when approaching something for the first time.

It is a customized document that outlines how a company can achieve its objectives, such as gaining funding, obtaining a particular market share, or growing revenue. This template includes crucial elements that allow the startup founders to start with a solid foundation rather than from scratch. 

Take a Sneak Peek

What our Business Plan Template Includes

Business Leaders

Here, we will discuss the startup’s essential or primary decision-makers or business owners such as the CEO, COO, Vice President, President, and Managers.

Executive Summary

 This will include information on the company, its products or services, mission statement and pricing details. You also have an option to add your management team’s roles and responsibilities, a business strategy and objectives.

Market Analysis

It will help you analyze the target section of your target market, help you research the estimated market size, and find the target location. You will be able to understand the market in which your company will compete, find data on target market segments and keep up with industry trends.

Opportunities

Customer Problems & Companies Solutions

The customer analysis section will help you identify your target customer, understand the needs of your B2B clients and show how your products can solve their pain points.

Competition Analysis

SWOT Analysis

The strategic planning and management analysis technique identify your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats related to your business competition or project planning.

Marketing and Sales Plan

Operation Plan

The operational plan will discuss the internal strategies to build your business. It will outline employee’s needs, milestones, and processes.

Financial Plan

This part of the business plan will allow you to make financial projections based on a fixed budget. It includes templates for three key financial statements: An income statement, a balance sheet, and a cash-flow statement. 

Accomplishments

In this section, you can add the accomplishments you expect your business to achieve, evidence of how your business is improving, and other strategies it can incorporate to grow better.

Why is a Business Plan Important? 

• Importance of your business plan is that it helps you test the viability of business ideas.
• A business plan will create an effective strategy for your startup's growth.
• To evaluate competitors in the target market and find your audience.
• Help you get investments from venture capital, a bank, or personal investors.
• Creating a business plan will determine which new employees are needed to assist with the daily tasks.
• Plan for every phase of your business or scale an existing business to the next level.
• Identify the pain points of customers and make personalized marketing plans.
• Hire and build partnerships, which is very necessary for the early stages of your business.
• Set marketing goals, strategies, and tactics you can implement in your multi-channel campaigns.
• You can also scoop out the necessary steps you should take and adjust your investment of time and money accordingly.

How Will This Template be Beneficial For Your Business?

The template will come with instructions written in a manner that is easy to follow, so all you have to do is fill in the blanks. You can adjust the template to suit your needs and don’t have to build an outline from scratch. 

You can navigate through daunting business jargon and create an effective plan. This free business plan template will benefit you in securing investors, designing an effective growth strategy, and understanding your startup’s future financial needs.

You can write a template with these simple steps:

• Write the executive summary of your business idea
• Add a company overview
• Provide the problem and solution 
• Identify the target market
• Research your competition
• Describe your product or service offerings
• Outline your marketing tactics

Yes, this template is free. You only need to sign in and download the template. We promise that you won’t get a better free business plan templates for B2B startups.

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Millennium Agency Menu --> Services Market Research BRAND180 Brand Strategy Creative Design Messaging Strategy Website Design Digital Marketing Sectors Technology Advanced Manufacturing Pharma and Biotech Client results eBooks About Leadership Community Careers Schedule Time Blog Podcast Schedule a call How to Write a Powerful B2B Marketing Plan: Free Template

Posted on July 8, 2022 by Linda Fanaras

Writing a powerful B2B marketing plan is no easy task. When you are establishing your B2B marketing plan, it is important that you take the time to really get to know your brand, as well as your current and potential audience. You need to know what you are selling, and who you are selling to. However, it is not that simple, and there are many additional factors and steps that need to be taken to have a truly powerful marketing plan. At Millennium Agency, we are experts in marketing planning, as well as an assortment of other B2B branding and marketing strategy services which is why we have created this B2B marketing plan template that walks you through the stages of building a powerful marketing plan.   

Phase One: Research and Foundation   

Before you can begin writing a marketing plan that is powerful enough to drive success , you must know exactly what makes your business unique. During phase one of our B2B marketing strategy template, we encourage you to conduct in-depth research about your brand, both from an internal and external perspective. Knowing what your employees, customers, investors, and even potential customers think about your business can give you productive insight into what your business does well, and what you can improve on. It is in your best interest to invest in taking careful time to dive deep into your brand and what people think, because this research will be used to build your overall marketing planning strategy.   

During the research phase, you also want to consider your competition and do a bit of research on them. Knowing who your competitors are, and how they position and market themselves not only helps you avoid being repetitive, but also shows you how you need to do better. Research is the key to marketing plan templates for every industry, and it allows you to build a stable, cohesive foundation for a powerful marketing plan.  

Phase Two: Analysis and Goal Setting  

Once you reach phase two of the B2B marketing plan template , you begin to use the research conducted in phase one. During this stage, you should analyze the information that you yielded and note any popular trends or consistencies present, both positive and negative. A common marketing planning strategy used by industry professionals is called the SWOT analysis , which combines internal and external analyses to guide you towards a marketing plan that is successful. A SWOT analysis examines your strengths and weaknesses, as well as your opportunities and threats, and requires you to look openly and honestly at how your business performs as is. Once you properly break down these key points of your business, you can establish your goals with ease.   

Establishing goals not only includes pinpointing the successes you want achieve in the future, but also lays out the objectives you must meet to succeed. Goal setting is the core of marketing plan templates, and the more specific and direct you can be when setting your goals, the more cohesive and successful your results will be. Your goals serve as your guiding beacon for your marketing plan, and your objectives are what help get you there. Establishing your marketing plan objectives can be challenging if you do not have a background in marketing, because they are the logistical, technical details of your entire strategy. If you are unable to determine successful marketing objectives on your own, employing the help of a professional firm is the best way to get assistance and see a marketing plan example for yourself. Either way, you cannot move on to the next step in the template until you have clearly identified your goals and objectives.  

Phase Three: Audience Identification and Targeting      

By phase three of the Millennium Agency marketing plan template, you should have a wealth of knowledge on who you are and what people are saying about your brand, as well as a clear understanding of your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. From there, you should have built out a clear set of goals and objectives that support your business reaching those goals. Once you have the basics down, it is time to fine tune your marketing planning to your specific audience.   

You should have gained a thorough understanding of your target audience and your customers’ identities during the research phase of the marketing plan template, and now is the time to use what you learned to better serve your products or services to the right people. How you position yourself within your market and industry is important, and most customers take only a mere minute during first impressions with your brand to decide whether or not they wish to continue on with your business’ website, advertisement, blog, email, or however you are reaching them. Because of this, you need to make sure that you are making the right decisions when it comes to communicating with and engaging your audience; if you miss the mark, you may not get a second chance. During this phase of the marketing strategy template, you should be establishing a clear tone and message that you will be using to reach and engage your target audience and generate leads.   

Phase Four: Coordinating Logistics   

Before you can begin executing your marketing plan, you must also coordinate all of the different logistics that must be taken into consideration such as your business’ budget, timeline, and capabilities. If you have not already enlisted the help of a professional marketing strategy firm, now is the time to do so! Although you can tackle coordinating all of the technical logistics of your marketing plan on your own, having an experienced firm is a great way to guarantee that you are getting the most out of your marketing planning experience. The right marketing firm will help you ensure that you are getting the most optimal results from your planning efforts.  

During this phase, you should lay out exactly when you hope to reach each goal, customizing each objective deadline to your specific business and industry needs. From there you need to determine what your budget is, how much you want to spend daily, and on what marketing efforts. You cannot move on to solidifying your tactics until you know how much time and money you are working with. Once you have your goals and objectives lined out, and have your budget and timeline sorted, you can begin to schedule and execute your strategy as outlined through this digital marketing plan example.  

Phase Five: Execution   

By the time you reach phase five, the execution phase, you should have already laid the foundation and pinpointed the exact goals and objectives you want to reach, as well as determined how you are going to achieve success using the budget and timeline you are working within. Now it is time to execute your marketing plan, which involves a lot of different components depending on your specific goals as a business. Making sure that your B2B marketing plan goes off with success can be tricky to manage, and marketing firms are well versed in juggling many different marketing components, ensuring the correct materials and efforts are launched correctly and without issue. During the execution phase, you should be preparing and launching all of the different objectives you pinpointed during earlier phases. From there you should be gathering data on your B2B marketing plan’s success and determining how successful your efforts are at generating leads. The execution process can take place over the span of weeks, months, quarters, or even years, and requires close management to ensure your plan stays on track.  

Phase Six: Monitoring and Refinement  

The final stage of any marketing planning template example is the monitoring and refinement process that takes place from initial launch up until a new campaign is launched or the current plan dies out, whichever comes first. However, we suggest reevaluating your B2B marketing plan strategies frequently to avoid falling behind in your industry. Throughout the monitoring and refinement process, you should be gathering data on how successful each component of your campaign is at meeting your goals, and using that data paired with qualitative data such as customer and employee comments allows you to modify and optimize your B2B marketing plan and strategies.  

Don’t Navigate this Alone    

Marketing planning can be difficult, especially if you do not have previous marketing plan examples f or your brand or if you do not have a marketing planning template to follow. We have reviewed the most basic form of a market planning template, and through the six phases we highlighted, you should be able to build a B2B marketing strategy that works for your business. Although no one knows your brand better than you, an experienced marketing firm knows the ins and outs of marketing the best – after all its what their brand is all about. Hiring a B2B marketing firm will optimize your marketing planning experience and will yield more successful results every time.  You do not need to navigate the marketing planning process alone, you have already done half of the hardest part by going through this marketing strategy template, the next step is to schedule time with a member of our staff to begin planning your next strategy.  

About Millennium Agency  

Millennium Agency is a nationally recognized, top woman led B2B branding, positioning, and digital marketing firm who knows how to create value that emotionally influences your customer’s buying decision, giving you the competitive advantage. As your trusted partner in B2B software technology and manufacturing, we provide the branding and positioning framework that make an impact – so you can focus on what you do best – run your business successfully. For more information, visit our website or call 877-873-7445.  

About Linda Fanaras

Linda Fanaras is the CEO and Founder of Millennium Agency located in Manchester, NH and Boston. She can be reached at 877-873-7445 or [email protected] .

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Your B2B Marketing Plan for 2024 (incl. Template)

16 february 2024 by jessie taylor.

There's plenty of resources out there for creating B2C and D2C marketing plans, but B2B companies seem to get left high and dry.

B2B companies, especially those in SaaS and tech like Leadfeeder , face different challenges and have different goals. You have to consider how your target audience and industry impact what marketing strategies are effective for your business.

So, we're going to share the process we're using to design our 2024 marketing plan. I hope this step-by-step guide (and marketing plan template!) will help you start the new year off right.

Note: Leadfeeder is the lead generation tool you've been dreaming of. Sign up for a free trial and start finding hidden, high-quality leads today.

Why do you need to create an updated B2B marketing plan?

Marketing is always evolving.

The strategies and tools you used this year might not help you get ahead next year. Even if the core tenets of marketing are the same (think lead generation , SEO, paid ads, and content marketing), the strategies and martech tools you use to implement a successful strategy may have.

When you think back, COVID-19 completely changed how many companies worked, who they hired, what goals they focused on, and even their revenue.

As a B2B company, it's crucial to be ready to adapt to whatever is going on in the world.

For example, with Leadfeeder by Dealfront, we use IP addresses to identify the companies visiting your site . During the pandemic, we had to change the way we track companies to make sure we were still accurate.

Other companies have changed the platforms they use, the ads they create, even the type of content they publish.

It's not a whole new world, but things have definitely changed.

To be successful, your 2024 marketing plan needs to match the new reality. Here's a five-step guide to get it right.

5 steps to create an updated B2B marketing plan 

B2B companies struggle to generate more leads, find effective marketing strategies and improve conversion rates . A well-planned marketing strategy can help you overcome those challenges.

Not sure where to start with your 2024 B2B marketing plan? This five-step guide will get you started. 

1. Examine your past marketing success and failures

Before you set goals for next year, consider what worked last year. Did your email marketing strategy kill it? Was your new lead generation tool a flop? Are paid ads spending more than they're bringing in?

You can also use tools like Leadfeeder (and obviously Google Analytics) to see what content your website visitors spent time-consuming vs. quickly bounced from. Hotjar could be another neat element to bring in to literally see where people hung out on the site.

I'm going to be honest — this step can be lengthy, but it's crucial to avoid wasting time and resources on strategies that don't work.

Review each segment of your marketing strategies and answer these questions:

What was the goal of this strategy?

Did we meet those goals? Why or why not?

What tools did we use? Did they meet our needs?

What can we improve? (Or, should we scrap this strategy entirely?)

2. Pay attention to new and changing marketing trends in 2024

No one can predict the future, but paying attention to the current marketing landscape is crucial to designing an effective 2024 marketing plan.

Here are a few trends our team is paying attention to this coming year:

Automation : Automation is taking over the marketing world. While we don't suggest turning your entire marketing strategy over to the robots, there are areas it can help, such as marketing automation tools , automated bidding for paid ads, and automated integrations that push data from one tool to another.

Machine learning and AI : This is an exciting field that just keeps growing. Machine learning and AI allow algorithms to analyze a set of data or rules and use it to understand unrelated data. AI helps B2B companies understand our customers better, personalize our marketing, predict changes in the industry, and inform content creation.

Personalization : There's been a permanent shift towards personalized marketing efforts. More than half of all consumers say they will keep buying from a company that offers a personalized experience. Consider adding it to your marketing plan.

More (and better) content : B2B buyers read an average of 13 pieces of content before they decide to buy, so creating engaging content should still be a key part of your 2024 marketing plan.

SEO is still the reigning champ : Nope, SEO is not dead. In fact, Google is getting smarter and smarter. Pay attention to new SEO trends like natural language processing and passage ranking .

3. Review your buyer personas 

A good marketing plan is designed to move a specific customer through the buyer's journey. Do you know who your customers are?

At Leadfeeder, we actually have two main buyer personas — sales and marketing teams. We've found that most of our top customers derived from the marketing side, so we've adjusted our content and marketing strategies to focus on them.

And it's made a huge difference. We wouldn't have realized the shift if we hadn't taken the time to review our buyer personas and make sure we were targeting the right market.

4. Consider new marketing tools

There's a ton of marketing tools out there. (That might be an understatement.)

It's overwhelming, I know. Rather than trying all the new tools out there, take a look at your biggest challenges of the last year.

Where did you fall short? What took up most of your time? Where do you want to improve?

Then look for marketing and sales tools that specifically target those tasks.

For example, if finding leads is a problem, Leadfeeder can help. Using a small bit of code, we track who visits your site and show you how to reach out to them. It only takes a few minutes to set up and we have an awesome free trial .

Here's a peek at our dashboard, where you can see new leads, filter them by location, industry, etc., and view contact information:

Other tools we love include Pipedrive , a sales CRM and pipeline management tool, and Mailchimp, a killer email automation platform — we have an integration with both of these tools .

The point is to find marketing tools that solve problems for you, not just ones that pay for the most ads on LinkedIn.

5. Outline short and long-term goals

Now it's time to lay out some goals. What do you want to accomplish in the next year? Does that goal align with the overall business goals of your c-suite? It's important to outline both short and long-term goals to keep yourself on track.

For example, your long-term goal might be to increase lead generation by 24 percent in the coming year, while your first-quarter goal might be to implement a new lead gen tool and increase leads by 15 percent.

Having both goals creates a framework to reach that larger goal.

We like to use the SMART framework for goal setting to ensure goals are clear and trackable.

B2B marketing plan template

After following the steps above, you should have most of the information needed to create your 2024 B2B marketing plan.

This checklist will help you create a usable document:

Success starts with a strong marketing plan

Creating a winning B2B marketing plan for 2024 is the key to growing your business in the new year. Yes, it can be time-consuming. But, investing the time now will ensure your team is ready to hit the ground running in January.

Note: Is lead generation part of your 2024 marketing plan? See how Leadfeeder can help you uncover hidden leads and turn them into customers. Sign up for your free 14-day trial today .

Jessie works in Content Marketing and Social Media for 6+ years and creates authentic, brand-led content that helps turn target audience into customers.

Now that you're here

Leadfeeder is a tool that shows you companies that visit your website. Leadfeeder generates new leads, offers insight on your customers and can help you increase your marketing ROI.

If you liked this blog post, you'll probably love Leadfeeder, too.

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B2B Company Marketing Plan Template

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Ready to take your B2B marketing strategy to the next level? Look no further than ClickUp's B2B Company Marketing Plan Template! This complete template is designed specifically for B2B companies, helping you identify target markets, develop effective strategies, and achieve your business objectives with ease.

With ClickUp's B2B Company Marketing Plan Template, you'll be able to:

• Define your target audience and understand their pain points
• Craft tailored marketing strategies to reach and engage your ideal customers
• Set clear goals and track your progress towards increasing brand awareness, generating leads, and driving sales
• Collaborate with your team, assign tasks, and ensure everyone is aligned for success

Don't waste any more time trying to piece together your B2B marketing plan. Get started with ClickUp's template and watch your business soar to new heights!

Benefits of B2B Company Marketing Plan Template

The B2B Company Marketing Plan Template is a powerful tool that can help your marketing department achieve its goals and drive business growth. Here are just a few benefits of using this template:

• Provides a clear roadmap for your marketing team, ensuring everyone is aligned and working towards the same objectives
• Helps identify and target specific B2B markets, enabling you to focus your efforts and resources effectively
• Guides the development of marketing strategies and tactics that resonate with your target audience, increasing brand awareness and generating quality leads
• Enables you to track and measure the success of your marketing initiatives, allowing for continuous improvement and optimization

Main Elements of B2B Company Marketing Plan Template

ClickUp's B2B Company Marketing Plan template is the perfect tool to streamline your marketing efforts and achieve your goals. Here are the key elements that make this template effective:

• Custom Statuses: Track the progress of your marketing tasks with 6 predefined statuses, including Cancelled, Complete, In Progress, Needs Input, Planned, and To Do.
• Custom Fields: Utilize 6 custom fields such as Quarter, Task Type, Impact, Progress, Percent Completion, and Effort to capture important details and metrics for each task.
• Custom Views: Access 5 different views tailored to your needs, including Key Results, Timeline, Getting Started Guide, Objectives, and Progress Board, allowing you to visualize your marketing plan from different perspectives.
• Collaboration Features: Leverage ClickUp's collaboration features such as assigning tasks, commenting, and file attachments to ensure seamless communication and teamwork within your marketing team.
• Goal Tracking: Set and monitor your marketing objectives using ClickUp's Goals feature, which allows you to align your marketing efforts with your overall business strategy.

How to Use Marketing Plan for B2B Company

Creating a comprehensive marketing plan for your B2B company is crucial for driving growth and success. By utilizing the B2B Company Marketing Plan Template in ClickUp and following the steps outlined below, you can develop a strategic and effective marketing plan that will help you achieve your business goals.

1. Define your target audience

To start, it's important to clearly define your target audience. Understand who your ideal B2B customers are, their pain points, challenges, and motivations. This will help you tailor your marketing efforts and messaging to resonate with your target audience.

Use the custom fields feature in ClickUp to create categories for your target audience, including industry, company size, job title, and pain points.

2. Set clear marketing objectives

Determine the specific objectives you want to achieve with your marketing plan. Are you looking to increase brand awareness, generate leads, or drive conversions? Setting clear and measurable marketing objectives will help you stay focused and track your progress.

Utilize the Goals feature in ClickUp to set SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) goals for each objective.

3. Develop your marketing strategies and tactics

Based on your target audience and objectives, develop a range of marketing strategies and tactics that will help you reach your goals. Consider using a mix of digital marketing, content marketing, social media, email marketing, and events to maximize your reach and engagement.

Use the Board view in ClickUp to create cards for each marketing strategy or tactic, and assign team members responsible for executing each task.

4. Create a marketing budget

Allocate a budget for your marketing activities to ensure you have the necessary resources to implement your strategies. Consider factors such as advertising costs, content creation, marketing tools, and team training. Having a well-defined budget will help you make informed decisions and optimize your marketing efforts.

Utilize the Table view in ClickUp to create a budget spreadsheet, track expenses, and monitor your spending.

5. Monitor, analyze, and optimize

Once your marketing plan is in action, it's important to continuously monitor and analyze your performance. Keep track of key metrics such as website traffic, lead generation, conversion rates, and ROI. Identify what's working well and what needs improvement, and make data-driven optimizations to maximize your marketing effectiveness.

Use the Dashboards feature in ClickUp to create visual reports and track your marketing metrics in real-time.

By following these steps and utilizing the B2B Company Marketing Plan Template in ClickUp, you can develop a well-structured and effective marketing plan that will drive growth and success for your B2B company.

Get Started with ClickUp’s B2B Company Marketing Plan Template

B2B marketing teams can use this Marketing Plan Template to streamline their marketing efforts and effectively reach their target audience.

First, hit “Add Template” to sign up for ClickUp and add the template to your Workspace. Make sure you designate which Space or location in your Workspace you’d like this template applied.

Next, invite relevant members or guests to your Workspace to start collaborating.

Now you can take advantage of the full potential of this template to create a comprehensive marketing plan:

• Use the Key Results view to track and measure the success of your marketing campaigns
• The Timeline view will help you visualize your marketing activities and deadlines
• Refer to the Getting Started Guide view to understand how to effectively use this template
• Utilize the Objectives view to set clear goals and objectives for your marketing plan
• Use the Progress Board view to track the progress of each marketing task
• Organize tasks into six different statuses: Cancelled, Complete, In Progress, Needs Input, Planned, To Do, to keep track of progress
• Update statuses as you work through tasks to keep team members informed of progress
• Monitor and analyze tasks to ensure maximum productivity and successful marketing campaigns.

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Launch Marketing

How To Write an Effective B2B Marketing Plan

on November 9, 2022 - blog , B2B Strategy and Messaging , Campaign and Content Development/Execution , Strategy and Messaging

Marketers have a love-hate relationship with the end of the year. While it is exciting to wrap up a year and review performance, it is also a bit chaotic when planning for a new year. Have you thought about your B2B marketing plan for next year? Well, it might be a good idea to start. While it can be tempting to procrastinate planning, especially when the end of the year can be a busy time for organizations, it is valuable to stay on top of planning. Being fully prepared for the first quarter of the year can help an organization maximize leads and revenue and refrain from missing any opportunities. Whether the year is coming to an end, or you are reviewing and editing your plan during the second quarter of the year, it is important to keep certain things in mind when developing a B2B marketing plan. These four components will explain how to write a B2B marketing plan that will increase leads, opportunities and revenue.

Understand What Has and Has Not Been Effective

While it is ideal for all marketing efforts to be effective, the reality is, some marketing activities are more effective than others. Understanding which efforts performed well, did not perform well or only somewhat had an impact, is necessary to determine what should be included in a new B2B marketing plan. Be sure to evaluate all your marketing tactics. This includes everything from content marketing to social media to search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing and more. Everything that qualifies as a marketing activity in your organization should be analyzed and helps round out the B2B marketing plan moving forward. Consider these three questions when determining what has and has not been effective:

• Which activities moved the marketing engine forward most effectively and influenced company growth and revenue?
• Which activities were star performers in terms of response and conversion rates, cost-per-lead, total revenue generated and overall influence?
• Which activities did not see any success and had minimal impact on overall marketing and revenue performance?

Have Knowledge of Emerging B2B Marketing Trends

In any industry, but especially marketing, it is important to be in tune with current and emerging trends as well as changes to technology, software and more. Trends influence many aspects of marketing that impact B2B marketing plans and overall business decisions. For example, with the addition of new social media platforms comes the opportunity for advertising on those platforms. Understanding how popular that social media platform is, who the audience is, what the costs look like and the potential for success will largely determine if advertising on that platform is worthwhile. As new trends take hold, such as new social media platforms, the usage of videos , the inclusion of voice search in SEO and more, there will need to be more consideration as to if and how to include them in your B2B marketing plan. Whether they are included or not, being up to date on new trends ensures you are keeping up with the industry changes and even gaining a competitive advantage.

Be Clear on Sales and Marketing Objectives

Too many marketing teams create goals and tactics that are not necessarily aligned with sales. This crucial error negatively impacts the relationship between sales and marketing and creates issues when developing a B2B marketing plan. It is important to be in the know of how the sales team is working and what they need from marketing to move prospects forward. For example, understanding the type and volume of leads that the sales team needs and when the time is to pass a qualified lead to them. Taking the time to strategize with your sales team also gives you the ability to revisit the segments and audiences you are trying to reach, tactics to get to them and the information they need before purchasing your product or services. While this is most likely a known thing, it is always valuable to have a conversation with sales since they are at the forefront of what’s going on in the market by being face-to-face with prospects every day. As a result, you will wind up with aligned goals and ensure that sales get what they need, not just what marketing thinks they should have. An empowered sales team is a more effective sales team, which directly impacts the bottom line and marketing’s value within the organization.

Consider All Possibilities When Creating Your B2B Marketing Plan

With trends, data and other teams in mind, it is time to put those together and create a marketing plan that will help your organization achieve success. Start by outlining all of the possible activities, while keeping in past performance, and prioritize them based on your expectation of what each one should produce. For example, if you found this year that SEO was a key factor in driving people to your website, this is something to devote more time and resources to in the future. In contrast, if you found social media efforts did not have a huge impact, but you want to keep a presence alive, then it might go lower on the list. Consider all possibilities. Maybe videos were not a large part of marketing activities in previous years, but it might be something to include this year based on trends. Whatever the case may be, do not rule out anything. Some activities have to be included, like content creation and branding. Content and branding heavily drive many other activities in the B2B marketing plan, so including these is non-negotiable.

Another thing to keep in mind is the budget. Including budget allotment for each activity will ensure it is approved and remains under the targeted budget. Having specific numbers tied to expenditures gives you the ability to properly evaluate cost-per-lead and other metrics that will help assess the efficacy of a marketing activity. And, it almost goes without saying, but you need to put resources into each of the marketing activities too. After budget tasks, it is a matter of creating a marketing calendar, and then individual action plans for each part of it. When it is all put together, it will surely be a detailed B2B marketing plan aimed to deliver success and increased revenue for organizations.

Want to get started on your yearly B2B marketing plan or make adjustments to your current one? Contact us today or request a free marketing consultation! We’ve helped many of our clients put together B2B marketing plans around their goals.

Contact Launch Marketing to see how our turn-key marketing services can generate leads and drive revenue for your business.

PHONE: 512.495.9900

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How to Make an Ecommerce Business Plan for Your Startup

Darren DeMatas

February 28, 2024

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In addition to receiving commissions generated through affiliate marketing, we are able to fund our independent research and reviews at no extra cost to our readers. Learn more.

So you’ve decided that you want to quit your day job and start your very own ecommerce empire. That’s great!

But before you become the next Jeff Bezos  (and definitely before you quit your job!), it’s worth spending some time thinking about a business plan. In this article, we’ll dive into the key elements of an ecommerce business plan, which is very different than writing traditional business plans.

Why You Should Create a Business Plan

We know that starting an ecommerce business is exciting, and it can be tempting to jump right in without constructing a business plan. READ: PLEASE DON’T DO THIS.

If you haven’t put your ideas, questions and concerns on paper, then you haven’t given your business model enough thought .

Taking the time to write a business plan might seem like a lot of work, but it can save you a lot of time and money in the long run by better preparing you for potential challenges and opportunities that you’ll face as a first-time entrepreneur. Think of it as a roadmap for your new business venture.

It’s exciting to start your own ecommerce business. However, you want to be well prepared and not jump into anything without having a solid, foolproof ecommerce business plan in place.

After all, you wouldn’t jump out of a plane without a parachute, so why start a business without a safety device in place? That safety device is your business plan.

The business plan is the brainstorming process that ensures your concept and goals are realistic.

This is more than just mental notes. True business plans take your ideas , questions, and concerns and put those in writing.

As you start creating your business plan, you’ll soon understand that it’s more than a single piece of paper with handwritten details on it. It’s a clearly constructed format of how your business will be created, how it will operate, and what you hope the future holds in terms of a successful ecommerce business.

When you write your business plan, be sure to have a target audience in mind. Are you going to look for investors or put a Kickstarter campaign into motion and use this as your descriptive platform? If so, make sure that your business plan contains everything the audience would want to know about your business (and more!). Many traditional funding solutions require a business plan in order to give you capital. However, there are alternative solutions, such as  Payability  that specialize in ecommerce and don’t require credit checks, a business plan, or any complicated paperwork. They can also get you approved in as little as 24 hours.

When your business plan is completed, you should have achieved the following goals:

• Knowledge:  A greater sense of knowledge of the business aspects.
• Resources:  The resources you’re going to need to make your business successful, such as partners, money, employees, etc.
• Road Map: Have clear set goals to take you from the very beginning of your business and onward.
• Viability: In other words, is your business possible? Will you have enough profit margins to keep the doors open long-term?

Now that you know why you should create a business plan, it’s time to move on to how you can create your business plan and get started putting your ecommerce business into motion.

How to Start an Ecommerce Business Plan

At the very beginning of the planning stages, it’s a good idea to develop a framework for your business model. This business model will continue to evolve as you create each section of your ecommerce business plan, so don’t strive for a perfect completed plan on the first try. You will be making tweaks to the plan of certain steps along the way.

There are many ways to sell products online and different business models  to pursue. Research and learn from successful ecommerce business examples in the market. The exact business model you follow will be one that makes the most sense with your resources, skills, and interests.

In order to create the best online business plan with your product in mind, you need to figure out the following things:

What are you selling?

The first step to creating an online business is to learn the absolute basics of what you can sell.

• Physical products: Clothing , shoes, home goods
• Digital products: Software as a Service products, ecourses, ebooks
• Services: Consulting services, home cleaning

Who are you selling to?

• Business-to-Business (B2B): You are selling to organizations, corporations, and non-profits rather than individual customers
• Business to Consumer (B2C): This means you are selling to individual consumers rather than businesses
• Marketplace: You are acting as a middleman by bringing businesses and (B2B or B2C) customers to one website.

How are you sourcing your product?

• Manufacture in-house: You make your product or service in-house
• Third-party manufacturer: You outsource the manufacturing of your product or service to a third-party manufacturer
• Dropship: You partner with a dropship manufacturer. Basically, this means that they make your product, package it and ship it directly to your customer while your company handles the entire customer relationship.
• Wholesale : You buy goods or services from other companies in bulk and re-sell those products on your online store

Additional References

• Entrepreneurship: Business & Marketing Plans
• Small Business and Entrepreneurship
• Entrepreneurship Resources
• Business Plan Resources

Executive Summary

The executive summary will be written according to your goals, and it’s recommended that this is done at the very end of your business plan completion. This will ensure that you include all of the important factors about your business and present your ideas in a concise and complete way.

Some of the features you’ll include in the executive summary include information showing that you’ve done your research, you have concrete sales forecasts, and the main details about your brand.

Business Model

When you’re figuring out your business model, you have to consider four different areas:

• Monetization strategy
• Product/industry
• Target market
• Sales channel

Monetization Strategy

The monetization strategy delves into the methods you are going to use to sell your products.

This strategy will look at different product monetization methods, including white label, private label , affiliate marketing, wholesale, dropshipping, and even selling ads.

Product/Industry

The product industry section is where you summarize your main niche.

For example, “Vegan Skincare Products.”

Target Market

In the target market section, you will write a sentence or so on who your target market, or ideal customer, is in the community.

If you’re selling vegan skincare products, your target customers might be women who embrace the vegan lifestyle and use natural skincare products in their daily beauty regimen.

Sales Channel

The sales channel refers to where you’re going to sell your products.

For example, you might be selling your products on your own website, and this should be entered in this section.

Business Overview

This next section covers your company overview.

This section of your business plan will cover various features of your company, including the following:

• Company type
• Domain name
• Value proposition
• Brand traits

The brand name section lists your business name or brand name.

This is an extremely important aspect of your business plan as it’s what will set the tone for everything that follows.

Pick a brand name that’s simple yet unique and is something that can be used in a wordplay manner, if desired, but not pun-worthy.

Company Type

The company is how your business operates. For example, you might label your business as an LLC , S-corporation, sole proprietor, or some other type of business organization.

The best way to determine how you should categorize your company is to speak to your accountant. There are various tax and legal aspects to forming your business in a certain way.

Speak with the professionals in the company and corporation formation field to determine how to label your company and which company type best benefits your business in a variety of ways.

Domain Name

This section is where you list your domain name.

Choose a domain name that is memorable and embraces the overall traits and features of your business.

And, when choosing a domain name, be sure to think of SEO aspects when doing so. You’ll find out just how much all of these things tie together and ensure a frequently-visited website is the end result.

Keep in mind that with ecommerce, the domain name is just as important as the brand name. Maybe even more so!

Value Proposition

A value proposition is a short, crisp statement that will gauge how clear your idea is. Write this section as if you had one minute to explain your business to a potential investor or customer and then practice it over and over again.

The value proposition can be used on your ecommerce store as your company description.

Here’s a good example: Say you’re looking to start a hiking company called Atlas Hiking Co. which sells premium performance hiking shirts. A possible company description could be the following:

Atlas Hiking Co. is a lifestyle hiking company that produces high-performance hiking shirts for outdoor lovers. Our proprietary SPF40 fabric is one of the lightest fabrics on the market, providing mountain lovers with maximum comfort, both from a breathability and sun-protection standpoint. Our product is made in the U.S.A. and a portion of our profits are donated to preserve national parks around the country.

Pay special attention to all the sensory words !

The mission statement in your business plan is the “why” of it all.

For example, why you started the business, why you are selling the products you are selling, etc., can all be added to this section of your business plan.

You can make this portion as simple or detailed as you like. Just make sure to properly and clearly explain your business mission.

The vision part of the business plan is your “how” in the grand scheme of things. It is the dream you have for your company and the path you’re going to take to realize that dream.

When you write the vision portion of the business plan, think long-term. What are you hoping to achieve, not just in the near future but for the long haul of the life of your business?

Look into the future and plan out where you see your business in 5, 10, even 20 years from now.

This will help you construct the rest of your business plan if you know where you want your business to head, now and in the future.

Brand Traits

The brand traits section is a short section in your company overview.

Basically, in the brand traits section you’re going to want to list three to five words that describe your brand.

Think of your brand personality and describe it using a few separate powerful words.

The personnel section lists all individuals, including yourself, who will be involved in the daily operations of your business. You can create a separate section for a full operations plan or add that later.

Some business owners choose to handle all duties on their own or with a partner, while others will hire individuals to fill the following roles:

• CEO (usually the business owner)
• Management team
• Customer service/logistics
• PR/Social media specialist
• SEO manager
• Advertising manager

Competitive Market Analysis

Here’s a fact you can bank on: there has never been a successful e-commerce entrepreneur that didn’t understand his/her target market cold.

That’s why this section is one of the most important in the entire business plan. It will force you to understand the industry in which you operate, the overall industry analysis and outlook, the existing competition, and your target customer demographic.

Market Segment

The market segment portion of the business plan will help you to put your ideas down on paper, make them more focused, and get your team together.

This area will include your niche selection, target market, and competitive analysis.

Niche Selection

The niche section  provides an overview of your niche, why you selected it, whether there’s a micro niche included, and the type of niche you’ve chosen.

The purpose of this section is to crystalize the ideas that you have and make sure they are understandable and viable.

The target market section covers an overview of your target market plus describes your market segments.

Ask yourself who your  target customer  is (population size, age, geography, education, ethnicity, income level) and consider whether consumers are comfortable with buying your product category online.

When listing the target market information, make sure to mention your target audience size as this is important for ensuring that your audience will be adequately covered.

Competitive Analysis

With the competitive analysis portion of your market analysis, you want to list your market leader and direct and indirect competitors.

After you mention who these entities are, you need to list the characteristics of each one, such as domain name, business model, monthly traffic, and pricing range.

However, before you even get started in writing this section, you need to spend several hours researching your target market.

Here are some of the most efficient ways to research a particular market:

Industry reports

Google is your best friend. Look for any recent industry reports on your market of choice. This will give you a good sense of how much growth the industry is experiencing, why this growth is happening, and what are the largest customer segments. In our example of Atlas Hiking Co., we should research the outdoor apparel market.

Let’s say that through our research of the outdoor apparel industry, we discovered that there was a huge boom in youth hiking apparel. Perhaps parents were increasingly concerned about their kids’ exposure to UV rays while hiking, so they began to spend more money on their kids. We could use this valuable information to guide our business strategy.

There’s only so much you can read online. Go to a nearby store that sells similar products to yours and interview the store representative. The store rep has interacted with hundreds of interested customers, which can lead to thousands of valuable insights! It’s amazing how these insights can translate into a meaningful business opportunity.

Here’s an example:

If I were going into Billy’s Outdoor Store to research the outdoor apparel market, I would probably ask Billy the following:

• What are your best-selling products?
• What are your worst-selling products?
• Find products similar to yours and ask the representative his/her favorite features on products similar to yours.
• How much are customers generally willing to spend on these types of products?
• Do customers make repeat orders of any of these products?
• Do you get a lot of customers that are looking to buy last-minute hiking gear before they go on a hike?

Competition

Create an Excel spreadsheet of all of your competitors. In your spreadsheet, you should have the following columns:

• Competitor Name
• Price point
• Product Description
• Key Features (e.g., fabric, waterproof, slim fit, etc.)

What is the competition missing? Is there a gap in the offering? Where you can add some additional value?

After conducting the competitor analysis, Atlas Hiking Co. might find that the competition’s hiking shirts offer very few features at a low price point, but no one offers a luxury hiking shirt with additional features at a higher price point.

This is just an example of the types of insights one can gain from market research which can drastically alter your business model.

Keyword Research

By using Google’s keyword planner  and trends pages, you can get a good sense of how in demand your product is and whether it’s trending upward or downward. Google is great for a general idea, just don’t bank on it.

Some other keyword tools you can use for keyword research include Ahrefs, JungleScout, and Viral Launch. Check out this list  for more ideas.

Trade shows

Are there nearby trade shows that you can go to? Again, creating connections with other people in your industry is a surefire shortcut to countless hours of reading on the internet. Trade shows are also a great opportunity to talk to competitors, meet manufacturers, and better understand where things are heading in your industry.

Once you finish researching the relevant industry, you should summarize your findings by answering the following questions:

General Industry

• How big is the overall industry?
• How big is the specific sub-industry in which you intend to operate?
• Where has most of the historic growth in the market come from?
• Why is this the right time to enter this market?
• What are the sub-segments that are poised for future growth (e.g., youth apparel)?
• How crowded is the product category with competition?
• How is your competition distributing its product (online, retail, wholesale, etc.)?
• What’s missing from the competition’s product offering?

Products and Offers

So we know we want to sell hiking shirts, but how do you research specific products?

But for some of us, we’re not quite sure what we should sell. To succeed in online retail, you need a product that is trending upwards in a growing niche.

Different types of products

Some of the different types of products include the following:

• Convenience products: Frequent purchase products, little effort on buying
• Shopping products: Less frequently purchased in between purchases, little more effort and planning, shop around
• Specialty products: Strong brand preference and loyalty, will buy no matter what the price

The various types of niches include the following:

• Hobby niches
• Lifestyle niches
• Problem niches
• Weird/embarrassing niches

Existing products

Come up with detailed specifications for each product or service you intend to sell. If it’s a hiking shirt we’re selling, we would want to have:

• Detailed sketches of the shirt
• Fabric weight, materials, type
• Key features (e.g., pre-shrunk, water-proof, SPF 40)

Future product pipeline

What are other products that you have in the pipeline? Perhaps once you’ve successfully sold hiking shirts, you’re able to leverage your manufacturing relationships to provide hiking socks and shorts. Include that information in this section.

The products and services section will cover the various selling categories of items.

These product offerings will include the following:

• Core product

Each product group will have its own purpose in your sales catalog. For example, tripwire is the product that brings customers to your ecommerce store or online marketplaces  while the core product is your main seller.

Knowing what products you’ll include within each section allows you to have a firm grasp on what your main product will be and how the other types of products will work alongside your main product.

This section will also cover the search volume and Amazon pricing range.

You’ll need to calculate your true costs. You have to make sure you don’t overestimate your margins.

To tabulate your total true costs, you need to write down the costs in the following areas:

• Target price
• Supplier cost of the product
• Total cost per unit
• Net profit per unit
• Profit margin per unit

Once you complete the pricing portion, you’ll have everything on one sheet and readily accessible whenever you need it.

Marketing Plan and Operations

So, now you’ve concluded that you have a great business idea, and it’s in a growing market. That’s fantastic – but how are you going to drive traffic to your ecommerce website and get customers to buy it ? And how much can you afford to spend on your product?

Marketing  is everything. It’s important that your marketing efforts match your business model.

If you have a website and no marketing, your site won’t have any visitors. With no visitors, you will make no sales. Then how do you grow and sell your ecommerce business (if that’s your long-term goal)? Even with the best possible products, nobody will buy them if they aren’t directed to them in some way.

In order to come up with a marketing strategy, you need to first know your customer inside out. You should be able to answer such questions as:

• How old is your customer?
• Where does your customer live?
• What is the population of your customer base?
• What is their education level?
• What is their income level?
• What are your customer’s pain points?

With so many channels to reach your customer, which one is best for you?

Once we know pretty much everything there is to know about our target customer, we can shift focus to our marketing strategy. You want to choose marketing strategies that equal positive conversion rates. What channels should you use to grab the attention of your customer demographic? Some of the key marketing channels include:

Paid Marketing

• Pay-per-click – this online marketing typically involves using Google Shopping campaigns  and managing a product data feed.
• Affiliate sales networks – Allowing other blogs and websites to sell your product for a cut of the revenue. List the different affiliate sale networks that you plan to promote through.
• Facebook ads ⎯ Ads posted on Facebook to draw in buyers through social media means.
• Influencer marketing ⎯ Hiring industry influencers to get the word out about your product through their social media platforms and contacts.

Organic Marketing

• Social media (Facebook, Instagram , Pinterest, etc.): What is your strategy for social media, and where will you dedicate your attention?
• Search Engine Optimization : Create and promote awesome content so people find your product organically through search.
• Content marketing: Figure out how you’ll use content marketing in your business. Consider various article topics that will persuade your target audience to buy your products.
• Blogger networks: could be organic or paid through affiliate sale programs.
• Key bloggers: Develop a list of the key bloggers in your product category. For Atlas Hiking Co., this might be an influencer that blogs about the best hiking trails in America.

Finding the optimal mix of these advertising tools depends 100% on your customer segment as well as your product type. For example, a SaaS product targeting millennials will require an entirely different marketing strategy than an e-commerce physical product targeting baby boomers. Perhaps that should be a post on its own for another day!

How much should you spend to acquire a customer?

In order to understand this, we need first to discuss a concept known as customer lifetime value or LTV. In essence, this is a formula that helps you better understand how much an average customer will spend over time.

Here’s  a good read on how to calculate LTV.

It’s important to remember that for new businesses, you don’t have a lot of data on customer purchase habits so it’s a good idea to be more conservative with your assumptions in calculating LTV.

Let’s say, for Atlas Hiking Co., I determine that the average LTV per customer is $300. This means that over time, the average customer will spend $300. Let’s say, on average, if I receive $300 in revenue, $100 of that will translate to gross profit before I factor in my marketing costs (basically, I’m just subtracting the cost of making the shirts).

Knowing that my gross profit is $100 per shirt is a critical piece of information because it tells me that I can spend up to $100 in marketing to acquire a customer and still be profitable!

Some of the marketing options include social media marketing and content marketing.

Think about your business model and then line up your marketing budget. Your marketing budget may include the following items:

• Sales/branded content
• SEO/blog content
• Facebook/Instagram ads
• Influencer marketing
• Marketing tools
• Niche advertising

Choosing The Right Technology

With so much technology and SaaS products out there, it’s important to understand the various moving parts and diagram how they all integrate with one another.

Some of the different elements include:

• Shopping Cart Platforms  – e.g., Shopify , BigCommerce , WooCommerce , or any open-source platform
• Hosting – Nexcess , BigScoots , Kinsta , WPX
• Payment Processo r – e.g., Stripe, Paypal
• Fulfillment Center – e.g., Amazon, ShipBob
• Apps – e.g., Zipify, BuildWooFunnels, Gelato
• Accounting & Taxes  – e.g., Quicken, Xero
• Marketing Automation – e.g., Klaviyo , Mailchimp
• Marketing Tools – e.g.  Buzzstream, Ahrefs
• Customer Loyalty Programs  – e.g., Antavo, Smile

Come up with a detailed list of the different products and services you need to run your business as well as the monthly and per-transaction cost of each of them. This will be important in understanding the impact of these services on your margins.

Matching your business model to your technology is essential, too. Certain website platforms are better suited for specific sales models.

Email marketing is another type of technology that should be carefully considered and matched up correctly with your business model.

Keep in mind that it takes, on average, 6-7 interactions with a brand before someone makes a purchase, so you need to keep using technology to get them back to your website.

As you explore the technology options and find out ways to draw potential customers in and keep them happy while they’re there, here are some key points to keep in mind:

• What you say about yourself and your products with your website content
• How you respond to questions on live chat and email support
• How to make use of chatbots
• How you connect on social media
• The information you send through email marketing
• What bloggers and influencers say about your brand
• How existing customers review your company
• How you advertise
• How you establish loyalty beyond sales

After you figure out your technology methods, you have to come up with a technology budget.

The business plan must also include the operations side of things. Determine who will be your manufacturer, secondary manufacturer, and shipping and fulfillment  provider.

When looking at supply chain costs and options, ShipBob  is an ecommerce fulfillment provider you can consider.

Financial Plan

When figuring out your financial plan, evaluating and pinpointing your startup costs  is essential.

The focus of the financial plan is how long it will take for you to make your money back. You also need to figure out if you need a business loan .

Traffic and conversion rates will help you determine how long it will be until you start making money back.

You’ll also want to use an income statement to detail financial information.

This section is used for financial projections, such as forecasting sales, expenses, and net income of the business. Ideally, you’ll want to create a monthly Excel balance sheet showing the following:

• Projected revenue:  First, come up with your projected number of units sold and then come up with your projected revenue (Projected Revenue = # of Units Sold * Average Sales Price).
• Fixed expenses:   these are expenses that are fixed no matter how much you sell. Typically, these relate to monthly SaaS subscriptions, employee salaries, or rent.
• Variable expenses  – these expenses change in direct proportion to how much you sell. Common examples include the cost of goods sold and credit card payment processing fees.

This helps business owners better understand what they need to achieve to hit their profit goals. In reality, projections are usually always off the mark, but it’s good to give yourself some measurable goals to strive for.

This section should aim to answer the following questions about your product offering:

• How much product do you need to sell per year to meet your income goals for the business?
• What are the margins on your product? If you sell one hiking shirt for $50, how much do you make after paying your supplier, employees, and marketing costs?
• What is the lifetime value of a customer?
• How much can you spend to acquire customers? If you conservatively project that the average customer will spend $300 over time on your shirts, then you can afford to spend an amount less than $300 to acquire that customer using the paid marketing channels described previously.
• Do you have any big capital expenditures early on that would require you to need to bring in investors?
• Can you improve gross margins by making bigger orders from your suppliers?

There are various acquisition channels that will help your traffic to convert including:

Your revenue plan will contain a 12-month revenue forecast plan to help you map out each month of earnings.

There are different business earning models you can go through to determine how much you can make with your business.

You want to calculate how much traffic costs. This all depends on the methods you use to gain traffic to your site.

As you determine what your profit might be with your ecommerce business  or ecommerce businesses, there are certain math formulas to use:

• The profit equation
• Break-even analysis
• Units needed to achieve the profit target

You should also consider how you will use fintech companies in your ecommerce business.

What are the key elements of an ecommerce business plan?

The main components of an eCommerce business plan include the executive summary, company description, market analysis, organization and management structure, product line or service, marketing and sales strategy, financial projections, and funding request, if applicable.

How do I create a budget for my ecommerce business?

Start by estimating your initial startup costs and ongoing expenses. Consider costs like website development, inventory, marketing, shipping, taxes, and any necessary licenses or permits. It’s also important to factor in a contingency plan for unexpected costs.

How do I find the right product to sell?

Research is fundamental. Look at market trends, customer needs, and competitor products. Use tools like Google Trends or social media platforms to understand what customers are currently interested in. Always consider your passion and knowledge about the product too, as this can drive your business forward.

How can I differentiate my product from competitors?

Differentiation can come from unique product features, superior customer service, better pricing, or a compelling brand story. Understand what your competitors offer and how you can do it differently or better.

Wrapping Up Your Business Plan

Careful planning is crucial to get your e-commerce business from the planning phase to the launch phase and to ensure its successful future.

Going through the exercise of writing a business plan will cement your own understanding of your business and your market. It will also position you to take advantage of lucrative opportunities while mitigating harmful threats to your business down the line.

Your turn! Have you written a business plan for your online store? Do you have anything to add? Tell us about it in the comments below!

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• B2B Marketing Services – Lead Catalyst Platform
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• Analyze, Adjust and Optimize Your Efforts
• Foster Customer Advocacy
• Conclusion 

Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or a business owner looking to boost your company’s presence, a comprehensive B2B marketing plan can be a game-changer. A crucial element contributing to marketing effectiveness is understanding how your products bring value to your customers’ businesses. It’s not just a statement you are putting out there with well-crafted content but substantiating it. 

To ensure that you can explicitly demonstrate how your products can minimize costs, enhance competitive advantages, or boost productivity for your customers you need an effective plan. Failing to plan, execute and demonstrate the value of your product or service can turn your strategy and brand into nothing more than another marketing gimmick.

In this guide, we’ll discuss what is a B2B marketing plan, discover essential tips for creating one, showcase real-world examples, and provide you with a basic B2B digital marketing plan template to get you started. 

What is a B2B Marketing Plan? 

A B2B marketing plan is a strategic roadmap that outlines the steps a business will take to promote its products or services to other companies. Unlike business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing, business-to-business (B2B) marketing targets a specific audience of decision-makers within organizations. The primary goal of a B2B marketing plan is to generate leads, nurture prospects, and ultimately convert them into loyal customers.

Key Components of a B2B Marketing Plan

Define your marketing goals.

Establish measurable and realistic marketing goals. Whether it’s increasing brand awareness, driving lead generation, or boosting sales. Your goals should align with your overall business objectives. Be specific and realistic about your goals using the (SMART) criteria – specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound to track your progress.

Undertake a Market Analysis

Begin by conducting a thorough analysis of your target market. Identify your total addressable market (TAM) and assess the competitive landscape. Understand potential customers’ pain points and determine how your products or services can address those needs.

Segment Your Target Audience and Create Buyer Personas

Create detailed buyer personas representing your ideal customers. Understand their roles, responsibilities, challenges, and motivations. This will help tailor your marketing messages to resonate with your target audience. Segmentation recognizes that different groups will respond differently to content and messages. First, determine whether segmentation is necessary based on the identified audience(s) and their characteristics. Segmentation is recommended if the audience cannot be reached effectively with the same messages and channels and/or certain segments have significantly different worldviews, needs, and approaches.

Have a Laid-out Marketing Strategy

Develop overarching strategies that align with your goals. This may involve content marketing, email marketing, social media advertising, and influencer marketing. Each strategy should contribute to achieving specific marketing objectives.

Clearly Define Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

What sets your business apart from the competition? Your USP should communicate the unique value your products or services bring to the table. 

Write Content and Choose Your Channels

Dive into the specific tactics and channels you’ll leverage to execute your strategies. This could include creating engaging content, optimizing your website for search engines, running targeted Google Ads campaigns, and utilizing various social media platforms. 

Allocate your Marketing Budget

Allocate resources effectively by establishing a marketing budget. Consider the costs associated with advertising, content creation, marketing tools, and any other expenses related to your marketing initiatives.

Establish a Timeline

Create a timeline that outlines the timing of each marketing initiative. This will help you stay organized and coordinate your efforts for maximum impact. 

Define key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of your marketing activities. Regularly track and analyze metrics like website traffic, conversion rates, and social media engagement to gauge the effectiveness of your efforts.  A successful B2B marketing plan is dynamic and adaptable. Regularly review your performance metrics, gather feedback, and be prepared to adjust your strategies and tactics based on the insights you gain.

10 Tips on How to Create a B2B Marketing Plan 

Creating an effective B2B marketing plan requires careful consideration and strategic thinking. Here are ten tips to guide you through the process: 

Understand Your Target Audience

Knowing your audience is paramount in B2B marketing. Conduct in-depth research to understand the challenges, pain points, and priorities of your target businesses. This knowledge will shape your marketing messages and strategies. 

Align Marketing with Sales

A successful B2B marketing plan aligns closely with the sales process. Collaborate with your sales team to understand their needs, share insights, and ensure marketing efforts support the entire buyer’s journey. 

Understand the duration of your buying process and stay updated when it changes. This awareness allows you to report on these shifts and, more importantly, adapt your strategy to maintain a consistently robust sales funnel. 

Create Compelling Content

Content is king in B2B marketing. Develop high-quality, relevant content that educates, informs, and engages your audience. This could include blog posts, white papers, case studies, videos, etc. 

Utilize Multiple Marketing Channels

B2B buyers engage with content across various channels. Incorporate a mix of channels such as social media, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and offline events to reach your audience effectively.  

Implement Marketing Automation

Marketing automation tools can streamline repetitive tasks, nurture leads, and provide valuable insights. Invest in a marketing automation platform that aligns with your business needs and integrates seamlessly with your existing systems. 

Stay Informed About Industry Trends

B2B marketing is dynamic, with trends and technologies evolving rapidly. Stay informed about the latest industry trends, emerging technologies, and shifts in buyer behavior to ensure your marketing strategies remain relevant. 

Optimize for Search Engines

Enhance your online visibility by optimizing your website for search engines (SEO). Conduct keyword research, create relevant meta tags, and regularly update your content to improve your website’s ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs). 

Measure and Analyze Performance

Regularly track and analyze key performance indicators (KPIs) to assess the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. Use analytics tools to gain insights into website traffic, conversion rates, and other relevant metrics. 

Happy customers can be your most powerful advocates. Encourage and showcase customer testimonials, case studies, and success stories to build trust and credibility within your target market. 

10 B2B Marketing Plan Examples

Now that you know how to plan your marketing, let’s look at some B2B companies doing it right across various industries. 

HubSpot : HubSpot’s inbound marketing methodology focuses on attracting, engaging, and delighting customers. Their B2B marketing plan emphasizes content creation, email marketing, and marketing automation. 

Salesforce: Salesforce leverages a multi-channel marketing approach, combining content marketing, social media advertising, and community engagement. Their B2B marketing plan emphasizes building strong customer relationships through personalized experiences. 

IBM: IBM’s B2B marketing plan revolves around thought leadership and educational content. They invest heavily in creating white papers, webinars, and case studies to position themselves as industry leaders. 

Adobe : Adobe’s marketing plan highlights the power of visual storytelling. They use video content, interactive experiences, and creative campaigns to highlight the capabilities of their software products. 

Cisco: Cisco’s marketing plan focuses on a comprehensive digital strategy. They utilize social media, content marketing, and online communities to connect with their audience and provide valuable insights. 

Mailchimp : Mailchimp’s marketing plan is centered on user-friendly content and community building. They emphasize the importance of customer education through blog posts, tutorials, and engaging events. 

Oracle: Oracle’s B2B marketing plan integrates various channels, including social media, email marketing, and influencer partnerships. Their approach emphasizes the importance of personalized communication and targeted campaigns. 

SAP : SAP’s B2B marketing strategies center around customer success stories and case studies. They showcase the real-world impact of their solutions through in-depth narratives that resonate with their target audience. 

Microsoft: Microsoft’s marketing plan is characterized by a strong emphasis on thought leadership and innovation. They use a combination of events, webinars, and educational content to position themselves as industry pioneers. 

LinkedIn: As a B2B platform, LinkedIn’s marketing plan is built around professional networking and content sharing. They provide businesses with tools for targeted advertising, lead generation, and brand building within a B2B context. 

These examples illustrate the diverse approaches that successful B2B companies take in their marketing strategies. Analyze these cases to draw inspiration for your own B2B marketing plan. 

Best B2B Marketing Plan Template 

Crafting a marketing plan for B2B from scratch can be overwhelming, but having a template can simplify the process. Here’s a basic B2B marketing plan template to guide you: 

Executive Summary 

• Business Overview: Provide a brief overview of your company’s mission and core values. 
• Key Objectives: Clearly state your marketing plan’s primary objectives. 

Market Analysis

• Total Addressable Market (TAM): Define the size and characteristics of your target market. 
• Competitive Analysis: Assess the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors. 
• Buyer Personas: Create detailed personas representing your ideal customers. 
• Unique Selling Proposition (USP) 
• USP Definition: Clearly articulate what sets your business apart from competitors. 

Marketing Goals 

• SMART Goals: Set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound marketing goals. 
• Content Marketing : It is a best practice to outline your marketing tactics for creating and distributing valuable content. 
• Social Media Marketing : Detail how you plan to leverage social media for brand promotion. 
• Email Marketing : Specify your approach to email marketing and lead nurturing. 
• Influencer Marketing : If relevant, explain how you’ll collaborate with influencers in your industry. 

Tactics and Channels 

• Content Creation: Specify the types of content you’ll produce and the platforms you’ll use. 
• SEO Strategy: Describe your approach to optimizing your website for search engines. 
• Paid Advertising: Detail your plans for running paid advertising campaigns. 
• Events and Sponsorships: If applicable, outline your strategy for participating in industry events. 

Marketing Budget 

• Allocations: Break down your budget across different marketing initiatives. 

Timeline 

• Marketing Calendar: Provide a visual representation of when each marketing initiative will occur. 

Metrics and Analytics 

• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Define the metrics you’ll track to measure success. 
• Analytics Tools: Specify the tools you’ll use to gather and analyze performance data. 

Adjustment and Optimization 

• Review Process: Outline how often you’ll review and adjust your marketing plan. 
• Establish a system for gathering feedback from your team and stakeholders. 

Conclusion 

• Summarize your B2B marketing plan’s key points and reiterate the importance of its implementation for achieving business success.

What Should a B2B Marketing Plan Put into Consideration? 

In addition to the above elements, here are a few factors that you should include in formulating your marketing plan:  

• A SWOT Analysis: Conduct a thorough analysis of your business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to inform your marketing strategy better. 
• Customer Journey Mapping: Understand the various touchpoints your customers encounter throughout their journey with your brand, helping tailor marketing efforts at each stage. 
• Competitive Advantage: Clearly define how your products or services offer a competitive edge over others in the market, emphasizing what makes your business stand out. 
• Lead Generation Strategy : Develop a detailed plan for attracting and capturing qualified leads, outlining strategies such as content marketing, lead magnets, or targeted advertising. 
• Sales and Marketing Alignment: Foster collaboration between the sales and marketing teams to ensure a seamless transition from lead generation to conversion, aligning strategies for overall business success. 

Key Takeaways

Creating a robust B2B marketing plan requires careful consideration of your target audience, clear goals, and well-defined strategies. By following the tips, studying real-world examples, and planning ahead, you’ll be well-equipped to develop a successful B2B marketing strategy that drives results for your business.

Transform your business growth with Blue Atlas B2B Marketing Services ! Let’s build your effective marketing plan strategy today – Contact us now!

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Accessibility

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Blue Atlas Marketing Accessibility Statement

Accessibility Statement

• www.blueatlasmarketing.com
• April 5, 2024

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We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.

To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.

This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.

Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.

If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email

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Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:

Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all of the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.

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The Ultimate Guide to B2B Marketing in 2023 [+ New Data]

Discover a variety of B2B marketing strategies you can use to reach and resonate with your business audience

THE ULTIMATE PRODUCT MARKETING GO-TO-MARKET KIT

Ensure that your whole team is aligned with four planning and internal enablement templates for your next product launch.

Updated: 05/04/23

Published: 05/04/23

Effective B2B marketing is difficult to get right. Between creative demands, budget limits, and channel decisions, marketers have a lot to juggle when developing their marketing strategy.

The biggest determinant of effective marketing, however, is your audience .

If you’re not properly targeting your buyer persona , your promotions and advertisements will likely fall on deaf ears. You might as well not be marketing at all.

Where target audiences vary the most, though, is between individual consumers and businesses . Some companies serve individual shoppers, while others cater to companies and organizations.

Marketing to businesses is very different from marketing to individual consumers. That’s why an entirely different marketing method — B2B marketing — exists, and that’s why we built this guide.

By the end of this article, you’ll have a better understanding of B2B marketing, the most effective B2B marketing strategies, and how you can tap into and convert your business audience. Plus, the trends you can expect in the B2B space in 2023, according to new research plus expert tips.

What is B2B Marketing?

B2b vs b2c marketing, b2b marketing strategies.

B2B Marketing Trends to Watch

B2B Marketing Examples

What is b2b.

B2B stands for “business-to-business,” which refers to a business model where businesses sell products and services to other companies as opposed to consumers.

If you’re a new marketer in the B2B space, or a small B2B business owner learning the ropes, B2B marketing can seem new and strange, but not to worry — you’ll soon learn it’s not so different from typical consumer marketing, and we’ll go over everything you need to know so you can create an effective B2B marketing strategy.

B2B (business-to-business) marketing refers to any marketing strategy or content that is geared towards a business or organization. Companies that sell products or services to other businesses or organizations (vs. consumers) typically use B2B marketing strategies.

The purpose of B2B marketing is to make other businesses familiar with your brand name, the value of your product or service, and convert them into customers.

HubSpot is an example of a company that engages in B2B marketing. HubSpot’s customers are other businesses, not individual consumers. Therefore, all of our marketing efforts can be classified as B2B.

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The State of Marketing in 2024

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• Managing Privacy
• The Future of Marketing

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B2B and B2C (business-to-consumer) marketing are very different. B2B and B2C marketing differ in their respective strategies and applications, as well as in their audiences and how they communicate with them .

B2B marketing targets the needs, interests, and challenges of individuals who are making purchases on behalf of, or for, their organization (rather than for themselves), thus making the organization the customer.

Here are a few examples of B2B companies:

A coworking space that leases office spaces to remote teams and freelancers (like Spaces )

An on-demand order fulfillment, warehousing, and screen printing service (like Printful )

A marketing software company that sells social media management tools, lead generation software, and other marketing tools to businesses and organizations (like HubSpot !)

B2C marketing targets the needs, interests, and challenges of individual consumers who are making purchases on behalf of, or for, themselves, thus making the individual the customer. Here are a few examples of B2C companies:

An e-commerce company that sells office supplies to remote or self-employed individuals (like Poppin )

A store that sells t-shirts and other clothing and accessories (like Target )

A music platform that sells streaming subscriptions (like Spotify )

Take a look at this chart comparing B2B and B2C customers.

As much as they differ, though, B2B and B2C also intersect in many ways. While Poppin sells office supplies to remote or self-employed individuals, they also design corporate office spaces and branded supplies.

On the flip side, Printful not only offers order fulfillment and warehousing to businesses; they also fill e-commerce printing orders for individuals.

As distinct as the B2B and B2C marketing audiences can be, B2B marketers can always learn from B2C campaigns , too.

As I said above, marketing depends on its audience. While B2B and B2C marketing vary, not every piece of B2B marketing material is alike, either.

In this section, we’ll talk about various B2B marketing strategies you can implement to reach your specific business audience. Some of these strategies are preparatory, such as identifying your audience, while others are ready to be executed, such as creating a B2B website. Let’s get started.

1. Understand the B2B buyer’s journey.

Before we dive into actual strategies you can implement, it’s important to understand the B2B buyer’s journey . This piece of information will help you create and implement marketing strategies that meet prospects at every stage of their purchase process.

Because of the higher price point of B2B products, B2B sales cycles tend to be a lot longer than B2C cycles. Nurturing these prospects via marketing takes a similarly long time, too, and you must use specific tactics at every stage to drive them toward a purchase decision or a demo request.

In other words: B2B marketing is not as easy as setting up ads on Instagram and hoping for clicks. (We wish! That can work, however, in conjunction with other strategies.)

The B2B buyer’s journey is divided into three stages:

Awareness Stage: The prospect has become aware of a problem and begins educating themselves.

Consideration Stage: The prospect researches solutions for their new problem.

Decision Stage: The prospect is ready to make a purchase or formally begin a buying process.

After understanding the buyer’s journey, take this opportunity to create a customer journey map for your company — or, if you’re a new marketer at a B2B company, asking for one for reference.

A customer journey map is a customized version of the buyer’s journey that shows how your brand interacts with prospects during each phase. When you have that information, you can understand which marketing strategies, such as content marketing, will be most effective at each stage.

2. Identify your target market and target audience.

Now that you have a strong understanding of the buyer’s journey, it’s time to begin understanding who you’re marketing to specifically. Who is taking the buyer’s journey and purchasing your products? You get to decide — and it all begins by identifying who they are.

First up, define your target market . For B2B companies, we first recommend identifying your target companies with firmographic data such as:

• Company size, i.e small, medium, or enterprise
• Company region or location, i.e North America, South America, Africa, or specific countries and regions
• Company industry, i.e healthcare, fintech, or SaaS
• Number of employees

Then, define your target audience — that is, the specific human prospect who is looking for your brand’s products or services. Remember, you’re not marketing to other companies, you’re marketing to people who work at that company.

You can use demographic and psychographic data to identify individual prospects you’ll be marketing to. This may include their:

• Education level

This information will help you create buyer personas and customer profiles , which in turn will help you understand how they make purchase decisions and which marketing channels they’re more likely to use.

For instance, if you’re targeting an entry-level employee, ages 22-26, at a small business in North America, you can likely use social media to reach them effectively.

3. Choose your marketing mix (or the 4 Ps of marketing).

Now that you’re armed with your buyer’s firmographic, demographic, and psychographic information, it’s time to start building a B2B marketing strategy that’s tailored specifically to them. Start by defining your marketing mix, or the 4 Ps of marketing :

• Product: What product you sell
• Price: How much the product costs
• Place: Where the product is sold
• Promotion: Where customers will find out about the product

Defining your 4 Ps is an excellent precursor to creating a more extensive marketing strategy. It marries all of the information you’ve recently found about your potential customers with the information you already know about your own product.

That will empower you to create a more effective strategy than if you jumped right into tactics and execution.

Featured Resource: Marketing Mix Templates

Click here to download the templates for free .

4. Create a B2B marketing plan and a marketing strategy.

Once you’ve defined your marketing mix, you can dive in even more deeply by creating a marketing plan and a marketing strategy . A marketing strategy marries market conditions with your company’s goals, and a marketing plan provides an actionable roadmap with specific channels and metrics.

What’s most important is outlining your own company’s summary and target markets, then deciding where you’ll promote your company. The thing is, it’s all too easy to choose specific strategies, like social media marketing and content marketing, without a strategic approach. That can easily lead to overspending in the wrong areas.

To create a marketing plan and strategy, we recommend starting with a template.

Featured Resource: Free Marketing Plan Template

Click here to download HubSpot's free Marketing Plan Template.

Using this template, you’ll be able to compile all the information you need to choose the right B2B marketing channels for your company. You’ll be able to lay out your:

• Business Summary and Initiatives
• Target Market
• Market Strategy
• Marketing Channels
• Marketing Technology

In this list, we could have easily shared specific marketing tasks you can do, such as creating online content or publishing short videos. And while these things will likely be a worthy use of your time, it’s more important to spend your time strategizing to minimize marketing costs and increase your ROI .

Strategizing is the core of your B2B marketing strategy — not implementing specific tactics such as blogging or SEO. Those will come later once you have defined the big picture.

5. Cover all of your B2B marketing bases, such as launching a website.

It’s time to dive into the more tactical aspects of your B2B marketing strategy by ensuring all of your marketing bases are covered. But we don’t want to dive too deeply yet; this is about nailing down the basics. The “basics” will vary per industry; for instance, in a more traditional vertical, you might rely less on your website and more on industry events.

That said, you want to ensure your B2B company has covered most of the following things (click on each one for a checklist to run through):

• Launching a website
• Creating and maintaining your social media profiles
• Starting an email marketing newsletter
• Signing up for industry events and conferences

No matter which B2B industry you’re in, and regardless of your audience type and age, these things will likely benefit you. Later, we’ll cover specific types of B2B marketing that you can integrate under each of these strategies. But here’s a good introduction:

• Strategies for your website: Content marketing , blogging , SEO
• Strategies for your social media profiles: Social media marketing , paid social media , short form video marketing
• Strategies for your email marketing newsletter: Email marketing , lead nurturing
• Strategies for industry events and conferences: Event marketing , trade show marketing

6. Run a competitive analysis.

To choose your specific marketing strategies even more strategically, carry out a competitive analysis .

Scope out the market and see which businesses are marketing to your target audience. Learn what they’re currently doing — do they have a website? A presence on a specific social media platform, such as LinkedIn? Things to be on the lookout for when inspecting competitors are:

• Competitor product offerings
• Competitor sales tactics and results
• Competitor marketing content and social media presence

Featured Resource: 10 Competitive Analysis Templates

Download Now

Getting a general overview of these items can help you recognize your competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats — otherwise known as a SWOT analysis . Once you understand where they stand, you can better compete with them and choose the best channels.

If none of your competitors are on Instagram, for instance, then Instagram marketing may not be a good strategy to pursue (or, at least, you should test it out first before investing too many resources in it).

7. Determine your brand positioning.

Next, define your brand positioning in the market. This statement is the who, when, why, and how of your brand identity — or the way your brand is perceived through the eyes of the customer.

This will help you cultivate a consistent brand image, regardless of the marketing channels and tactics you use.

Devise a brand positioning statement that your team and prospective customers can believe in, and you’ll be ready for the next step.

Featured Resource: Positioning Statement Templates

Download for Free Now

8. Explore marketing channels to use.

By now, you’ve likely run across the different types of marketing channels your competitors use successfully, and the channels they haven’t taken advantage of. You’ve also likely gotten an idea of what you want to do based on your big-picture strategizing so far.

With the previous steps completed, you’re ready to diversify your B2B marketing portfolio and reach the businesses you need to. Depending on your customer segments and competitor analysis, you can now explore channels, strategies, and tools to optimize your leads and customer funnels.

Next up, let’s look at the types of B2B marketing you can implement now that you’ve created your overall strategy.

Types of B2B Marketing

The following categories are B2B marketing channels bound to connect you to your target audience.

B2B Email Marketing

Email marketing is a tried and true method of reaching both individual consumers and business customers. Most B2B marketers use email — are you one of them? You should be. Emails lead to engagement, which turns subscribers into leads … and then customers.

Download our guide to optimizing email marketing for conversions and learn how to grow your email list, ensure deliverability, and increase engagement .

Unlike B2C customers who respond best to emotions and entertainment, B2B customers look for logic and positive ROI. Essentially, they’re asking themselves, How can your business help my business grow? Because of this, your email marketing must consistently resonate with your business customers and focus on things that matter to them — like time, money, and resources.

Email marketing is also a powerful vehicle for sharing your brand’s content. Many B2B companies use email newsletters as part of their content marketing program, and the B2B marketers we’ve spoken to say these newsletters are most critical to their content marketing success.

With the constant barrage of emails flooding our inboxes today, it’s more important than ever to create and send out effective marketing emails. To help you create emails that stand out, you can use HubSpot's AI Email Writer .

B2B Email Marketing Best Practices

Write enticing subject lines . Think about your email subject lines as a Netflix trailer — if you can’t hook your audience with a two-minute clip (or, in this case, a few dozen characters), don’t expect them to open and watch (or read) the whole thing. We recommend spending almost as much time on your email subject lines as you do on the emails themselves.

Stick to one call-to-action (CTA) per email . If you think the number of emails you receive is a lot, take a look at the CTAs in those emails … some are packed with two, three, and sometimes up to 10 different CTAs. Don’t make this mistake, which can leave your recipients’ heads spinning, asking “What should I click on first?” and ultimately clicking on nothing. With one CTA per email, you allow your audience to focus on your email content and ultimately one action … a welcome reprieve from today’s frequent decision-making and analysis paralysis.

Segment your email to reach the most relevant audience . Not every email you send will be appropriate for everyone on your list. Your subscribers may be at different stages of the buyer’s journey or be seeking different solutions. That’s where email list segmentation comes into play. Not only does this help you relate to your audience better, but it gives your emails that personal feel that says “Hey, I’m listening and I know what you’d like to see.” Consumers prefer email quality over quantity anytime.

Make sure your email designs are responsive . Most email users access their inbox on their phones, and emails that don’t show up correctly on mobile devices are often deleted. Ouch. Don’t let your email be one of those.

Don’t be afraid of the cold email . As uncomfortable as it is, the right email can convert new customers — like these cold sales email templates , which will help you get your leads’ attention.

👉🏼 HubSpot Tip : You can’t send marketing emails without any recipients — these people make up your lists. There are plenty of easy ways to grow your email list . Begin with opt-in forms on your website homepage, About page, and blog. Check out HubSpot’s Free Form Builder tool to get started.

B2B Digital Marketing

Every business, whether B2B or B2C, should have a digital presence — which is comprised of paid ads, search engine optimization, a website, and any other place your B2B company is active online. Let’s walk through a handful of tactics that can strengthen your B2B digital marketing strategy.

1. Define your target audience.

A strong B2B digital marketing strategy starts with defining your target audience, or buyer persona . This demographic and psychographic information will inform almost every other marketing activity thereafter, ensuring your content and digital material is absorbed by the right eyes and ears (and that no resources go to waste on your end).

2. Create your website.

Secondly, digital marketing can’t quite function without an informative, engaging website. Most buyers visit a website before making a purchase. Moreover, since the typical B2B sales cycle often involves many key players (such as gatekeepers, decision makers , and other folks who have to buy into a purchase), websites are easy, straightforward ways for influencers to share information about your product or service.

For inspiration on how the best B2B websites are built to impress, check out this video:

3. Optimize your digital presence.

Your website needs to be more than informative and engaging, though … it needs to be discoverable. You can do this with on-page SEO and technical SEO tactics. These include everything from image alt-text and meta descriptions (what your visitors can see) to structured data and site speed (what your visitors can’t see). Off-page SEO is also at play here, which refers to external linking strategies and social sharing — SEO tactics that take place off your website.

4. Run PPC campaigns.

Finally, round out your digital presence with pay-per-click (PPC) advertising , which allows you to get your content and brand in front of new audiences via search engines and other advertising platforms. I recommend maximizing your PPC investment by advertising more than your specific products or services — such as your brand personality, blog or social media content, or company tagline.

The best way to see an ROI from your paid ads is by 1) incorporating your buyer persona data and 2) boosting content that they can relate to. For example, it’s highly unlikely a brand new consumer who’s never heard of you is searching for your exact product.

They may be searching for a location-based solution or product feature. To reach the greatest number of potential customers, pay to target relevant categories within your brand vs. promoting your product or services.

B2B Content Marketing

We’ve talked about how B2B customers are focused on expertise, driven by logic, and desire to be educated. What better marketing tool to satisfy these priorities than B2B content marketing ?

Whereas a traditional PR marketing strategy interrupts a consumer’s day-to-day with promotional material, a content marketing strategy adds valuable information and informs the consumer — which is precisely what B2B customers are looking for. Not to mention that content marketing supports SEO efforts, which involves anticipating what your audience is searching for , helping them discover your website and content … and potentially converting them to customers.

It's important to note, content marketing is most effective when you align your content to various stages of the buyer's journey. As Jonathan Franchell, CEO and Founder of Ironpaper . points out: "Effective content in the awareness phase educates the buyer on their pain points."

"A frequent mistake B2B organizations make is educating the buyer on their own company, product, or service. The buyer isn't ready for that; they are just beginning to understand their problem."

Franchell adds, "Additionally, B2B companies should test content. Run a test on an incentive and vary the type of content - use a webinar, an ebook, or a video. Understand what format of content attracts the right types of buyers and measure it down to an individual human level."

Business decision makers prefer to get information from an article than an ad. Knowing this, I’d say you should be putting the same (if not more) resources into your content marketing than your traditional advertising strategy.

Because the B2B buyer’s journey is slightly different than the B2C buyer’s journey (which has shorter sales cycles and fewer decision makers involved), the content you create for your B2B content marketing strategy may vary more than the content you’ve seen as a consumer yourself, as illustrated in the below graphic.

Before you start creating content, though, I recommend creating a business blog . (Don’t worry, growing your blog readership is easier than you think.) Your blog will house all the content you create and serve as a home base for readers to visit and subscribe to.

B2B Social Media Marketing

Believe it or not, B2B buyers and C-Suite executives can and do use social media when making a purchase. That’s right — social media marketing isn’t just for brands targeting individual consumers.

Many B2B companies struggle with social media marketing, though. It can be harder to use social media to connect with business customers, especially because (as we mentioned above) there’s typically a lengthier sales cycle and longer chain of command.

Honestly, B2B social media marketing might not be where you convert the greatest number of leads, and that’s OK. It likely comes into play near the beginning of your customers’ buyer’s journeys.

Social media is a powerful tool for building brand awareness, giving your company an online personality, and humanizing your business — all very powerful factors when it comes to marketing and connecting with potential customers. Like email marketing, social media is also a highly effective channel for sharing your content and enhancing your brand expertise, the latter of which we know B2B customers appreciate.

Overwhelmed by social media? Spend more time connecting with your followers with our time-saving suite of social tools.

While your social media accounts might not convert as frequently as your content or email marketing, they’re just as important. In this case, followers are just as valuable — you never know when they might convert to leads or customers.

👉🏼 HubSpot Tip : Content shared by employee advocates can generate more engagement than content shared by brands. So, involve your employees in your B2B social media marketing strategy. Encourage them to create their own social media channels and share about life at your company. Create a culture account ( like our @HubSpotLife Instagram ) to show what’s going on at work, not just what you’re selling. You never know — this might attract strong talent, too.

B2B Marketing Trends to Watch in 2023 [New Data]

HubSpot's Blog team conducted research to determine the challenges, opportunities, and initiatives that most B2B marketers are focusing on in 2023.

Let's dive in.

1. Generating leads and traffic is the top challenge for marketers.

Top of mind for everyone this coming year is generating more traffic. Marketers surveyed in our 2023 Industry Trends Report cited generating leads and traffic as the top challenge they face, followed by hiring talent and pivoting their marketing strategy to round out the top three answers.

With changes on the horizon and a potential recession looming, it's no surprise 17% of marketers are concerned with pivoting their marketing strategy. Throw in increased competition, and budget constraints and it's safe to say marketers have their work cut out for them in 2023.

2. Marketers anticipate struggling to keep up with trends in 2023.

Marketing trends move fast, so it’s not surprising that marketers we surveyed cited keeping up with trends as a top concern heading into 2023.

Facing increased competition, leveraging CRM systems, and having to pivot marketing strategy rounded out the top five concerns on the horizon for marketers.

3. Social media marketers report 'creating engaging content' will be their number one challenge in 2023.

22% of social media marketers marked "creating engaging content" as the number one challenge they believe they'll face in 2023.

With nearly all businesses utilizing social media vying for customer attention, competition is stiff. Businesses have had to evaluate what makes them stand out above the crowd and how they can better engage and target prospects. To make their best efforts shine, marketers have been utilizing a variety of formats, which we'll dive into next.

4. Marketers leverage video the most.

When it comes to marketing formats, video is the preferred choice with 50% of marketers making it their go-to option. Images came in a close second with 47% of marketers utilizing this format.

Video also provided the most ROI when compared to other formats like images, blog posts, podcasts, and case studies.

It’s popularity isn’t expected to wane anytime soon. Video is expected to grow among new users in 2023 with 1 in 3 planning to leverage this format next year.

5. Influencer marketing was the trend leveraged most this year.

As a result of the pandemic, we've seen an immense shift in how consumers' shop, with the majority now shopping online — and, in particular, purchasing products directly on social media .

It makes sense, then, that B2B marketers want to ensure their products or services are showing up on social channels with influencer partnerships.

Influencer marketing is projected to become a $13.8 billion dollar industry by the end of this year, and it's showing no signs of slowing down.

Most B2B marketers — 71% — planned on investing more in influencer marketing this year, and likely was a wise choice as this avenue will continue to grow in 2023.

However, you'll want to ensure you choose partnerships wisely. While it can be tempting to find influencers with massive audiences, many businesses have seen more success with micro-influencers, so be sure to do your research to determine which influencers have the most authentic connections with your desired audience.

6. Facebook leads in ROI, but other platforms are gaining popularity.

Our 2023 Trends Report found that not only was Facebook the most widely used marketing platform, but also provided marketers the most ROI . Out of the marketers surveyed, 18% stated they plan to invest in Facebook the most, followed by TikTok and YouTube tied with 16%.

While Facebook provides the most ROI, investment in other platforms is on the rise. YouTube is expected to see the most growth in 2023 with marketers with 91% of those using it planning to increase their investment.

Measuring ROI can be easier for some activities compared to others. For instance, it's easy enough to track a social media advertising campaign's ROI if you're tracking sales made from an ad placed on Facebook. Sales is a tangible outcome, and Facebook's Ad Manager enables you to easily track ROI from your efforts.

However, other activities can be more difficult to track. Analyzing which pieces of social or blog content resulted in sales, for instance, can be a more arduous and convoluted process.

To combat this challenge, take a look at How to Calculate ROI in Marketing [Free Excel Templates].

Additionally, consider A/B testing various marketing activities and tracking ROI to determine which platforms traditionally have the biggest ROI for your business. For instance, most marketers find the highest ROI from Facebook — but this could vary for your brand or business needs.

7. The number one goal for marketers in 2023 is increasing revenue.

Understanding your big-picture goals is imperative for creating an effective marketing strategy for 2023 — so it's likely helpful to know what other B2B marketers' plan to focus on next year. .

Looking ahead, B2B marketers’ top priority is to increase revenue and sales, knocking increasing brand awareness down to the third spot from last year.

Top marketing goals:

• Increase revenue
• Improve customer experience
• Increase brand awareness
• Increase engagement
• Improve brand loyalty

Roughly half of B2B marketers reported that 'increasing brand awareness' was their number one goal in 2022.

Brand awareness is critical for fostering trust, long-term loyalty, and brand equity. It makes sense, then, that so many marketers feel it's critical for long-term success.

Additionally, Chief Evangelist at Terminus Sangram Vajre says he predicts that data collection will become a major priority for brands.

As he puts it, "The quality of our campaigns and initiatives will increasingly rely on our CRM, CDP, and 3rd-party sources to help create stylized, targeted, and convertible marketing initiatives. And since CMOs are increasingly held to ROI numbers, we have to up our game."

To consider how you might manage your data in a more efficient, sustainable way, take a look at Everything You Need to Know About Data Management .

Additionally, if you're unsure how you can continue tracking your audience without using third-party cookies, read 7 Marketing Alternatives to Tracking Cookies .

8. This year marketers stopped leveraging podcasts and audio content, while others stopped implementing VR and AR.

As important as it is to learn what marketers plan to do , it's equally vital to learn what they plan not to do. This can help you identify your own guardrails, and ensure you're sticking to the most efficient marketing strategies, rather than wasting time and resources on all of them.

HubSpot's Blog Research found 25% of marketers plan to stop leveraging podcasts and audio content ; followed closely by 23% who plan to stop leveraging VR and AR .

This doesn't mean these activities are inefficient, but it does suggest that some survey respondents found the time, effort, and resources required for each of these efforts wasn't worth it. Ultimately, it depends on your audiences' preferences.

If your audience doesn't enjoy consuming business content on podcast or audio formats, then re-consider investing in these initiatives.

However, audio content isn't going anywhere — so if you haven't already, you might consider testing various audio formats in 2023 to see how they perform with your audience. If you're unsure how to get started, take a look at Everything You Need to Know About Starting a Podcast or Clubhouse vs. Podcasts: Which Should Marketers Use? [Data + Expert Tips] .

9. Philanthropy is best when it's genuine.

Carla Andre-Brown, a Content Marketer at Mailbird told me, "Brand-building activities will look to work with social and environmental causes in a format that is ongoing and builds recognition for both parties. Marketers will need to be especially mindful of the way they present their company, to avoid being accused of having poor intentions."

"For instance," Andre-Brown continues, "a company using the Pride theme each summer without having policies that protect LGBTQ2IA+ employees is called 'Rainbow washing'. To ensure this work is well-received and has an impact, marketers should listen to their communities' suggestions and look for sustainable changes that everyone can benefit from."

A B2B marketing approach that works for one business may not work for another, but that’s not to say we can’t learn something from the pros. Here are eight B2B marketing examples of businesses who did it right.

1. Social Media Marketing: Adobe

TikTok can seem like a difficult platform to stand out as a B2B brand, but some companies have managed to attract thousands — if not millions — of viewers to their videos through high-quality content and an understanding of the app.

Take software company Adobe, which has 262.3K followers and 2 million likes on its TikTok account .

When Adobe first joined the app, the company's second video got over 2 million views. The video asked its audience, Who is a creative TikToker we should know about?, which encouraged high audience engagement.

Adobe succeeds on the app because it creates engaging content specifically catered for TikTok's audience. All Adobe's videos are short, entertaining, and easily digestible.

Take the following example, which has over 370K views and highlights how user @emilesam used Adobe's After Effects edit to create a fighting sequence against himself.

@adobe May the force be with @emilesam in his #AfterEffects edit. ✨ #Adobe #foryoupage #fyp #foryoup ♬ original sound - Adobe

The brand does a good job highlighting its products in a fun, non-promotional way. Both consumers and businesses can see a clear connection between using Adobe's products and finding success on TikTok — which makes this a great example of B2B marketing.

2. Content Marketing: Shopify

Ecommerce company Shopify produces many different types of content resources, such as a blog, business courses, and community events. But one content avenue that helps the brand stand out is its podcast , aptly titled Shopify Masters: The ecommerce business and marketing podcast for ambitious entrepreneurs.

The podcast focuses on inspiration stories from entrepreneurs, and offers practical tips for starting an online business on Shopify. Episode topics range from "Disrupting the Soda Industry with a Healthy Spin" to "How Masks For Dogs Landed a Deal on Shark Tank".

Offering so much valuable, interesting content for free is a fantastic example of effective B2B marketing, which should always provide value before it tries to extract it.

3. Digital Marketing: Mailchimp

Mailchimp's homepage is easy to navigate, clean, and focuses entirely on its customers' pain points.

Consider, for instance, the first large text you see when you click on the page: "Get down to business and grow sales". The smaller text below it reads, "Engage your customers and boost your business with Mailchimp's advanced, yet easy-to-use marketing platform."

The language focuses on the customer, and how Mailchimp can help the customer reach their goal: To grow their businesses.

Additionally, the website offers a banner at the top of the page that enables customers to choose in which language they'd prefer to view the website. Even the company's Products navigation menu includes how the product can "Get Your Business Online" and "Market Your Business".

Ultimately, the company demonstrates how much they value each of their customers by tailoring each piece of content towards its customers' unique challenges.

4. Client Testimonials: Venngage

Venngage took its positive client testimonials and sprinkled them throughout its website. This social proof lets prospects know that you have a track record of reliability, and have delighted previous customers beyond expectation. Not only that, but sharing testimonials can have a big impact on potential consumers in the Consideration and Decision stages .

After all, 98% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses, which is up from 81% in 2019, so using client feedback is a great tool to attract new ones.

Image Source

5. B2B SEO: TravelPerk, Google

A B2B buyer spends 27% of the time in the purchase journey independently researching online, potentially using at least one search engine during the online research. It’s worth the time and money to invest in making sure other businesses can find you with ease.

TravelPerk displays a diverse range of paid search and SEO. An impressive SEO strategy is its use of topic clusters and sub-topics for reaching its target audience. TravelPerk ensures that search engine pages like “business travel expenses” have a paid ad leading to its website, or high-ranking blog content providing information travelers are looking for.

6. Inside Influence Marketing: IBM, Influencer and Employee Advocacy Program

IBM Systems business group has seen the growing importance of employee voice and the rise of employee influencers as a strategy in B2B marketing.

In the words of Ryan Bares , Global Social Programs Lead, he states, “In the B2B marketing world, we’ve all come to understand that buyers trust individual voices more than formal marketing and advertising messages, so finding ways to optimize influence internally is becoming a key area of focus.”

Leveraging employees in your company that have an affinity for the industry, vast knowledge of trending topics and your brand, could be key in building new relationships in the industry.

7. B2B Referral Program: Blackbaud, Blackbaud Champions

Blackbaud offers an incredible B2B referral program that incentivizes current customers to become product advocates — Blackbaud Champions. Champions are encouraged to share their insight into how the implementation process works, what it’s like to work with the team, and how Blackbaud solutions have helped you advance their mission.

“When you share your experiences and expertise and help us spread the word about our products and services, we’ll reward you with benefits only available to Champions. By providing your feedback, participating in activities like reference calls and case studies, and sharing educational content and events on social media, you’ll earn Reward Points in the Blackbaud Champions Hub which you can redeem from the Champions Rewards”

These points are what Champions strive to redeem, as they include incentives like discounts, complimentary passes, gift cards and VIP experiences, and more.

Referral programs are a great way to kindle customer loyalty and have advocates spread the word about your business through the network.

Invest in B2B Marketing and Reach Your Business Customers

Marketing isn’t effective unless you keep your audience in mind, and no other audience is as fickle and critical as business customers. Your marketing should communicate how your business can help theirs, and if it doesn’t, you can redirect your B2B marketing strategies to reach them.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in March 2021 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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How to Create a B2B Marketing Plan: Pro Tips & Examples

Danah Derani

September 14, 2023

Learn how to reach your business’s audience and drive growth through effective B2B marketing strategies and tactics.

Here, you’ll find:

• Definition and benefits of B2B marketing
• How to create a B2B marketing plan
• B2B marketing tactics and best practices
• Examples of B2B marketing strategies

The largest factor of successful marketing is your audience. If you’re not properly targeting your buyer persona, it’s unlikely your advertisements, promotions, and general marketing tactics will thrive.

Target audiences vary greatly between consumers and businesses, though. That is, some companies cater to individual shoppers, while others serve organizations.

Marketing to businesses is an entirely different beast. That’s why business-to-business marketing (B2B marketing) exists. 

Used by companies to sell products and services to other companies, B2B marketing aims to help build, maintain, and expand relationships with other businesses. 

As a seasoned marketing professional, there’s a lot to consider when taking your B2B marketing efforts to the next level. From channel decisions to budget limits to creative demands, effective B2B marketing can be a challenge to get right. 

To help steer you in the right direction, we’ll break down what B2B marketing is, the most effective B2B marketing strategies and tactics, and how you can help tap into and grow your business audience.

What is B2B marketing?

Just like in its name, B2B marketing refers to the marketing of services or products to other businesses and organizations. B2B marketing’s purpose is to attract other businesses, familiarize them with your brand, showcase the value of your product or service, and eventually convert them from leads into customers.

In today’s digital landscape, this means marketing teams need to be able to capture a prospect’s attention quickly — and retain it. There are various tactics to do this, which we dive deeper into below. 

B2B can include various industries and forms: car parts, security solutions, office supplies, restaurant equipment, software-as-a-service (SaaS) subscriptions , and much more. Essentially, B2B marketing campaigns are targeted at any individuals — from entry-level salespeople to C-suite executives — with the ability to take on purchasing decisions.

(Image: Adobe stock)

How does B2B marketing work?

B2B marketing involves nurturing prospects through the buyer’s journey. This journey begins when a business identifies a problem it needs to find a resolution for.

Say your office has been recently renovated, leaving you in need of fresh office supplies and furniture. At this point, you’d research the appropriate products, services, and other businesses to help. Then, you’d evaluate your options, settle on the best choice, and commit to a purchase. 

Ultimately, the goal of B2B marketing is to guide prospects along each step of the buying process. 

So, your B2B marketing efforts should:

• Clearly identify the problems your business can solve
• Showcase how you stand out from competitors
• Provide trials/demos so your customers can better evaluate your products
• Allow for a swift and easy purchasing process

Benefits of B2B marketing

You’re likely wondering how your business will benefit from a B2B marketing strategy. Even with its complexities, B2B marketing provides several benefits to your company, including:

More qualified leads: An extensive B2B marketing strategy — complete with a thoughtful plan and effective tactics — will help place you in front of more prospective buyers looking for your product or service.

Increased traffic: Strong marketing content will drive more traffic to your business and allow relevant leads to become familiar with what you have to offer.  

Nurtured relationships: Once you develop a B2B marketing plan that establishes your business as an expert in your field, you can reduce customer churn by building strong client relationships. This is also known as lead nurturing.

Stronger brand awareness:   Potential clients need to know what your business can offer and how they can work with you. Having a presence on various marketing channels will help with this, ultimately increasing your brand exposure and getting leads to choose your business over another.  

Improved rankings:   You want prospective buyers to easily find you when searching for the type of service or product your business offers. With a successful B2B marketing plan, you can improve both your search rankings and visibility. 

How to build a B2B marketing plan

In B2B marketing, your strategy will inform how you plan to increase brand awareness about your business offerings to potential buyers. This process involves everything from determining your target market and brand positioning to selecting the channels and tactics needed to take leads through their buyer’s journey. 

While there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach that guarantees success for every B2B company, the basic steps of putting together a B2B marketing plan are applicable to all B2B companies. 

Follow these six best practices when building out your plan to ensure it meets your business goals.

1. Determine your brand positioning

First, you’ll want to define your brand positioning in your respective market. Brand positioning is what helps your offering stand out from competitors. This statement outlines the who, when, why, and how of your brand identity — or what makes it unique through the eyes of the customer. 

Think of your brand highlights, including excellent customer service, competitive pricing, ease of use, superior quality, and the like. This essential step is how you’ll maintain a consistent brand image and loyal customer base.

2. Define your target market and target audience

Now that you’ve defined your brand statement, you need to understand and define who you’re marketing to. Since your products or services may be better suited for some types of buyers versus others, you’ll want to make sure your marketing efforts are aimed at the right target audience and target market. Let’s begin with your target market, or the broader group of people who would be interested in your brand. In the B2B world, you’ll identify your target companies with data including:

• Company size
• Company region
• Number of employees
• Company industry

Next up, you’ll define your target audience. This is the specific segment of that broader target market who will also be the focus of your marketing campaigns. To determine these individual prospects, we recommend using demographic data including:

• Education level

Once you’ve gathered this information, you can begin creating buyer personas to help you understand how your potential customers make purchase decisions, as well as which marketing channels they’re likely to use. 

For example, if you’re trying to target entry-level employees ages 18–22 in the entertainment industry, it’s safe to say you can use content on social media platforms to attract them. 

3. Identify the buyer’s journey

Before a potential buyer makes a purchase, they’ll navigate through a process known as the buyer’s journey . This process has three stages for audiences:

• Awareness: The buyer identifies that they have paint points and want to understand more about them.
• Consideration: The buyer begins to look for and compare potential solutions to their problem.
• Decision: The buyer is ready to purchase the best solution that fits their needs.

To help guide your potential buyers through their journey, it’s important to build a trusting relationship with them. So, your B2B marketing plan should meet the following:

• Generate demand using top-of-the-funnel marketing tactics that boost awareness of a problem and spark interest in your offering;
• Generate and convert leads using middle- and bottom-of-the-funnel marketing tactics that convert interest into action;
• Build customer loyalty using marketing tactics that transition one-off customers to returning customers.

After understanding and identifying your buyer’s journey, we recommend creating a customer journey map for your company. This visual tool will help you define your customers’ needs and how they engage with your brand.

4. Choose your tactics and channels

This operational stage is where you’ll begin using different marketing tactics and selecting the channels that make the most sense for both your brand and target audience. 

By implementing inbound or outbound marketing tactics (even a combo), you can generate more leads at the top of the funnel. Then, you can make strategic decisions about things like acquisition, conversion, and retention.

5. Create assets and execute campaigns

Now that you’ve decided on the best tactics and channels to reach both your marketing goals and potential buyers, it’s time to start creating assets. These can — and should — continue to evolve as you test and optimize your campaigns. 71% of B2B buyers state they consume multiple assets to help with their decision-making process before moving on to communicating with a sales team. For many prospective buyers, this is their first interaction with your brand. That’s why it’s essential to create meaningful ones that’ll guide them to the final stage of the buyer’s journey. 

Having a range of attention-grabbing, relevant content will help your brand stand out and prospective buyers see how your product or service is the best option out there. Keep in mind the lengthier B2B sales cycle when it comes to executing and launching your marketing campaigns.

6. Measure and improve

After your content has been published, monitor its performance metrics, collect data, and determine how to maximize its greatest reach. This information will help ensure you’re achieving the best ROI on your B2B marketing efforts and help assess which tactics are the most effective.

B2B marketing tactics (that actually work)

B2B marketing tactics make up the how that you’ll use to serve your overarching strategy. The difference between a B2B marketing plan and a tactics is as follows:

• A B2B marketing plan is the strategy you’ll define to meet your business objectives.
• A B2B marketing tactic is a tool you’ll utilize to achieve the objectives outlined in your plan.

There are two main goals to keep in mind when selecting which digital marketing tactics are best suited for your B2B marketing efforts: generate demand and generate and convert leads .

Generate demand

At the top of the marketing funnel, the main purpose of generating demand is to highlight a problem that potential buyers have and show them your solution.

1. Content marketing

Content marketing is a digital marketing tactic that involves creating and publishing content that’s relevant and valuable to your audience. This is essential for B2B businesses as it has a great ROI and positions you as an expert in your field.

The goal with B2B content marketing is to increase brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, generate leads, and ultimately convert prospects into buyers.

The goal of SEO is to drive more traffic to your website from search engine result pages (SERPs), which should ultimately lead to more buyers. To take advantage of this digital marketing tactic that goes alongside content marketing, you’ll optimize your website and online content with specific, relevant keywords.

We recommend conducting a full content analysis, keyword research, and content audit, followed by implementing link building, page title and meta description updates, and high-value keywords. 

For example, if your company offers SaaS tools to other large companies, you could implement the keyword “enterprise SaaS tools” into your web content. This will help increase visibility and improve the ranking of your web page on search engines like Google and Bing so that more people find your website when they’re searching for information related to your products or services.

3. Paid search/pay-per-click (PPC)

Another effective B2B marketing channel is paid search, or PPC marketing. This tactic involves utilizing Google Ads, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, and other ad channels to display your ad beside specific keywords when someone searches for them online. B

2B companies can generate a great number of leads and reach potential customers with paid advertising, as it allows them to target specific groups of people who have already shown an interest in your offering. 

Pro tip: Combine your paid search efforts with other marketing activities like email marketing, SEO, and content marketing for the best results.

4. Social media marketing (SMM)

Even though B2B focuses on targeting potential customers within other businesses, those B2B customers still serve as individuals who you’ll be solving a problem for.

With social media marketing , you can interact directly with prospects by learning what they want and getting feedback on your products or services. This tactic is especially important considering 72% of B2B buyers indicate using social media to research solutions, and 84% of B2B executives state using social media as a source for making buying decisions.

Popular social media channels for B2B are Twitter, Meta (Facebook and Instagram), and LinkedIn, with each platform having its own unique features that make it ideal for various audiences. 

Generate and convert leads

Once you’ve used the above tactics to generate demand and reach your target audience, you’ve reached the middle and bottom of the marketing funnel. Your goal here is lead generation — to encourage potential buyers to move to the purchase or decision-making stage of their buyer’s journey.

1. Retargeting

Retargeting is a great opportunity to place your business in front of the prospects who are familiar with your brand and have already taken certain actions on your website. For example, they may have visited your site and added items to their cart, but ultimately left without making a purchase.

Retargeting displays targeted ads for your products or services on different websites, social sites, and SERPs to entice potential buyers to visit again — and hopefully make a purchase.

2. Referrals

B2B referral marketing involves leveraging your existing customers to generate your company’s new B2B business leads. You can do this through a referral program which incentivizes prospects with an offer.

Referrals allow you to increase reach, grow your business without spending money on ads, and help build trust and credibility for your brand.

3. Email marketing

One of the best ways to convert leads into customers is through email marketing. You can use this personalized tactic alongside other types of marketing activities, like social media marketing and content marketing. It allows you to send newsletters, updates about your products or services, invitations to events, and any other brand-specific information you feel is beneficial for potential buyers to learn.

Email marketing lets you engage in a more personalized way with your audience by targeting them with specific messages. The greater your engagement, the more prospects that are likely to come your way. And more prospects mean more conversions, which ultimately leads to increased sales.

4. Marketing automation

This strategic method is commonly used to guide leads throughout their buyer’s journey, particularly at the point when they need a greater level of information and trust in a company before making a purchase.

Once you’ve identified that a user has visited your website or downloaded one of your free resources, marketing automation allows you to automatically follow up with them in hopes of building that trust to choose your brand as the solution to their problem.

B2B marketing examples

Now that you know what to do to get your B2B marketing plan up and running, we’ve put together a list of three successful B2B marketing plans to give you a spark of inspiration ahead of your next campaign.

Roche Diagnostics: Marketing automation

Roche Diagnostics is a leading healthcare company that provides pharmaceutical and healthcare testing solutions to companies worldwide. To help avoid marketing to prospects who may not be a good fit for their specific products and services, the company places a premium on targeting their ideal customer base. This is an especially important consideration for an industry as large as healthcare.

(Image: Roche website)

Roche leverages marketing automation tools to qualify and nurture leads. This also helps them understand where prospects are in their buyer’s journey. Marketing automation also allows them to compare customer data between business units to further increase engagement with existing customers.

Shopify: Content marketing

Content marketing is essential for any B2B company that wants to attract a large customer base. Shopify has invested in almost every type of content marketing, including free business courses and how-to guides, podcasts, and blogs.

(Image: Shopify website)

One aspect of its content marketing roster that stands out amongst competitors is their offering of over 20 free tools. These tools help solve problems for entrepreneurs, including generating a business name, making a logo, or creating a catchy slogan. Queries for these specific types of tools have thousands of monthly searches on Google. In turn, this increases the number of visits to their  overall website. 

IBM: Social media marketing

IBM does an excellent job using social media marketing in a compelling way to reach current and potential customers. The company showcases its legacy in the tech industry by sharing photos and videos on Instagram. Which, of course, builds trust and credibility with their target audience. IBM also shares videos of employees talking about their work experience and what new technologies they’re researching.

(Image: IBM’s Instagram page)

This humanistic approach of storytelling reinforces the brand’s company values around innovation, trust, and personal responsibility, as well as making them a company that has seen repeated success for the last 100 years. 

What is the difference between B2B and B2C marketing?

Now that you understand how to put together your marketing plan, you may be wondering how B2B marketing differs from B2C marketing.

The main difference between B2B and business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing is the targeted buyer. B2B marketing is focused on selling to businesses, while B2C is about selling to individual consumers. 

B2C companies look into the interests and needs of individual consumers who often make a purchase out of desire.  On the flip side, B2B organizations provide a specific solution to another business’ challenge or need. This makes the B2B marketing funnel and sales cycle much longer as there are more decision-makers.

B2B marketing poses some unique challenges that B2C doesn’t have to deal with — all of which are important to keep in mind as you develop your marketing plan. These include: 

Decision-makers

B2C generally has one individual making a purchase decision, while B2B often requires many people. This is because with B2B, purchase decisions are typically sent up the management chain for approval and involve greater effort and team input. 

Longer sales cycle

Since there’s only one decision-maker involved in B2C, the sales cycle is much shorter than B2B. On average, B2B sales funnels take between four and eight months .

Brand strategy

With B2C, branding is all about speaking to and reaching customer emotions. B2B branding, on the other hand, focuses more on customers’ intellect by gathering data and conducting case studies to determine how the service or product is the most reliable solution.

Different platforms

Since B2C aims to reach customers rather than other businesses, they typically use digital platforms  for engagement. (Think Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram). B2B marketing focuses primarily on strategizing efforts in search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, LinkedIn, and email. 

Although B2B is more involved than B2C, and the same strategies won’t work for each of their respective audiences, there’s a lot B2B marketers can learn from B2C campaigns . 

The takeaway

Yes, there’s a lot that goes into a B2B marketing plan. And it should continue to evolve over time. So it’s important to keep track of metrics, try out new methods, channels, and tactics, and continuously optimize your strategy. The marketing tactics outlined above should all be added to your marketing toolbox.

Remember, even though it’s business-to-business marketing, you’re still speaking to other humans. The most effective B2B marketing is thoughtful, conversational, targeted, and relevant. Take action to maintain an understanding of your customers’ motivations, pain points, and what they need most. 

Looking for more insight on how to improve your marketing efforts? We’d love to chat .

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How to Write an Assisted Living Business Plan + Free Sample Plan PDF

Elon Glucklich

7 min. read

Updated April 3, 2024

Free Download: Sample Nursing Home Business Plan Template

With the U.S. senior population expected to reach 80 million by 2040 , the demand for assisted living services is skyrocketing. 

Seniors are living longer, and many are looking for amenities like health care, fitness, and recreation services as they age. This surge in demand, plus consistently high occupancy rates in well-run facilities, means starting an assisted living facility or improving your existing facility can be an incredibly lucrative business venture.

However, achieving success requires more than just filling rooms. From ensuring the health and wellbeing of your residents, to navigating license and permitting requirements, to understanding your market to securing funding for your facility, you’ll need to think strategically to ensure your care facility reaches its full financial potential. 

A business plan organizes your market, customer, and competitive research, so you can prioritize the most profitable services and develop marketing strategies to attract the right residents. Think of it as your roadmap for defining a successful business model. It’s the type of proof of concept that lenders or investors will need to see before they’ll feel comfortable funding your venture .

• What should you include in an assisted living business plan?

Here are a few sections we recommend including in an assisted living facility business plan:

Executive summary

Market analysis, competitive analysis, marketing plan, financial plan.

No two assisted living business plans will be exactly alike. A residential assisted living business owner’s market research and growth strategy will vary depending on the market or markets they’re operating in. And while some assisted living developers own large portfolios of facilities in multiple locations, others may be focused on a single location.

If you’re starting a new assisted living business, it’s likely that you’re seeking a bank loan or outside investment. Business plans written for funding typically follow a detailed and proven structure to impress lenders and potential investors.

Below we’ll highlight some of the most important business plan sections for an assisted living business. 

Your executive summary is your facility’s elevator pitch. 

It’s the first, and sometimes only, section of your business plan that a lender or investor will read. So your executive summary needs to be engaging.

In no more than two pages, draw the reader in with an overview of your business opportunity and mission. Why are you passionate about serving seniors? What problems are you solving for residents and their families?

Describe what sets you apart. Maybe you’re opening a new facility in a location with pristine views and landscaping. Or maybe you’re offering innovative care programs.

Briefly mention your team’s qualifications and commitment to resident care. Touch on the factors that will be key to your success, such as hiring highly trained staff or introducing programs tailored to residents’ needs.

With significant startup costs to run an assisted living facility, it’s crucial that you understand both the broader senior living industry and the dynamics in your market. The market analysis section is where you show potential funders of your project that you’ve done your research.

Get to know your potential residents. Start by analyzing the size and projected growth of the senior population in your area. The U.S. Census Bureau is an excellent source of demographic information, and should include the age breakdown of your community.

It’s also important to determine the characteristics of your potential residents. Are you targeting:

• Active seniors seeking independent living with some support
• Seniors dealing with, or recovering from, surgeries or other medical issues
• Seniors with memory care and other intensive needs

You may be targeting a combination of these services in your assisted living project. But no matter who your ideal customers are, you need to demonstrate through your study of industry and demographics trends that there is a demand for the services you’re offering. 

Identifying your competition is crucial if you’re planning an assisted living facility. A lender or investor will expect your business plan to analyze your facility’s competitors, and demonstrate that there’s room in the market for a new entrant.

Start by researching and listing your competitors. These could be:

• Other licensed assisted living facilities
• Independent living communities
• Adult foster homes
• In-home caregiving services

Note their size, services offered, and any specializations they offer. What are their strengths and weaknesses? Are they large chains or smaller, family-owned facilities? 

Consider factors like:

• Level of care

Be honest about your facility’s strengths and weaknesses compared to the competition. Do you offer a unique activity program? Are your rooms more spacious?  Focus on what sets you apart.

Answering these questions will help you determine how to stand out and win over potential residents and their families.

Remember: Solid research is key. Back up your assumptions about your target market and competition with data and analysis. This shows potential investors and partners that you have a strong grasp of the assisted living landscape.

By the end of your competitive analysis, you should be able to state why a family would choose you over your competitors. 

This is where you turn your market and competitive research into an actionable plan to attract residents to your facility.

By now, you should have plenty of information about the senior living market in your area. Now it’s time to document how you’ll reach families seeking senior care services for their loved ones.

Start by thinking broadly about tactics to reach your target customers:

• Networking with healthcare providers and elder care professionals to spread awareness of your facility
• Advertising online, through television commercials, in printed publications and on social media
• Appearing at community events

Each of these strategies accomplish the goal of boosting your visibility. Make sure your messaging through these marketing channels emphasizes the factors that set your business apart from competitors. They might include: 

• A focus on personalized care
• Top-of-the-line amenities
• A vibrant social calendar

Additionally, spend some time in your marketing plan to discuss your pricing and sales process. Document your pricing and how it compares to your competition. And detail how you will turn prospects into residents. Will families tour in-person? Can they schedule virtual consultations? The plan should detail the entire journey prospects will experience, from initial awareness of your facility to moving in.

Finally, remember to track the results of your marketing efforts. This helps you refine your strategy and get the most out of your marketing budget.

This section is where your careful planning turns into actual numbers . While it might seem intimidating, don’t worry – you don’t need a finance degree to get this right. Here’s what a typical assisted living financial plan includes:

Sales forecast : Project occupancy rates and income from resident services. Be realistic, especially in the first year, and consider different pricing tiers if applicable.

Expense budget : List all planned spending, including:

• Staffing (one of your largest costs)
• Food, maintenance, and supplies
• Insurance, marketing, and licensing fees
• Legal and professional services

Profit & Loss (P&L) : This combines income and expenses to show if you’re profitable.

Cash flow statement : Crucial for managing bills. Shows when money comes in and out, so you avoid cash shortages.

Balance sheet : This snapshots your facility’s financial health, listing assets (like your building), liabilities (like loans), and overall equity.

Important notes

Startup costs : If seeking funding, detail costs like renovations, equipment, and initial staffing.

Assumptions: Be transparent about any predictions you’re making (occupancy rates, growth, etc.). This adds credibility.

Use of funds: Explain to potential investors exactly how their money will fuel your success.

Industry-specific costs: Research sample financials for assisted living facilities to ensure you cover all your bases.

Remember, your financial plan is a living document. Revisit it regularly to track your progress and adjust your strategy as needed.

• Download your free assisted living one page sample business plan

Download our assisted living sample business plan right now for free. You can download other medical and health business plans , or check out Bplans’ collection of over 550 free sample business plans to find more inspiration. If you’re considering other types of senior care businesses, read our article on how to write a home health care business plan .

With tons of opportunity, but significant upfront costs, it’s crucial to do your homework before investing funds in your assisted living plan. Writing a business plan is one of the best ways to put yourself on a path to a financially viable business.

And the business plan is an absolute must if you’re looking for outside funding to help you turn your dream into a reality.

See why 1.2 million entrepreneurs have written their business plans with LivePlan

Elon is a marketing specialist at Palo Alto Software, working with consultants, accountants, business instructors and others who use LivePlan at scale. He has a bachelor's degree in journalism and an MBA from the University of Oregon.

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Adobe Summit 2024: Unveiling the future of customer experience management (CXM) in the age of generative AI

Today, at Adobe Summit, the world’s largest digital experience conference, we unveiled a suite of innovations for the enterprise across Adobe Experience Cloud and Adobe Creative Cloud that empower brands to deliver one-to-one personalization at scale through natively integrated generative AI and real-time insights.

These major innovations will deliver business value from generative AI by driving insights based on unified customer data, scaling the production of personalized content, and boosting customer engagement through journey orchestration. This includes a new Adobe Experience Platform AI Assistant that supercharges the productivity of experienced practitioners, democratizing access to extended teams through a natural language interface and enabling them to unleash new ideas. Adobe GenStudio is a new generative AI-first offering for marketing teams to quickly plan, create, manage, activate across apps and publishers, and measure on-brand content. New Adobe Journey Optimizer capabilities enable both B2C and B2B brands to enhance journey orchestration with timely, personalized experiences. A new capability in Adobe Firefly, Adobe’s family of creative generative AI models for safe commercial use, called Structure Reference brings users a new level of creative control.

“Generative AI enables a fundamental shift in the relationship between brands and their customers, creating a transformative moment for business leaders to drive organizational productivity while delivering new digital experiences. The ability to personalize interactions at scale has become the key growth driver in customer experience management for enterprises around the world, and Adobe is leading the way in making this a reality with powerful generative AI deeply integrated into existing workflows.”

Anil Chakravarthy, President, Digital Experience Business, Adobe

New data innovations

Announced on stage at Summit were a broad array of releases anchored in Adobe Experience Platform, to enable brands to activate customer data across various enterprise systems through an integrated set of applications, creating a foundation to activate insights and deliver true personalization at scale.

• Adobe Experience Platform AI Assistant provides a simple conversational interface that can answer technical questions and will automate tasks, simulate outcomes, and generate audiences and journeys within applications such as Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform, Adobe Journey Optimizer, and Adobe Customer Journey Analytics.
• Federated Audience Composition provides data management flexibility and efficiency by allowing teams to federate audiences and data directly from enterprise data warehouses (AWS Redshift, Azure Synapse, Databricks, Google BigQuery, and Snowflake) to augment real-time and cross-channel use cases in Adobe Experience Platform. This enables teams to minimize data copy, govern the use of sensitive data, and get the most out of their existing IT investments for powering customer experience workflows such as profile enrichment, audience segmentation, and personalized communications.
• Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform (CDP) Collaboration is a new clean room application for brands and publishers to collaborate in a privacy-safe way to discover, reach, and measure their high-value audiences in a world without third-party cookies. Real-Time CDP Collaboration is expanding and evolving the value of a CDP to include data collaboration as a critical and necessary component of customer data management in a cookieless world.

New content innovations

The c ontent supply chain is an end-to-end business process that every company needs to deliver the content required for marketing campaigns and personalized customer experiences. It is composed of five key building blocks: Workflow and Planning, Creation and Production, Asset Management, Delivery and Activation, and Insights and Reporting. Adobe GenStudio, a new generative AI-first offering lets marketing teams quickly plan, create, manage, activate, and measure on-brand content to help companies automate and optimize their content supply chain.

• Workflow and Planning: Adobe Workfront Planning provides every user a unified view into all activities across the marketing lifecycle, to ensure organizations plan strategically and accelerate delivery.
• Creation and Production: Adobe Firefly Services and Custom Models unlock personalization at scale for enterprise content creation and production, eliminating manual tasks while ensuring generated outputs remain on-brand.
• Asset Management : Adobe Experience Manager Assets content hub allows teams to easily distribute brand-governed assets across their organization and external partners. Content Hub forms a seamless connection point between GenStudio and AEM Assets, where any user can search for an asset and create personalized variations with Firefly in Adobe Express, the all-in-one content creation application.
• Delivery and Activation : Adobe Experience Manager Sites variant generation, powered by generative AI, enables brands to create personalized variations of marketing assets, with copy that is audience-centric and on-brand. With Edge Delivery Services, brands can deliver the fastest possible page load times. Document-based authoring in AEM Sites also allows the broader team to author webpages in Microsoft Word or Google Docs.
• Insights and Reporting: Adobe Content Analytics creates an essential feedback loop for brands to understand which generated assets and campaigns are performing best, down to the attribute level. These insights help build a more complete view of the overall customer experience, expanding Adobe Customer Journey Analytics beyond web, streaming, in-product, and more.

New customer journey innovations

For both B2C and B2B brands, the ability to enhance customer engagement through journey orchestration hinges on a unified and real-time view of the customer. This ensures that as brands interact with consumers on channels such as the web, social media and mobile, any real-time changes in user behavior or preferences are captured, triggering new experiences. The newest offerings announced at Summit are designed to orchestrate personalized journeys that drive impact to help teams harmonize both brand-initiated and customer-initiated moments.

• Adobe Experience Platform and Adobe Journey Optimizer Unified Experimentation uses enhanced statistical models to help marketers, product managers, and developers leverage experimentation and decisioning capabilities within journeys — driving reuse of offers across communication channels or optimizing the ideal path a customer should take to maximize conversion.
• Adobe Journey Optimizer provides enhanced brand-initiated journey orchestration by helping brands connect their audience-centric campaigns with real-time customer signals, so that the right customers are engaged and mistimed marketing communications can be avoided.
• Adobe Journey Optimizer: B2B Edition is a new application built on Adobe Experience Platform, with an industry-first focus on account specific buying-group journey orchestration to reimagine sales and marketing collaboration throughout the B2B revenue lifecycle.

Customer and partner momentum

“Creating richer and more relevant experiences within a connected customer journey is fundamental to success in today’s marketing climate and Adobe Experience Cloud has been our partner of choice in customer experience management,” said Norm de Greve, chief marketing officer, General Motors. “Adobe’s enterprise applications allow our teams to deliver real-time, highly personalized touchpoints at scale for customers engaging with our brands.”

Adobe also announced today an expanded partnership with Microsoft to deliver generative AI capabilities for marketers that bring powerful Adobe Experience Cloud customer experience insights and Firefly generative AI directly into Microsoft applications to reinvent workflows and ignite productivity. An expanded partnership with OneTrust integrates consent management into AI-powered customer journeys. Adobe is also working with agency partners including Havas, IPG, Omnicom, Publicis, and WPP, and system integrators including Accenture, Deloitte, IBM, and EY to accelerate generative AI investments, processes, and workflows across creative production and digital marketing.

Adobe Summit 2024 is a hybrid event with both an in-person and online presentation powered by Adobe Experience Cloud. Luminary speakers and industry leaders presenting at Summit include General Motors CEO Mary Barra, Pfizer Chief Digital and Technology Officer Lidia Fonseca, Delta Airlines CEO Ed Bastian, TSB Bank CMO Emma Springham, MLB Chief Operations and Strategy Officer Chris Marinak, founder and CEO of Zaia Ventures Ukonwa Ojo, author and entrepreneur Nina Schick, and Shaquille O’Neal, host of Adobe Sneaks where Adobe unveils the latest research and development innovations.

To watch the Adobe Summit keynotes online, as well as explore more than 200 sessions and hands-on labs across 12 tracks, network with peers or speak live with an Adobe expert, visit the Summit web experience .

https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2024/03/19/leverage-ai-to-get-more

https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2024/03/18/adobe-announces-firefly-powered-features-substance-3d-apps

https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2024/03/18/adobe-partners-nvidia-harness-power-pdf-intelligence-next-gen-llms