Standing at the precipice of a new B2B marketing campaign is an exciting place to be. A vast ocean of opportunity lies ahead – but without a clear objective to guide the way, your campaign could fall into uncharted water. 

So how do you know which objective is going to set you on the path to success?

Determine the overarching business goal.

Your objective shouldn’t automatically be to ‘launch a lead generation campaign’ just because you have revenue targets to hit. You need to take your strategy a step back and find an objective related to your overall business goals, not your marketing tactics. 

Or perhaps you have revenue targets to hit within a short timeframe. At a glance, this goal sounds like a cut-and-dry lead-gen campaign, but the most effective objective may be to cross- or up-sell to your existing customer base via referral schemes or loyalty programmes.

For example: you want to bring a new service to market within a new segment. If brand recognition is low across the new audience, you may need to launch a long-term brand awareness campaign to establish your profile and keep your brand front-of-mind throughout the B2B sales cycle.

Speak to your target audience. 

Think about the people you’re selling to: the type of companies they work for, positions they hold, and problems they face.

Speak to a group of these people – via interviews, polls or surveys – to understand their needs and behaviours in the market. Do they struggle with the problem your offering solves? Do they know that a solution to this problem exists? Have they heard of your brand? Are they aware of your offering? Do they use a competitor? Are they aware of your USPs?

These questions will help you understand your audience’s readiness, which is pivotal in steering your B2B campaign objective. As a general rule of thumb: 

• If your audience doesn’t know that a solution to their problem exists, you need to drive need through a demand generation campaign. 
• If demand for your solution is there, but your audience doesn’t know and/or trust your brand, you need a brand awareness campaign. 
• If demand is there, and your brand is known, you can focus on lead generation.

Validate your audience insight with market data.

If your campaign audience is similar to your existing customer base, speak to the sales team to see if their customer interactions mirror your insight. Check your CRM data to validate their anecdotal experience even further. 

Or if you’re targeting a new audience, you can use Google Search Console’s keyword tool to understand audience maturity and determine the demand for your product or service.

Are people searching for your solution? Are competitor sites ranking highly for terms related to your offering? Or are there long-tail terms that indicate people have a problem you’re able to solve?

If not, you’ll need to focus on demand generation. 

If the demand is there, but no one’s searching for your branded terms, you need to focus on brand awareness. 

And again, if demand is there, and your brand is known, you can focus on lead generation. 

Set metrics against your objective. 

By now, you should know which marketing objective to focus on. (If not, speak to our campaign experts at Lesniak Swann.)

Next, set campaign targets that align with your chosen objective. 

If you now realise your objective won’t help you hit all your metrics, you may need to blend two objectives. If this is the case, always choose a primary objective – where you’ll focus the most resource – backed by a secondary objective. 

For example, your campaign may start with long-term brand building, and transition to lead generation as you increase awareness across your market.

Now all that’s left to do is to plan, produce and activate your campaign!

We recently worked with ANS – an industry-leading digital transformation partner – who were looking for a B2B lead generation agency to maximise ROI. See how we helped them hit lofty revenue targets. 

Or explore how our sector-specific, thought-leadership campaign attracted attention and generated leads for TalkTalk Business.

Looking to launch a results-driven B2B marketing campaign? Let’s talk it through.