Employees in marketing departments or agencies often have to fight prejudices. Contrary to what some people think, creative work does not only consist of mood boards and brainstorming sessions, but in most cases follows clear structures. Learn how you can establish these structures in your company.

1. Marketing processes in B2B companies

In agencies, tried and tested work processes are a given: yes, they are creative and iterative, but by no means chaotic. Because with the right strategy, you not only save time and money, but also capacity and frustration.

2. What understands one by a marketing process?

Wikipedia provides us with the following definition: "The marketing process is a core process that relates to the sales of a company. This is where the exploration, design and development of sales markets takes place."

A marketing process therefore includes the necessary steps to position a company's services on the market, to increase awareness and thus to win customers. These steps include the definition of goals, the strategy of how to achieve these goals, the necessary measures and the measurement of success.

As is common in theory, there are also different approaches and divisions in the structure of the marketing process. Essentially, every marketing process consists of the following steps, even if they are named differently:

2.1 The marketing analysis
This is essential as the first step of any strategy: Where do you stand? What are the strengths and weaknesses of your company or the service in question? What are the USPs? Does the service solve a current problem of your target group?

In addition to the internal analysis, an external analysis of your competition and the relevant market should also take place. What opportunities does your performance have in the market and compared to your competitors? What do you really do better?

2.2 The marketing objectives
Derive the marketing objectives from your business objectives. Every activity should contribute to the overall success of the company. If you have not defined corporate goals before, do so now. They give direction to your daily activities and to your employees. They can be economically (increase in turnover, profit, etc.) or psychologically (customer satisfaction, awareness, etc.) oriented.

2.3 The marketing strategies
A marketing strategy describes the way you should achieve your marketing goals and which measures you should use to achieve them. Often there is not just one strategy: depending on how many different markets you serve and how different your target groups are, it is advisable to set up several marketing strategies to match them as closely as possible to your target groups and markets.

2.4 The marketing instruments
They describe the concrete factors of marketing, e.g. product, price, distribution and communication policy. An optimal marketing mix describes the combination of instruments through which you achieve the marketing goals.

2.5 Marketing control
Continuous performance measurement is necessary to check whether you have achieved your marketing goals and - if not - what you can improve. This is usually done by comparing target and actual values.

3. How set you the theoretical marketing process in the practice convert?

Of course, we know from experience that much of the theory cannot be translated one-to-one into our everyday practice. However, it is advisable to use the outlined marketing process as a template for your structure. It gives you an indication of which questions should definitely be answered when creating each marketing activity. The design thinking approach provides you with many tools on how to put the theoretical concepts into practice.

With clear structures, you also simplify project management: structured processes always require the same tasks. Employees can develop their own effective way of working and responsibilities can be distributed sustainably. Once the division is established, it can also be applied to future projects. This makes the way of working more efficient and saves you valuable working time.

Also use the process to review existing campaigns and marketing activities: What has already worked well and where is there potential for improvement?

When you introduce the marketing process, you should pay attention to the following:

  • Designate a project manager.
    This person ensures that the process goes according to plan, timings are met and communication between stakeholders works.
  • Adapt the template to your team
    Create a plan from the steps above. Then work through the five steps of the marketing process as a team.
  • Briefing
    Create a briefing for everyone involved in the project. This way everyone is on the same page, even if they work in different departments.

The person responsible for the project coordinates the progress and communication between all those involved. This way, the individual measures are created in the same design, in the same tone of voice and with the same content; after all, a uniform appearance increases the recognition value of your brand and your performance among the target groups.

4. Your way of working digitise for more efficiency

t is precisely now that we realise what a relief digital tools can be for our everyday business. Use them also for your marketing processes to make communication within the team more transparent, faster and clearer.

Project management

Digital project management tools make it easier to distribute, control and check tasks. The status of the project and the individual tasks is transparent and comprehensible for everyone.

Cloud systems

Documents and files can be collected in a central location and are thus accessible to all participants. A transparent structure is important to maintain an overview.

Of course, it makes sense to introduce these tools not only in marketing, but for the entire company.

5. How convince you the management and your colleagues, new marketing processes introduce?

Introducing new, structured processes usually requires the support of management. You are most likely to convince them by showing how the new processes can save resources - while maintaining or even increasing quality. Suggest the following points for resource reduction that will optimise your marketing processes:

5.1 Optimise internal communication
Transparency is the key here: the goals, strategy, timing and activities can be viewed and reviewed by all participants at any time. Using a suitable project management tool, as described above, all employees can get an overview on a regular basis: Countless status meetings and endless e-mail histories become superfluous. Delays can be avoided and followed up in case of emergency.

5.2 Hire external service providers with templates instead of constantly new designs
Design is a big cost factor in marketing. Especially if you hire an agency or freelancer to do it for you. Instead of having layouts and graphics created from scratch every time, commission your service provider to create templates that you can edit with your existing programmes and tools. For example, you can adapt texts or images yourself.

5.3 Recycle content
Content collection and creation is very time-consuming, which is why it is often handed over to external service providers - of course, this often makes it expensive. However, it is an investment that is well worth it: you may spend a lot of money on a white paper, a case study or a professional article, but in the end you have a professional text that you can process further. Pick out individual passages and turn them into an exciting social media post or a press release. There are no limits to the possibilities.
Make sure that you store your content in a unique place. This way you have the bundled knowledge in one place and can access it whenever you need it. Also, create an editorial plan that includes not only planned content, but also existing content. This way you always have an overview.

6. Conclusion: Change enables Improvement

Integrating new processes into the day-to-day running of a company is no easy task. It takes patience, cohesion and strategy. But only through change can we improve things. If you do some research, you will notice how much more productive and efficient people work when they have a clear structure. Use that to your advantage.

Marie Great

The strategy and creative teams at Blaupause are passionate about creating relevant and creative content for our B2B blog. Do you have a topic related to B2B marketing, innovation management, employer branding, etc. that you'd like to learn more about? Bring it on!

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