Design Thinking Methods - Part 4: Visibility Matrix
In our series "Design Thinking for your B2B Marketing" we present helpful tools that you can use in your strategic marketing.This article is about the Visibility Matrix, which supports you in increasing your visibility in your target markets.
Design thinking is a creative approach to solving problems and developing new ideas from a customer perspective. Use the agile methods of this way of working to move your B2B marketing forward.

1. Why You now with this start should, your Visibility to increase

Visibility is a decisive factor for corporate success. Only what is seen can be bought. Many B2B companies rely on being known in their markets. But what if new players come along and ensnare customers with the full range of communicative possibilities? Bombard them with benefits and added values on all channels and convince them in the end? It is better to be the first to occupy the media relevant to your target groups and present yourself as a leading solution partner across all media.

But how do you start? How do you know which media and channels are really relevant, which ones you should start with, which ones you can expand later?

2. Determine Find the Status Quo

Based on our experience, it is helpful in agile groups to keep in mind where you are coming from and where you want to go. A visibility matrix is useful for this.

In it, one first collects all the media used so far and evaluates them according to how high their impact is and how resource-intensive their implementation or maintenance is. For example, a Christmas email to all addresses can achieve a high reach without much effort, but the effect is rather limited. A blog like this is more costly, but usually brings more attention.

It is important that as many employees as possible who participate in the external presentation - for example, by running their own blog on the topic - also participate in the visibility matrix. Ideally, you should send out a circular to find out who is active in this field in your company. The good thing is that you are looking for the most communicative colleagues, and they will respond to your call.

Once all the "priests" have been gathered, a good collection of all the channels and media used so far is quickly assembled. These are supplemented by all media that have not yet been taken into account. So much for the status quo.

3. Place Set out concrete goals set

The second step is to look into the future: Where do we want to address whom in the future? And through which channel and at what time?

The Visibility Matrix provides a timeline on the x-axis. In B2B companies it can make sense to divide the year into leading trade fairs. All other channels are placed around these trade fairs: in the invitation phase, during the trade fair and after the trade fair. Other milestones can be major product innovations, company mergers or changes in management. Once the milestones have been defined, a communication plan emerges almost by itself: Depending on the impact and effort, social media activities can be planned, supported by the homepage or flanked by classic but often high-impact mailings. The impact can be shown with the placement on the y-axis, the effort with the number of added sticky dots: The higher a medium is placed and the fewer sticky points it has, the more intensively you should start planning and implementing it.

Another advantage of the Visibility Matrix is the choice of themes: Since you refer to defined milestones, you can assign a core message to each of these points in time that directly relates to and further charges your B2B brand core. In addition, for each event you have one or more clearly defined target groups in mind that you can address specifically. Thus, you are never at a loss as to what to say.

4. Conclusion: The tool for planning your Visibility Offensive

The Visibility Matrix is a very efficient tool to find a consensus together on how to maximise the visibility of your B2B company. By making all the possibilities strikingly clear to yourself and by using your communication not for its own sake, but always according to the occasion, you are sure that you are not communicating past your target groups.

Of course, the tool should be used again after a certain period of time to evaluate your past actions and to refine the planned strategies and continue to optimally align them with your goals.

If you want to learn more about Design Thinking and effective tools, check out the other parts of our Design Thinking series! For example, about the background of Design Thinking and the Canvas tool, how the Customer Journey helps you to convince your leads at all touchpoints or how to find your true unique selling points with the USP Battlefield!

Stefan Weder

Together with my team, I structure innovation and communication-relevant knowledge for B2B companies and use it to develop target group-focused business models and productions. In doing so, we enter new territory every day. We share what we discover and experience there in our blog - and are curious what you tell us.