Our Proven Approach to B2B Marketing Strategy & Tactics

The marketing challenge

As a fractional CMO, the most common roadblock I see is a lack of direction. A lot of tactics are happening, but they are scattered. There’s no accountability. There’s no clear focus or goal.

Clients usually come to us with one of three issues:

1. They are fed up with agencies…whether it’s the cost…or lack of results…or both.
2. They are doing okay, but want to level up and not sure where to start or focus.
3. They are not confident in their marketing team’s ability – likely it’s a junior staff that needs training, guidance, and a plan.

Our program solves all three.

The marketing solution

By looking at marketing through the lens of 20 foundational elements, we are able to tie the goals of leadership…to management oversight…and through every marketing tactic.

I’m talking transparency. I’m talking accountability.

We focus on leadership, first.

Your Vision, KPIs and core metrics, and budgets are necessary before you can move forward with any marketing tactics.

For your Vision, you need to know where you’re going. What the focus is for your business. Your Vision is your direction that guides absolutely everything you do in marketing and beyond. If you don’t know what that direction is, it’s going to be impossible for a marketing agency or your marketing team to develop tactics that move the company forward…since you haven’t defined what “forward” means.

Same thing with Key Performance Indicators or KPIs. If you don’t have a metric of what success looks like, then you can’t build a path to get there. And you certainly have no way to hold marketing accountable. KPIs are the way to measure your progress to reach your Vision.

Your budget provides the guardrails. It sets expectations and goals for revenue and expenses.

Let’s take a look at the management functions.

Is your brand consistent in how you look, sound, and feel to your target markets? Who are your target markets? How have you positioned yourself with those markets?

What about your product marketing? Here we make sure you have product descriptions, product-specific value propositions, roadmaps, among other items, to make sure you’re leveraging the product itself.

And of course, who is going to execute on your marketing? Do you have a staff? Are you using a mix of vendors or agencies?

Sales and marketing go hand in hand, or least they should. They should also be accountable to each other. Marketing should understand they are supporting sales…and appreciate the fact that sales is talking to customers on a regular basis and that information is invaluable to marketing efforts.

When we look at your competitors, we want to see how you stack up. Do you sound the same as everyone else? Is there a way to make you more effective in standing out?

What about your strategic partnerships? Are you missing out on some partnerships you haven’t even thought of?

Now on to execution. This is all about the tactics.

This is where a lot of agencies start and skip the strategy altogether. Remember, if you skip the leadership and management functions you’re missing your direction and accountability.

In short, we look at how best to leverage each tactical area.

Our proven process

Assessment: To jump start the process, we assess each area of your marketing. This is not a lightweight review. We dive deep to understand who you are, where you stand in the marketplace, and what it’s going to take to level up.

Strategy Findings: After this initial discovery we walk you through the findings and recommendations. Marketing works best when the entire team understands the reality of where you are and what needs to happen. This also gives us a chance to answer any questions and make sure we’re all on the same page whether you’re the CEO or the marketing manager.

Don’t worry, since it’s tailored to you, it’s very interesting and engaging.

Implementation Roadmap: On day 2, we review your project plan of exactly what needs to be done based on our findings.
We include task descriptions, how-to tips, templates, who is going to own the task, when it should be done, and an estimate of how long it should take. It really is your playbook.

Implementation Support: You can stop there and implement on your own…or I can continue as your fractional CMO for accountability and guidance through the roadmap either one-on-one or in a mastermind group.

If you have a marketing team or marketing manager, our fractional support package even includes technical marketing training to level up staff skills.

Our history

We have been developing this program over the last 8 years with over 120 businesses across industries.

I came from a corporate background directing teams at the leadership level and Michelle has spent her career deep in the tactics with an agency background. Only when both strategy and tactics are aligned does marketing truly work.

We’ve seen the transformation in clients over the years. They have gone from frustrated to engaged….from scattered to focused.

Let’s chat

If this sounds interesting,  schedule a meeting!