A company striving to stay ahead of its competitors will need to adopt profitable and strategic B2B marketing plans to take its business to new heights. In this interview, Jaime Santafé Martínez (Jaime), Global Head of B2B Marketing at Urban Sports Club, shares some key learnings for developing an effective B2B marketing plan and better defining the growing role of digital marketing in your business.
What’s Inside?
- Jaime’s Career Journey
- Why Should Companies Invest in B2B Marketing?
- The Keys to a Strong B2B Marketing Strategy
- Final Thoughts
- Lessons Learned
Jaime’s Career Journey
Early in his career, Jaime worked at a start-up, which taught him some valuable lessons about dealing with work pressure and juggling multiple responsibilities. There were only three employees at the start-up, which meant they consistently had heavy workloads as they attempted to cover all areas of the business. Although he didn’t stay long in that company, an important insight he took away was that digital marketing would be the key to the future.
This being the case, he began looking at technology closely through a lens. “Most of my career revolves around technology – marketing automation, operations and processes. In my previous company, Gympass, we implemented a marketing automation tool for a project we worked on and immediately saw positive results,” Jaime said. He saw the possibilities of technology and how it could help a company scale with a model that fits the technology to the organisation’s needs.
“The technology part of marketing captivated me and I wanted to explore it further”, Jaime exclaimed.
Today, Jaime is the Global Head of B2B Marketing at Urban Sports Club. Established in 2012 in Berlin, Urban Sports Club offers a flexible sports flat rate membership featuring more than 50 activities.
Customers can combine fitness, yoga, swimming and more at any of the centres operating in Europe with a single membership. It also offers companies a special B2B membership so that they can offer the product to their employees as a benefit.
Why Should Companies Invest in B2B Marketing?
It may be common for start-ups to have only a sales team in B2B versus a marketing team so that they can focus exclusively on contacting potential customers. However, marketing plays an instrumental role in bringing together different cross-functional teams and helping the sales team achieve their goals.
To illustrate his point, Jaime gave the example of a restaurant. Assume that the team that prepares the meal at a restaurant is the sales team. While the sales team prepares the meal, the marketing team makes sure that the sales team gets the necessary raw materials to prepare the meal which the customers want. “We do everything the sales team requires, especially the steps before a sale,” Jaime said.
Elaborating further, he explained, “Preparing leads of potential clients or prospects can be handled by marketing, which then allows us to educate the sales team and get them to a point where they only need to close out the sale with potential customers.
The beauty of marketing lies in the fact that we perform many functions in various directions, which helps the system function more effectively and swiftly.”
The Keys to a Strong B2B Marketing Strategy
According to Jaime, the following are the key elements of an effective B2B marketing strategy:
1. Team Assessment and Role Allocation
Developing a great B2B marketing strategy calls for a detailed evaluation of the team. “I think it’s not good to have a one-size-fits-all approach. It’s of utmost importance to assess your team first and then prepare a marketing strategy accordingly.”
Although it is incumbent upon the stage of the company’s growth to determine the size of the marketing team, if the organisation can afford it then you should hire a team big enough to focus on all of the different stages of the lead.
Have one person to handle demand generation who focuses on the top of the funnel, while the lifecycle management person oversees what happens after the lead is captured. The third role can focus on product marketing and coordination between different teams – from finding out what clients want to defining what the sales team is trying to communicate, and determining what the product team should develop.
Next, a marketing operations person would assimilate all this information to ultimately help develop an excellent product. This person is in charge of the tools, data processes, and the technical setup of campaigns, so the rest of the team can focus on the actions.
This is where Jaime’s role as Global Head of B2B Marketing comes into play. “I make sure everything is tracked, and all the information flows from point A to point B as per the plan. This way, the rest of the team can focus on what they are supposed to say and do in order to nurture a lead.”
2. Digital Transformation
Jaime points out that another key element of a successful marketing strategy is digital transformation. Companies are currently undergoing different stages of digital transformation, and some handle everything – from content to social media strategy, to lead creation and nurturing those leads. The outcomes of digital transformation can help businesses build relationships with their B2B clients.
3. Leveraging Email Marketing
Customers love it when they receive an email with personalised content. “So, we create different nurturing tracks for each one. Based on the customer’s personalised interests and age group, we aim to offer unique experiences to them by tweaking email communication accordingly”, Jaime said.
He emphasised that email marketing is a potent tool to uplift your business, however, it is difficult to stand out from the crowd during the initial stages of building a relationship. Cold email marketing is an outbound selling technique that uses email to communicate with prospective customers without having any initial relationship.
You need to be a very strong player in the industry and have a robust brand presence in the market to avoid doing cold outbound completely. If you are not a big player, then you need to reach your customers through cold emailing with communication which is engaging, concise, and personable to create a demand.
4. Utilising the Power of Videos
The rapid success of TikTok and Instagram’s Reels indicates that video is a widely preferred format in the 21st century. Marketers cannot ignore the mass popularity of online videos as a channel to reach out to their target audiences, boost engagement and retain loyal customers.
Bold marketing campaigns have also begun to explore the potential of the latest technology to serve hundreds of personalised videos within seconds. This approach can influence customers’ perception towards a product or service which in return improves conversion rates.
Final Thoughts
Concluding about the ways of crafting an effective B2B marketing strategy, Jaime said that “My advice would be to be clear about your lifecycle, ensure you have one person responsible for all the stages and have a cohesive strategy that’s understood by the entire team.”
Lessons Learned
| 1 | Marketing plays an instrumental role in bringing together different cross-functional teams and helping the sales team achieve their goals. |
| 2 | To stay ahead of the competition you need to adopt profitable and strategic B2B marketing plans. |
| 3 | Developing a great B2B marketing strategy calls for a detailed evaluation of the team and then preparing a marketing strategy accordingly. |
| 4 | Marketers cannot ignore the mass popularity of online videos as a channel to reach out to their target audiences, boost engagement and retain loyal customers. |
Next Steps
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