B2B field marketing is like an adventure in many ways. You are out in the field dealing with unpredictable customers while trying to build creative, effective marketing campaigns and events that resonate and convert.
While the “wild card” feeling to the work is very real, field marketers must also find a way to make the work count by tying marketing efforts and content back to clear revenue sources.
One of the best ways to do this is through good old fashioned strategic planning. It may not sound very adventurous, but it’s the most powerful tool in your arsenal for hitting field marketing sales goals consistently, driven by relevant content.
Why There’s Power in Building the “Revenue Map” as a Team
When you align events or campaigns with sales goals from the start, and create a budget and content campaigns around them, it makes marketing ROI clear to both the team and organization. This saves time and money, reduces headaches, and eliminates confusion about who is doing what and why it matters.
There’s a basic formula you can use as a field marketer to ensure all bases are covered, while building a healthy, collaborative relationship with key team members as you do your part to hit revenue goals.
Assess the goals and objectives of a field marketing event as part of the planning. Some essential things to cover:
- How will your marketing efforts drive people to enter pipeline, and at what point along the buyer’s journey?
- How can you build on previous event campaigns or awareness to create revenue goals that make sense?
- Is there existing content, or will new materials need to be created to drive traffic?
- Are you clear on buyer personas and how to leverage them?
Evaluate the people, tools, and channels you need to meet your sales goals. An idea is just an idea until you get help to bring it together. Clarify the team members and departments that need to be involved in field marketing efforts, and what role they will play in promoting content. Collaboration tied into a clear, team-based strategy enables sharing of messaging across many media channels for a wider reach.
Share insights with all relevant teams and make notes available through a central content repository. When you build events and campaigns, you work from current success points and predictions. Other relevant teams – social media, marketing, sales may have insights on the types of content that can help, ways to improve on what already exists to pique customer interest, or direct you to undiscovered content.
Make a timing and content delivery schedule, and stick to it. Field marketing events and campaigns have a lot of moving parts, so plan early and get the content roll-out plan into a clear, shared schedule. This supports your efforts to stay on task and gives teams the insight they need to create and distribute content, or tie it into other relevant marketing efforts for the B2B organization. Create templates for a consistent look and feel and to save production time.
Do final check-in: is everyone prepared? Do all participating team members have the information they need in terms of content, finalized schedule, and big picture sales goals?
Host a post-production assessment for an event or marketing campaign. Think of it like a postgame football wrap-up. What worked and what didn’t? Did everyone have the resources they needed? Is there something to improve on for next time around? Were sales goals met, and were they realistic?
The goal as a business is to make customers happy and earn money. This means your field marketing events are more than an independent action for sales and marketing—they require team support and a group effort for the best success.
By planning your campaign piece by piece, you see what’s working well, what needs improvement, and which marketing content drives the most sales, while also helping your team to be team more agile and responsive. In the big picture, mapping content to field marketing sales goals saves time and resources that can then be used to innovate, test, and respond more quickly to customer needs.
What are some strategies you use to map content to sales goals and improve your B2B field marketing efforts?