Last year, the COVID-19 pandemic changed all aspects of everyone’s professional and personal lives. Once enticing markets may have vanished, organisations that were once fierce rivals may have no choice but to work together. For others, the ways they operate and communicate have changed drastically.
Furthermore, volatility continues, and B2B marketing leaders adjust their methods, ensuring that marketing plans are checked and revised as necessary so that their teams can retain agility and resilience.
As the value of these concepts of agility and adaptability has increased, they work with their clients to assist them in integrating these into their annual planning activities.
As a result, boards, CEOs, and executive teams are ready to step forward and make choices that will shape their company’s future and result in a significant increase in efficiency and value development.
Due to this, marketing leaders should mitigate the possibility of being centred only on near-term behaviour, which can slow their organisations’ longer-term growth. The B2B marketing leaders ought to navigate the external realities and complexities while working within their internal processes to produce a coherent yet implementable marketing plan effectively.
Developing a clear plan for the future isn’t often straightforward. Given the current state of uncertainty, such a task could seem much more complicated and overwhelming.
The complexity of the marketing planning process has been broken down into three levels by Forrester.
Shared Destination
The starting point is the shared destination. It offers visibility about producing potential revenue and providing sales, marketing, and product leaders’ decisions.
Revenue engine leaders must examine all revenue engine functions’ strategic fit, identify where change is required, and commit to driving that change for future market advantage to be attainable.
Making Decisions
Decisions that affect marketing’s strategy favouring a common destination are crucial for B2B marketing leaders at this stage. External choices here are primarily about the brand, markets, distribution channels, and the development of value.
As CMOs, this is an opportunity to apply their knowledge of consumers and customers’ shifting behaviour and preferences to decisions that increase company sales in current and emerging or untapped market areas. With the internal decisions completed, CMOs concentrate on the marketing operating model, marketing capabilities, and significant achievements to benefit the shared destination.
Decisive Insight
Decisions made previously impact lower levels, such as marketing activities, portfolio marketing, and demand marketing. They have powerful insight these leaders frequently lack. Getting this insight helps to identify their own sub-functions’ outstanding support of the long-term marketing plan.
Hence, Marketing Strategy Compass is a best-practice model Forrester utilises with B2B CMOs to assist them through confusion and noise and have a consistent strategic vision that advances their company’s growth agenda. To ensure B2B marketing leaders strive to be agents of change, a strong vision for the future is essential.
