Have you ever thought if there is a formula for the perfect B2B Marketing plan?

There is no magic, but some actions can be taken to ensure you get the best results out of your marketing efforts.

Tish Millsap is CEO and Senior Strategist at Revenate Marketing, and she’s spent a lot of time thinking about the world of B2B Marketing. Tish helps companies who are looking to elevate their B2B marketing by cutting through the clutter and getting the right messages in front of the right people.  She’s focused on companies in the hyper-growth stages of marketing, and she loves building ways to bring processes and revenue together.

Tish is constantly being asked the question, “If I spend a dollar on marketing, where and how exactly does that translate into revenue?” She’s spent the last several years developing an answer to that question.

We sat down with Tish in this episode of B2B Revenue Acceleration to talk about the five practical tips she’s developed for bringing a company’s B2B marketing to the next level.

I wanted to focus specifically on creating that connection between what marketing is doing and how we can driving revenue for the company.

Tish Millsap

1. Go with an ABM Approach – Account Based Marketing was born out of the realization that the effectiveness of ad campaigns and email campaigns are dwindling.  The traditional digital marketing approach used to be all about shoving things down the top of the funnel and hoping something stuck. But we’re in a new era of marketing that’s focused on purposeful targeting and personal relationships.  It takes a lot of work up front, but it gives you permission to go after who you really want to talk to!

The days of high volume demand generation are over.

Tish Millsap

2. Build for Scale – Make sure your infrastructure is set up for high levels of growth.  This is a delicate balance because while you need to plan, you can’t over-engineer your roadmap either.  Rapidly growing companies change. Don’t get distracted by bells and whistles on your quest of building for scale;  Get the basics of your technology infrastructure in place (CRM, Marketing Automation, etc), and make the best use out of your tool stack.

Try to keep it simple. Don’t buy shiny objects and try to implement them. Try to use the tools you have and make sure you’re getting the basics in place.

Tish Millsap

3. Outsource Sensibly – If you’re going into a hyper-growth stage of your business, take a look at what your marketing team looks like now and what it’ll look 6-12 months from now.  Marketing can be very specialized and every sub-function underneath marketing can be very complex. You can’t hire a full-time expert in each marketing discipline so Tish recommends prioritizing which team members you need to hire full time in-house versus who you need to hire as a contractor. This allows you to focus on flexibility and speed while still hiring experts.

4. Build your database – This is a fundamental discipline of marketing.  You must build a database of nurtured contacts before you can build a deeper relationship with them. You have to let these contacts know who you are and why your message is important for them to hear.  Here are three practical ways to grow your database:

• Go to events
• Utilize paid media channels to gauge interest
• Use a vendor like Discover Org to acquire email addresses.  Be careful here that you aren’t letting just anyone into your database. The answer isn’t to load 10,000 emails and fire off spam.

5. Test your position in the marketplace – Be very clear with your message: who are you and what are you doing in the marketplace?  The B2B marketing space is a very busy and very crowded one. Be crystal clear about your value proposition.  Everyone in your organization needs to be using the same language because you won’t be heard if you’re not all on the same page.  Tish likes to use this example: If she throws you 12 apples at once, chances are you won’t catch any. But if she throws you one apple at a time, you will catch the majority of them.  Think of your messaging the same way when talking to prospects!

Modern B2B Marketing is a complicated space with many companies promising a new shiny piece of technology that will solve all of your marketing needs.  Tish doesn’t think this is where the answer lies. Stick to the basics and build complexity from there; her five pieces of advice above are a great place to start!

This post is based on a podcast with Tish Millsap. To hear this episode, and many more like it, you can subscribe to The B2B Revenue Acceleration Podcast.

If you don’t use iTunes, you can listen to every episode here.