In short
- B2B marketing strategy: seven decisions before budgeting: Most B2B companies start with the question „how much should we spend on marketing?”.
- Decisions 1 and 2: the target customer and the purchasing decision-maker: The first decision is to narrow down. „All medium-sized production companies” is not the target customer.
- Decisions 3 and 4: the advantage and the customer journey in the long purchase cycle: Third decision: what sets you apart. The advantage must be something that the client can repeat to a colleague.
- Decisions 5 and 6: channels and division of marketing and sales tasks: The fifth decision is channels. Instead of asking „should I be on LinkedIn?”, ask which channel helps the customer at which stage of the journey.
B2B marketing strategy is a set of decisions about who you want to convince, what makes you different, and how to measure the results. Only then is it meaningful to set a budget. Below are seven decisions that are worth making in this order.
KOKPIT COMMPLACE® · RADAR OF DECISIONS
The strategy consists of six checkpoints, not one document
The radar leads from the current situation to a decision. The arm covers additional points, and each of them must be checked before the company spends money.
- 1Diagnosis
- 2Data
- 3Options
- 4The decision
- 5Implementation
- 6Control
The schematic of the Commplace® method · illustration, not client data
B2B marketing strategy: seven decisions before budgeting
Most B2B companies start with the question „how much do we have to spend on marketing?”. This is the wrong question in the first place. The budget only makes sense when you know who you’re working for, what you promise, and how you measure the results. Otherwise, the money gets wasted because „you have to be there”.
The B2B marketing strategy differs from that for consumers in several ways: there are fewer customers, the decision-making process takes longer, several people participate in the purchase, and the value of a single transaction is high. This means that trust and proof are more important than reach. Seven decisions below take this specificity into account.
- Who is the target customer: the industry, the size of the company, the situation in which they need you.
- Who decides about the purchase and who influences it.
- How do you differ from your competitors in a way that your customers understand and appreciate?.
- What is the customer’s path from the first contact to the contract?.
- What channels are working on this path?.
- How marketing and sales share tasks.
- How do you know that the strategy is working, and what is the benchmark today?.
Decisions 1 and 2: the target customer and the purchasing decision-maker
The first decision is to narrow down the selection. „All medium-sized production companies” is not the target client. The client is a company in a specific situation, for example one that is entering a new market, changing suppliers, or has a new management team. The purchasing situation says more than the industry.
The second decision concerns the purchasing decision maker, that is, the person who ultimately signs the contract. In B2B, there are usually several other people involved: the user, the purchasing department, the lawyer, the finance department. Each of them asks about different things. The CEO asks about the risk and outcome, the purchasing department about the price and terms, the user about convenience. The marketing materials should answer the questions of each of these people.
How to describe decydent without guessing
Instead of inventing a „person” in the office, talk to the five last customers and the two who did not buy. Ask who was involved in the process, what they feared and what weighed most heavily. Write down the answers in the customers’ words. This is the material from which the message is created.
One-screen strategy: evidence, options, risks, and plan
This is what the cockpit looks like, which monitors strategic decisions in Commwork®AI. Everything is visible at once: how many evidence has been collected, which option is winning, what could go wrong and who is responsible for what.
| Period | What we do | Owner | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0–30 days | Diagnosis and collection of evidence | The strategy leader | in progress |
| 31–60 days | Choosing an option and budget | Management Board | waiting |
| 61–90 days | Implementation and first measurement | Marketing team | plan |
Decisions 3 and 4: the advantage and the customer journey in the long purchase cycle
Third decision: what sets you apart. The advantage must be something that the client can repeat to a colleague. „Quality and experience” is not an advantage, because everyone says that. The advantage is, for example, the way of working, specialization, or proof that others do not have. Take a test: could your competitor agree with this statement? If so, you still don’t have the advantage.
The fourth decision concerns the customer journey. A long purchase cycle, i.e. the time from the first contact to the contract, calculated in weeks or months, means that the customer returns to you many times. Before asking for an offer, they check reviews, read articles, and ask friends. Your task is to be present at each of these stages with the appropriate material.
| The customer journey stage | What the client does | What they are looking for in you |
|---|---|---|
| Awareness of the problem | He searches for information, compares methods | A reliable guide, naming the problem in its own language |
| Considering solutions | It compares options and providers | Comparisons, selection criteria, evidence |
| The decision | Verifies credibility, negotiates | Realizations, references, clear offer and process |
| After purchase | Evaluates the cooperation | Contact, reports, meeting deadlines |
Want to check if your customer journey has any gaps? Let’s briefly talk about your sales process.
Make a short conversationDecisions 5 and 6: channels and division of marketing and sales tasks
The fifth decision is channels. Instead of asking „should I be on LinkedIn?”, ask which channel helps the customer at which stage of the journey. Search engines and articles support the information search stage. Industry media and relationships with journalists build credibility. Mail and conversations with salespeople finalize the decision. We discuss this in detail in the text about the distribution of the marketing budget among channels.
Sixth decision: who is responsible for what. In many companies, marketing „generates leads,” but sales says they are weak. The dispute disappears when both parties agree on what a good lead is, that is, a contact that deserves a sales conversation, and how quickly the salesperson should take it. More about this in the article B2B sales strategy and marketing.
- Agree on how the contact is to be set up for the sales conversation: what data, what requirements, what timeframe.
- Determine the merchant's response time to the report and check it monthly.
- Once a month, review the lost opportunities together and record the reasons, because this is the cheapest source of market knowledge.
- Together, evaluate the content: retailers know which questions customers are really asking.
Commwork®AI on this topic: the B2B customer journey funnel
Commwork®AI is a system that guides a company from order to decision. It combines the programs the company already has, such as spreadsheets, mail, and the sales system, into one system. In its B2B strategy, it shows the customer’s journey: how many contacts move from one stage to the next and where they stop.
The system monitors the deadlines for the tasks resulting from the seven decisions, prepares reports, and draws attention to deviations. The decision to change the direction, for example, the shift in the budget, is always made by a human being. See Commwork®AI and 101 described projects.
Commplace® Cockpits: what it's like to work on evidence
Six views that guide our decisions. All the charts below are illustrative examples, not given to clients.
The path of decisions with gates
Cost breakdown: not a single number, but a range
The roadmap for decision-making: from ideas to implementation
24-hour monitoring: what was detected
Growth and impact: the difference counts
Three scenarios instead of one forecast
The screen, graph and values are examples. The decision about further steps is always made by the person.
Tool radar: one picture of the situation before a strategic decision is made
The strategy is based on data from many sources: search engines, analytics, advertising, mail, documents, and calendars. The radar shows 28 tools, of which Commwork®AI collects signals in one place. The tip circulates around them, just as the team circulates around the sources before making a decision. The decision is always made by a human being.
How these tools help with strategy (examples of use cases):
- Diagnosis: Search Console (GSC), Google Analytics (GA4) and Ahrefs show where the company is visible and where customers are coming from.
- Data and options: Sheets and Docs collect numbers and A/B/C variants in one place, without manual input.
- Implementation and control: Tasks, Calendar, Slack, and Meet keep track of deadlines and owners, while HubSpot shows whether the actions turn into conversations with customers.
Decision 7: meters and reference point
The final decision is a way to test the strategy. Without it, the rest of the strategy remains a collection of beliefs. Metrics, or KPIs, which you can use to determine whether it works, should be derived from the company’s goal, not from what is easy to calculate. The number of views is easy to calculate, but it says little about sales. Better are the number of bid requests, their quality, the time from the first contact to the bid, and the percentage of winning bids.
The principle: correlation is not an indicator of influence. If sales increase after starting a sales strategy, it does not yet mean that it is a result of the strategy. To verify this, record the state before the change, compare it with the period after the change, and if possible, use a control group, i.e., a comparison with a similar segment in which you have not changed anything. You can also conduct A/B testing, that is, a parallel comparison of two variants. It is also worth establishing a review rhythm: a short monthly review of the metrics and a deeper quarterly review where the management decides what to continue, what to change, and what to abandon. We write more about the metrics in the text about KPIs of the marketing strategy in the cockpit.
- Pre-bid measurement: bid requests and meetings.
- Outcome indicator: winning bids and revenue from new customers.
- Quality metric: percentage of inquiries from companies that match the target customer.
How many meters are enough
Five to seven. More meters distract the attention, and each additional one requires time to collect data. Each meter should have an owner, a reading frequency, and a threshold at which you make a decision. A meter without a threshold is just a number on a slide.
Example: how decisions change the budget
This is an illustrative example with assumptions, not the specific company’s results. Let’s assume that a B2B service company has a marketing budget of PLN 300,000 per year and divides it equally among five channels of PLN 60,000 each. After making seven decisions, it turns out that customers mainly reach out to the company through recommendations and industry articles, and two channels do not handle any stage of the customer journey.
The company shifts PLN 120,000 from these two channels to expert content and industry media reports. This is a baseline assumption, not a promise of results. It also sets out in advance what it considers a failure: for example, a lack of growth in the quality of inquiries after six months will signal a need to change the approach, not to increase the budget. To assess the impact, it measures the number of inquiries and their quality over six months, compares them with six months before the change, and records all other events that could have affected the result, such as trade shows or a change in the price list.
How Commplace works with B2B marketing strategy
Commplace has been operating since 1996, that is, for 30 years, and operates according to a doctor-patient model: diagnosis, tests, plan, implementation, and monitoring. With the B2B strategy, we start with conversations with clients and distributors, data review and analysis of competitors. Only on this basis does the plan emerge.
Details of the offer can be found on the website. B2B marketing. If you want to see an example of a structured strategy, read on. Step-by-step marketing strategy for a manufacturing company. The pricing after a brief conversation and an initial diagnosis, because the scope depends on the number of customer segments and channels.
What do you get? A diagnosis with recommendations, a plan with scheduled decisions and task owners, a schedule and a set of metrics with a reference point. After implementation, we return for a review: we check what worked and what needs to be changed. The decisions are on your side; we provide the data and recommendations.
When you don't need a full B2B strategy
If you sell to one or two customers per year and know them personally, a full-scale marketing strategy will be an overkill. It is better to invest time in conversations with customers and good references. You do not need it even when your problem lies elsewhere: in the product, price, or quality of service. Marketing will not fix a product that does not meet a customer’s needs, and a strategy based on a flawed assumption will only validate that assumption. Similarly, when your company is very small and is just testing out an offering: just three initial decisions and a few quick attempts will suffice.
A full strategy starts paying off when you have several customer segments, several salespeople, and a budget that hurts when it’s misallocated. We write about how to get started in a smaller company in this article. marketing strategy for a small and medium-sized company.
Make seven decisions with someone who knows B2B
We’ll have a brief conversation. We’ll ask about the clients, the sales process, and the goals, and after an initial diagnosis, we’ll tell you which of the seven decisions have already been made and which need to be fine-tuned. No pressure, no obligations.
- Overview of seven decisions in your company
- Pointing out gaps in the customer journey
- Recommendation of further steps and scope of work
Network of experts: who works with whom when it comes to choosing a direction
A good strategy involves working on many roles at the same time: research, analysis of the competition, valuation of options, planning and control. This network shows how one system connects these roles so that the team doesn’t waste time passing on information.
The network of virtual experts works together: one system, many roles
- How to read the screen: Each point represents one role in the system, and the lines show which roles are exchanged in the conclusions.
- Market observation: Roles with names starting with OSINT involve tracking public sources (OSINT is the observation of publicly available information), for example, the movements of competitors.
- Approval: The roles prepare the proposals. The choice of options, budget and commitments is approved by the person.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
How is B2B marketing strategy different from B2C?
In B2B, there are fewer customers, the decision-making process takes longer, several people are involved, and the transaction value is high. Therefore, trust, evidence, and relationships matter, not reach. Therefore, B2B marketing strategy must cover the entire customer journey, including the sales side.
Where to start a B2B marketing plan?
From the decision: who is the customer, who decides, what makes you different, what is the customer journey and how you can measure the results. Only then should you choose the channels and budget. A B2B marketing plan without these decisions is just a set of ideas.
What is a long purchase cycle?
It is the time from the first contact of the client with your company to the signing of the contract, calculated in weeks or months. During this time, the client returns repeatedly, compares and verifies. Marketing should be present at each of these stages.
Who is the purchasing decision-maker in B2B?
It’s the person who ultimately approves the purchase, but the user, the purchasing department, finance, and the lawyer also have an impact. Each of these people asks about different things, so the communication should address their different concerns.
How to check if a B2B marketing strategy is working?
Record the state before the change, for example the number and quality of queries, compare it with the period after implementation, and take into account other events. When possible, use a control group or an A/B test. Increasing sales alone is not proof of effect.
How long does the development of a B2B marketing strategy take?
It depends on the number of customer segments and the availability of data. We determine the scope and timeframe after a brief discussion and an initial diagnosis, so as not to promise deadlines without knowing your situation.
It is worth reading further
Source: preparation by the Commplace® editorial team. The numerical examples are illustrative and based on explicit assumptions; they do not constitute legal advice or guarantees of results.