5 Best Practices of Standout B2B Marketers in Tech

Our agency has been fortunate to work with hundreds of large and medium-sized technology companies over the past 11 years. In that time we’ve worked with amazing marketers – many of whom started working with us while they were in contributor positions and rapidly progressed into senior marketing leaders of their organizations. So what makes B2B marketers stand out in their organizations? How is it that some are wildly successful while others may flounder? We grouped up as a team to debate which attributes our most successful client-side marketers have. Here are 5 best practices from our vantage point that we commonly see from high performing marketers – from strategy to execution.

High performing marketers can easily align buyer problems with the solutions their company provides. They are tuned in to the issues their buyers contend with and how their organizations’ solutions uniquely solve those issues. They also have a sense of business acumen in that they know the drivers of their organizations and what other departments are focused on beyond the marketing group. This also helps them understand which marketing efforts are most meaningful to their business from both a financial and strategic perspective and they prioritize their efforts accordingly.

The goals they set are tied to metrics everyone in the organization cares about such as revenue growth, analyst attention and partner acquisition. They pay attention to marketing vanity metrics, such as likes and shares, but only to inform more important KPIs such as buyer engagement and customer retention. They are also very good at communicating and sharing their goals widely to gain support for their projects – which leads to their next attribute…

Many B2B marketing projects suffer from a lack of funding or people to fuel the initiatives. Because marketing standouts communicate their goals widely and they are in tune with the rest of the organization they tend to find budget and/or human resources that can be reallocated for their purposes.

Their projects often have an aspirational vision which they have conceived themselves or helped to facilitate a brainstorm with relevant stakeholders to come up with a challenging project. Standouts tend to want to “go-big” so they aim higher than the mark realizing if they fall short their projects are still winners. Their enthusiasm about their projects is contagious.

Standout marketers sweat the details, especially as it relates to what the experience will be for their buyers. They will want to get aligned on how buyers will interact during the marketing experience, what the small and larger desired actions are for the buyer, what tactics will be used to move them to the desired actions, and what plans are in place if buyers don’t respond. They want to understand all of the contingencies might be for any given path a buyer might take during the marketing experience.

In summary, the standout marketers we have been honored to work with are aligned, collaborative, diligent, communicative, and knowledgeable. The other commonalities our agency identified are that high performers are positive, confident, and hard workers. They are also team players, who would be very happy to share any of their best practices with you.

Want to learn more about what your peers are doing to move ahead in their organizations, how they are gauged and measured by their companies, and what performance goals are tied to their compensation and advancement??Sign up to receive our weekly LinkedIn newsletter, The Big Idea in B2B Tech, with best practices exclusively for marketers in technology. Or subscribe to our blog at yeagermarketing.com/our-thinking/the-big-idea/.