5 Features of B2B Enterprise Marketing

By Olga Serdiukova, International Business Consultant, Advisor and Tracker for Innovation Freedom Global Lab

Everyone knows about B2B/B2C market segments and how to work with them in the area of sales and marketing planning and management. But today I would like to talk about the upper end of B2B – Enterprise sub-segment, which not everyone knows about.

B2B Enterprise is a very specific sub-segment where you work only with VERY BIG customers.

It is incredibly difficult to find a marketing expert who understands in detail how to work with this sub-segment and, therefore, clearly understands which marketing targets need to be set and which specific actions have to be included in a marketing plan. The reason is just that there are very few enterprise marketing experts on the market.

I hope that the tips below will be useful to all marketing specialists to better understand the specifics of marketing planning in B2B Enterprise:

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1)   Marketing KPIs:

While working with the upper-end B2B segment (aka Enterprise), you should forget about traditional customer acquisition KPIs and traditional digital autofunnels. Newsletters, website visits, clicks and conversions, most part of digital marketing KPIs - all can be collected and even calculated but won't tell you anything about your real business processes. Because sales and marketing for this market segment based on a completely different principle.

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2)   ABS and ABM - Account-Based Sales and Account-Based Marketing:

When you work with the B2C segment, the number of customers in your database may vary from JUST MANY to a HUGE AMOUNT, so you can apply statistical marketing metrics. In B2B Enterprise you have a very narrow list of, let’s say, up to 1000 customer accounts you should work with (typically 200-300 per country). Moreover, this list is not just about customer-companies but specific decision-makers within those companies who you and your salesperson will be working with.

This is what is called account-based work - individual work with each client in a segment/industry.

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3)   Enterprise Sales Pipeline Management:

The success of the Head of Enterprise Marketing's work depends a lot on whether your company has implemented enterprise sales management (pipeline management). It means exactly whether your sales department keeps processes under control or these processes are random and chaotic. And as a result, do you, as a marketing person, know exactly who your target audience is?

If the Account-Based Sales process is implemented within your company, then you can utilize Account-Based Marketing. But if not... best of luck to you with "boiling the ocean" with your marketing budget!

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4)   Market Awareness in Enterprise:

Typically, the Head of Enterprise Marketing has 2 requests from his managers and salespeople:

1. umbrella marketing/market awareness 
2. account-based marketing

These two parts have to be planned as separate blocks.

The first part, frankly, is about "how to boil the ocean". It gives a general buzz about your company in the industry. It works for the high level of your company’s credibility. Before the tender or when you make an appointment for business dinner, the potential client won’t think: “Who the heck is this?”

Typical tools: PR, expert articles for the industrial media, keynotes speeches at the industrial conferences… and ok, you can use digital marketing channels here. Generally, this part of marketing activities does not work as a lead generation in this segment, exactly how it should be for the awareness block.

Once again, as it’s important: do not expect direct lead generation from these activities and do not use lead generation KPIs here!

Thus, it’s unlikely that it makes sense to deliver this part of the marketing plan without the next one.

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5)   Account-Based Marketing:

If the Account-Based Sales process is implemented correctly, your Sales Director has sales targets for the fiscal year (with quarterly targets based on business seasonality) and a quota for each enterprise salesperson.

One more important point here: you should remember that the sales department is always an “internal customer” for the marketing department, especially in Enterprise. You should work very closely with your salespeople on a DAILY basis.

And only in coordination with the sales department a list of your targeted accounts should be created (in next articles I will describe the best way to create it, to analyze the market, and prepare a market segmentation).

If you have not discussed and agreed on it yet, do it ASAP. If nobody in the company cares about it, see paragraph 3 above.

The next step is to split your target audience into two parts:

? committed pipeline (list of customers/transactions you will receive with a very high probability)

? uncommitted/no pipeline (transactions with low probability, targets with no clear understanding of how to approach them)

For example, from the sales target of 100 million, you have 40 million guaranteed from a committed pipeline of 5 customers (“will be received tomorrow”) and 60 million “heaven only knows how to get" and "here we have a list of all potential customers in the industry with zero contacts with them.”

Typically, Enterprise Marketing Manager does not work with a committed pipeline, as these deals should be closed by salespeople.

The main task for the Enterprise Marketing Manager is to take a list of all remaining potential customers in the industry and generate enough qualified leads for the “internal customers” in order for them to hit the sales target for the current fiscal year.

How to create this marketing plan and what kind of channels to include – read in my next article!