The widespread applicability of vertical marketing from B2B to B2G

As many buyers expect relevant interactions with the companies competing to get in front of them, organizations that embrace innovation to understand the buying landscape stand to earn the biggest wins.

That’s why most ABM programs drive significant growth in pipeline and marketing ROI compared to other types of marketing strategies.?

Vertical marketing works and continues to influence how businesses market and sell their products and solutions, whether the organizations they’re targeting are public or private.

The slow death of spray and pray

The rise of? ABM, personalized messaging, and vertical marketing signals the death of spray and pray methods.

Today B2B marketers understand that broadcasting marketing messages to as many people as possible is typically a wasteful practice, but this wasn’t always the case.

With more meaningful data to work from, the savviest organizations limit their marketing motions to the buyers most likely to care about their messages, and they segment, track, and nurture their carefully chosen prospects accordingly.

On the B2G side, the need for personalized and strategic outreach is almost baked into the procurement process. Given local and federal government regulations and legislation, spray and pray was never truly an option.

What is changing for government organizations is the availability of—and willingness to embrace—new technologies that help them to do their jobs better. From the Department of Education to The United States Census Bureau, every organization under the sun benefits from technology that solves real problems.

Whether you’re a B2G marketer targeting the public sector or a B2B marketer engaging companies across industries, positioning your solution as “the solution” requires strategic, personalized marketing motions that earn the right attention from the right people.

The steady rise in specificity

B2B and B2G sales cycles aren’t known for being quick or straightforward.

Generally in B2B, the more complex the product or solution, the longer the sales cycle. Since most companies buy by committee, the sales cycle can drag on for even relatively simple products or solutions.

For B2G marketers, complexity runs rampant—from not-yet-decided legislation to organizational hierarchies.

As a B2B marketer, you might focus on one persona across multiple organizations, like targeting a CIO or someone with a “digital identity” title. As a B2G marketer, it all depends.

Take a state government for example. It depends on whether that CIO federated their IT services. Are they centralized or decentralized? That makes a big difference in terms of how to target the personas and how to message the value.

It also ups the need for precise and intentional marketing.?

Whether B2B or B2G, marketers who can learn the challenges of each target vertical or industry, the specifics around use cases, and how to speak their prospects’ language are the best positioned to create content and messaging that pushes the sales needle.

This is especially true for government organizations where each vertical uses distinct language.?

If your product appeals to both public and private organizations, customer use cases may be very similar. In either case, your job as a marketer is to identify those personas and translate the value of your solution into messaging that makes sense to them.

More data = more alignment

What do organizations with well-aligned marketing and sales teams usually have in common?

Data is the centerpiece of the relationship. They don’t use it to compete over attribution, they don’t tuck it in silos away from each other, and they don’t treat it as a one-way street.

They understand that data works best when it’s bidirectional. It’s not about using an SDR to propagate a marketing message that hopefully yields some opportunities. It’s about marketers learning from the conversations sales is having, and recognizing an SDR as more than a mouthpiece.?

It’s also about coaxing valuable feedback from sellers, acting on that feedback, and coming back together to co-analyze the results.?

In an era where most buyers spend considerable time interacting with a brand before ever speaking to sales, creating a flexible, responsive sales process that meets their needs at every step along the way requires meaningful and ongoing communication between teams.

In so many ways, data facilitates and supports these conversations.

The future of marketing is targeted

Chasing volume is no longer effective. To succeed in an increasingly competitive market, both B2B and B2G marketers must not only know who to target, but how to target effectively. Given the right technology and data to work with, marketing organizations can tailor their budgets and efforts to the opportunities where they’re likely to make the biggest impact.