What can be learned from the global roll-out of a digital marketing strategy? From the USA to Europe and China - SPS MARKETING introduced a global digital strategy for the corporation Magna International. This process produced 10 valuable learnings, which we also present in a separate webinar. These insights are useful for implementation of other digital campaigns as well.
We live in a time of digital chaos. B2B companies try their hand at new social media platforms and develop landing pages like content that will hopefully be seen and shared before it disappears forever as you keep scrolling on your smartphone. But unfortunately, there is often no method to the fun. Just trying everything first without a plan - while this can bring positive results, it is neither sustainable nor measurable, nor is it necessarily linked to the company's business goals. It needs a plan!
This is where digital marketing strategy comes into play. In our experience, a successful digital transformation must be based on a smart digital marketing strategy. And this, as with analogue marketing activities, is about making wise investment decisions to maximize competitive advantage, growth, profit and value - and then implementing them with consistency and structure. Therefore, it makes sense to think about certain issues in advance and thus structure the process. Especially if you have great respect for the introduction of a digital marketing strategy or do not yet know how helpful it can be, it is vital to look for resources and build up a structure.
As part of the new B2B Experience Hub, where we share our experiences around industry marketing in webinars, podcasts and blog articles, we cover global digital strategy for B2B and its methods. We unpack it all in our Kickstart webinar: Tamara Grünzweil, CEO SPS MARKETING, talks to Ana Topolic-Kriechbaum, Senior Marketing Director at Magna International, about goal definitions, concrete approaches and stumbling blocks at OFK. The Online Focus Conference (OFK) is the leading virtual B2B conference for digital marketing, where industry experts share their expertise and offer practical solutions to problems.
If you want to drive a digital strategy, it is first important to consider the skillset and catch up your own employees on why you are taking this action now. Generating enthusiasm among all stakeholders can have a significant impact on the success of the project! Then the target groups should be determined, focused and prioritized step by step. The work with the so-called personas is presented in the webinar and answers are provided to the question of why one determines them and how one continues to work with the results.
Workflows are an important topic because there are usually several internal departments within a company that collaborate on the digital strategy. Here it is important to optimize the workflows, because all too often there is chaos and no one knows from each other what the other is working on or how content is prepared. This usually affects several teams such as Advertising & Marketing, PR or HR. In order to bring more structure into this, various tools can provide great help. Working with Magna, weekly meetings and the work management platform Asana (link Asana) have proven to be very effective in keeping the whole team on track smoothly. In the webinar, Tamara and Ana go into how they brought about the entire coordination across all channels, because of course it's not just about their own employees, but also about all agencies and other parties involved in the project.
In the digital strategy project, the data madness can quickly become an insurmountable challenge. Run a campaign, get a few more conversions, done!? You shouldn't make it that easy for yourself, because sustainable and professional digital marketing relies on precise reporting and analysis. What do I do with the data, which tools make sense? Data collections from the various channels should be bundled and analyzed in the dashboard. A naming convention also makes a significant contribution to more efficient collaboration. With so many groups and agencies active at Magna, a rule should be introduced across all groups to standardize the naming of campaigns for easier access and clearer recognition for all.
Google is a great channel for B2B marketing, but it is not yet really B2B-friendly. The smaller budgets in B2B marketing and the very narrow niche target groups mean that keywords receive correspondingly poor ratings from Google, and you don't get detailed data on the competition like you do for B2C. There is simply too little search volume for niche keywords, which is why Google does not consider the keywords relevant. Nevertheless, one should work on the number 1 positioning here, because most queries also for B2B start on Google. "Google and B2B are not yet the best of friends," Tamara knows, "even Google's consultants don't know much about B2B. That's why it's important to be able to correctly assess the Quality Score and other ratings of Google Ads in order to really realistically assess the performance of ads, keywords or landing pages."
Far too often, the professional network of sales staff is still neglected, in the belief that they know the relevant contacts anyway. The small target groups like to give the false impression that they are dealing with the same contacts over and over again. But the generational change also arrives in sales! LinkedIn plays an important role in the implementation of Magna's global digital strategy.
Magna organizes training sessions for employees on how to use LinkedIn specifically for their own marketing, why it should be used, what it can do and how other campaigns have already worked. LinkedIn offers many opportunities for targeted advertising. It pays to let the potential of this network lie fallow in digital marketing, which is why it is important for success to create an awareness of this internally among employees. More information on this can be found in our blog article: Tips for successful B2B marketing on LinkedIn (link to Clari's blog article).
Every campaign is different! Budgets, targeting, regions, sectors, languages or topics - there are so many contents that can be different within a campaign and influence its success that benchmarks are not really comparable. It is too easy to want to determine the success of an ad via click-through rates (CTR) or the cost per click (CPC) by comparing it with other campaigns, but comparing figures at first glance is very difficult, especially in B2B. Here, deeper analyses are needed to obtain meaningful and tangible results: Each campaign must be considered as a whole and analyzed in detail. In the case of lead generation, the details behind it must also be included in the analysis: How do you define a lead, what counts as a valuable lead, how high are the costs for the lead in relation to the advertised product - a link that almost always leads to different results in B2C than in B2B.
The introduction of a digital strategy is exciting and promising - and challenging at the same time. Magna International has embarked on this journey together with SPS MARKETING and has since implemented many things. However, you should be aware that B2B makes its own demands on digital marketing. But with many years of experience and specialists on board, any digital strategy can mature - and your potential can become active. Visit our webinar "Global B2B Digital Strategy - 10 Learnings from a 150,000 Employee Group" to avoid costly stumbling blocks. (Download Webinar)
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