Hall Simon - B2B Digital Marketing Strategy

A brilliant, rare and impactful insight into areas to consider when creating a B2B digital marketing strategy. Great guidance on how to think about your customer journey throughout the process, not just in the implementation phases. Highly recommend this read as an essential for all marketers.

Catherine Dutton, Vice President Marketing, Atos

Simon Hall has written a B2B Marketing primer for the 2020s, which, by definition, deals with the realities of a digital first world. This is long overdue in the world of B2B Marketing and will no doubt become a standard source for the discipline.

I recognize through my own practice that this digital transformation from outbound marketing or a tell approach to inbound, customer journey-focused marketing, with all of its personalized digital touchpoints and omni-channel focus is todays B2B marketing reality and Simon does a good job of comprehensively covering all of the key elements, from content, to social, SEO, SEM and Web as well as the enabling infrastructure: martech, data, marketing processes (eg lead nurturing, ABM) and analytics. Simon presents a best-practice approach to each, steeped in personal experience and in that of leading companies in the technology market. He provides theoretical context and practical how-to guidance, with great detail on management and execution across the buyers journey.

The chapter on digital strategy points to the need for digital to be a clear part of the overall marketing strategy which delivers clear outcomes based on business goals. Too often in my experience, marketing strategy is confused with annual budget and resource planning, so the tools and approach Simon summarizes here are a useful reminder to understand the context of your digital strategy.

This book is a really valuable addition to the B2B marketing armoury and is highly recommended for those who intend to build their career in marketing.

Ceri Jones, former Vice President, Global Demand Centre and Operations, Basware Oyj

Digital marketing continues to be a minefield for marketers, especially those in B2B where extended decision-making groups and lengthy sales cycles pervade. Clear, engaging and practical, B2B Digital Marketing Strategy helps navigate the complexities of digital marketing.

Richard Robinson, Chairman, B2B Council, DMA

This is a well-written book suitable for both beginners and seasoned practitioners on a topic thats very important to business today. The case studies and tips are practical and useful for any business.

Jayson Gehri, Executive Director, Marketing, IBM

Whether you are new to digital marketing strategy in general or looking to brush up on a specific topic, this is a very useful read. Its informative, easy to navigate, and gives you the tools to understand and implement a great digital strategy in your company.

Amalie Lyneborg, Head of Marketing, Sturrock & Robson

Thank you Laura for your inexhaustible source of positivity and perseverance, as well as your boundless energy, allofwhich have inspired me in writing this book

Simon Hall is a marketing innovator with 25 years experience in technology and services marketing. In his former career, he served as UK Chief Marketing Officer for Dell as well as holding many senior European roles at Acer, Microsoft and Toshiba. He is also author of the book Innovative B2B Marketing.

In 2016 Simon founded NextGen Marketing Solutions, with the aim to help companies of all sizes capitalize on the latest marketing techniques. He is passionate about pioneering new and exciting initiatives, and sharing his knowledge and experience with the current and next generation of marketers.

In addition to running courses and workshops with companies on various B2B marketing and digital marketing areas, Simon also lectures final-year university students and degree apprentices in strategy and marketing at Pearson Business School.

He is a member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and the DMA B2B Council, and a Global Thought Leader in B2B Marketing for the ICG Group (a global consulting company).

B2B Digital Marketing Strategies is a clear and practical digital marketing guide which aims to assist B2B companies, marketers and departments in dealing with the most recent challenges surrounding digital marketing.

With rapidly changing B2B customer buying behaviours and the changing dynamics in the industry, there have been substantial changes and step changes in how digital marketing is applied in B2B marketing. The focus of this book is to explain and promote the new B2B digital marketing models and practices which have arisen as a result of these key changes in the marketplace.

You will find a number of case studies throughout the book, spanning different types of sectors as well as company sizes. Some of the best practices come from large enterprises, as well as small and medium businesses. Please use these as practical examples which you can apply in your own company.

This book is perfect for any marketer working in, or interested in building a more in-depth knowledge and understanding of, B2B digital marketing. It is suitable for small and medium-sized business owners and sales and marketing professionals as well as practitioners. I truly hope you benefit from my experience in leveraging these models.

B2B marketers will find new approaches, models, processes and solutions as well as examples of technologies to help them deal with key current B2B digital marketing challenges.

In less than 100 years weve moved through multiple eras of business and industry, from the production age through to the marketing age, and recently from the globalization era to the era of digital and applications.

Weve also seen a number of changes in B2B marketing; in fact, in a recent survey it was found that 76 per cent of B2B marketers feel marketing has changed more in the past two years than in the previous 50 years (Taylor, 2017).

Customers are changing in how they engage with businesses, how they evaluate products and services, and how they respond to marketing and sales efforts.

According to the latest B2B buyer research published by DemandGen Report, the world of B2B marketing is continuing to get more complex, and buyers are becoming more sophisticated. Some of the results from the survey show:

• more than half (56 per cent) of companies have four or more people involved in a purchase decision, while 21 per cent have seven or more stakeholders;

• 75 per cent of buyers said they are spending more time researching purchases, up from 72 per cent in 2018;

• 79 per cent of respondents said the winning vendors content had a significant impact on their ultimate buying decision.

The study also found that buyers are developing a growing reliance on peers. Sixty-one per cent said they agree that they rely more on peer recommendations and review sites (Andersen, 2019).

All the above statistics point to the fact that marketers need to embrace different marketing vehicles, and better tailor their messages and content to the customer. Marketers have the challenging role of influencing buyers more than before, so that when customers are about to purchase, theyre already considering the vendors products or services.