How To Survive B2B Marketing Management Disasters

Marketing is essential to helping a business to thrive, and this is especially true for B2B businesses. Because it is so important, the marketing strategies have to be good in order to draw in the targeted audience and gain customers. Marketing managers have a lot on their shoulders when it comes to developing these strategies. It is often said that marketing managers should spend 95% thinking about marketing and only 5% about management. This might look good for business school, but doesn’t necessarily translate well out in the real world where success depends on teamwork. So what happens when disaster strikes? How can a business survive a B2B marketing management disaster? The smart thing is realise that failure is always going to be a possibility and to be prepared by having a survival plan in place, to begin with.

1. Innovation

What should you do if you find that a campaign finally runs dry and fails to create demand and bring in revenue? It’s bound to happen at some point. When it does, you need to have new marketing ideas to fall back on. You should regularly source and brainstorm new ideas, prioritise and test them, and measure and assess them so you have something to use when a marketing strategy runs its course or just doesn’t work out to begin with. Being innovative with your marketing will help you to continue creating demand and keep you from falling victim to a demand drought disaster.

2. Work

A marketing manager’s job isn’t easy. Be ready for a heavy workload. If you’re not ready to handle it all, your team will have to pick up your slack and that can hurt the quality of the marketing in a whole. Marketing managers have the responsibility of planning campaigns, content, product launches, promotions, and events designed to draw the attention of customers.  You can alleviate some of the pressure by delegating some of the tasks and finding ways to automate some of the work.

3. Invisibility

Don’t let your marketing efforts go unnoticed by others. Let them know what you are doing is important. Also be sure that everyone in marketing knows what each other is doing so that there is unity in the work that is put out to customers. Share marketing plans throughout the company, especially the sales department, so they know what is going on. Share with your team the marketing plans, status updates of current projects, and performance reports so you can evaluate projects together. Using a marketing calendar tied into a project management system or automated marketing platform is a good idea to keep the team informed in real-time.

4. Avoid Rework

Many marketing departments are understaffed and overworked, and that leaves little time and manpower for doing things over and fixing mistakes. Make sure your overall goals and objectives are clear so there’s no time wasted on unimportant projects. Set reasonable goals that can be reached easily as you work towards the overall goal. Have a particular task assigned to a specific person. Make use of project management tools and a marketing project management platform to detail project plans and keep team members informed of progress and able to access important information.

5. Expect the Unexpected

Marketing, and the business world in general, is full of changes. Some changes can be expected, and others can come as a surprise. These surprise changes can often through a marketing plan into disarray. Instead of letting it completely throw you for a loop and send you panicking, it’s best to be able to go with the flow. Be flexible and able to adapt to the changes quickly. Make incremental plans. If you know your plan will have to change monthly due to various factors, don’t create a plan that will be carved in stone for months. Incremental plans will allow you to develop projects on a weekly, biweekly, or monthly basis, allowing you to complete work on a current project while also resetting priorities for any changes needed in the next round. You can also break up big projects into smaller ones that fit your timeline and then set longer-term goals and prioritise your backlog of projects as needed.

6. Cross-Train

Cross-train your team so that everyone knows how to do each other’s work in case a key team member is unavailable when disaster strikes. This could be due to them quitting, being out sick, family emergency, etc.

7. Team Planning

Talk with the team so that a plan can be made in case of an emergency, like a CEO scandal, an offensive tweet, or a product recall, as well as something like a search algorithm change, a website outage, a SEO penalty, etc. Also, exchange contact information in case something happens over the weekend. Plan a regular mock scenario in order to practice what to do in case of a marketing disaster.

8. Content

Even if disaster strikes, you need to have content available. Stock up on it in advance. Have “evergreen” content ready at hand. This is content that is not time-sensitive and is always relevant. Stockpile articles, images, videos and tweets you can fall back on. Brainstorm ideas for broad topics.

These are just a few ideas of ways to plan ahead to get through a marketing disaster. Some other good ideas can be found here.

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