How to improve campaign performance for B2B marketing

Developing an effective B2B go-to-market strategy is uniquely challenging for any company, but few know this better than financial marketers. For financial institutions to be successful in the B2B space over the long term, they must devote ongoing time and resources to figuring out how to improve campaign performance. And it all starts with embracing the power of data.

From data management to channel optimization, these are six time-tested best practices for anyone wondering how to optimize campaign performance, based on decades’ worth of practice with our own B2B clients.

1. Watch for signals

Of all campaign optimization techniques, this might be the most important, because it ensures you get your message to the customers it will resonate with most, at the right time. Don’t spend money going after a customer who has no use for your business, or who did have a need—but that was a month ago, and they are no longer a true prospect.

Business trigger marketing is about monitoring the market for activity signals and using that information to reach out to B2B prospects with specific messages tailored to their current stage of the business lifecycle. The three main types of business triggers include:

• New business: First-time filings and new-to-world businesses
• Expanding businesses: Subsidiaries or new locations
• Seeking credit: Businesses actively in the market for a line of credit

2. Aggregate data

Aggregating data is exactly what it sounds like: collecting data from a variety of sources. The result is a larger pool of prospects, which allows for economies of scale. As you deal with larger volumes of data and reach out to more potential customers, you’ll spread out fixed campaign costs over a greater number of recipients, and likely experience higher account balances and revenue production as a result.

Casting a wide net of data sources also gives you a more accurate picture of customer behavior, which can alert you of business triggers sooner and reduce your speed to market. This increases the chances of you reaching a prospect before one of your competitors can.

3. Understand the role of each channel

So, you’ve got the right message ready for the right customer at the right time—now you just need to find the right place to deploy it. That means selecting the B2B marketing channels that will create the most effective combination of message and platform.

To determine the best channel for your message, it helps to be clear on what you are trying to accomplish. Programmatic display channels (a.k.a. banner ads) are at the top of the marketing funnel, and best for brand recognition, product awareness and consideration. Social channels, like Facebook and Instagram, are good for mid-funnel engagement, especially retargeting. And when a customer is lower down the marketing funnel and you need to drive conversion, the most effective channels are direct mail (including B2B email marketing), paid search and outbound telemarketing.

4. Measure, test and fine-tune your approach in real time

They say that doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity, and this applies to your B2B marketing strategies as well.

As valuable as external data can be, your own internal data is critical to setting benchmarks and deciding how to optimize campaign performance. You'll see what's working, what's not and what the return on your current efforts is. Reviewing the data you collect can help define realistic expectations and goals for your team, add context and meaning as you track response rates, and lead to stronger sales and customer experiences. And during annual planning season, this information can also help you justify the time and budget you spend on marketing.

5. Learn from failure

If you’re struggling with how to improve campaign performance, it helps to remember that there’s something to learn from every campaign–even the ones that flop. Sometimes campaigns just fail, but it’s what you learn from the failure that can set you on a course for future success.

As tempting as it may be to put a lackluster campaign behind you as quickly as possible, this is the time to have your data science team dig in and conduct a brutally honest post-mortem. They’ll help you understand what went wrong, what to do differently next time, and even if you can still derive value from your data investment. (For example, maybe the problem isn’t your data set overall, but rather the attributes from it you used to predict response rates.)

As uncomfortable as it can be to experience a setback, it will benefit you in the long run to reframe “failure” as just one item on a long list of campaign optimization techniques.

6. Engage partners to bolster your skill set

Business-to-business marketing is a crowded landscape. With so many FIs competing for business, marketers must do everything possible to grow reach and close transactions. Sometimes that can mean recognizing the limits of your B2B marketing strategy framework and bringing in external help to get you where you need to go.

Even if you’ve handled B2B marketing internally in the past, you may have noticed some signs that it could be time to outsource. Whether you don’t have the bandwidth to plan and execute a campaign yourself, or you find that your data analysis needs have outgrown your team’s capabilities, it’s never too late to adapt and work with a third-party provider.