Five Solutions to the Six B2B Problems We All Share

SIX B2B PROBLEMS ALL BUSINESSES SHARE

o The mounting pressure of your ever-expanding day-to-day responsibilities.

o The pressure of time management feeds organizational inertia and failure to innovate.

o Executives with budget and financial control are more and more disengaged from day-to-day realities.

o Experience is no longer a proxy for knowledge.

o Hierarchies and silos are outdated but remain locked into organizational systems.

o Subject matter expertise and market intelligence are difficult to access.

MEDIAVILLAGE’S FIVE B2B SOLUTIONS FOR GROWTH

1. Replace organizational silos with ICOs — Integrated Collaborative Organizations — for greater efficiency and competitive effectiveness

Transforming from siloed hierarchies to horizontal collaboration is difficult, but silos are an obsolete model originally designed to foster independent thinking and budget control. As industry walls crumble and integrated partnerships become the norm, siloed organizations operating with legacy models cannot compete effectively with agile, collaborative ones. The integration of capabilities across B2B disciplines improves organizational efficiency.When silos are replaced by integrated models, organizations gain greater agility and cost efficiencies. Resources can be allocated and integrated quickly across the organization to respond most effectively to opportunities without the complications of politics, budgetary self-interest, organizational inertia, and relationship restrictions.

2. Use zero-based budgeting to assess B2B marketing investments

Legacy B2B solutions have declined in effectiveness and scale. With technology driving change in consumer and corporate behavior, it’s essential to assess B2B marketing investments from a zero base and reallocate budgets to gainproprietary business intelligence, target integrated business partnerships, fill knowledge gaps, and proactively address obstacles to growth. Journalistic standards and B2B priorities require updating.

3. Invest in solutions-based B2B marketing

Integration of capabilities across B2B marketing disciplines improves organizational efficiency and agility. Resources can be allocated and integrated quickly across the organization to respond most effectively to opportunities without the complications of politics, budgetary self-interest, organizational inertia, and relationship restrictions.

Strategies need to be rebuilt around digital, experience, and purpose marketing, Corporate brand equity must be clearly differentiated around capabilities, education, emotional connections, sustainability, differentiation, and talent. Solutions are built on ongoing market intelligence, agility and quick response, content marketing, communications management and control, effective B2B targeting, multiplatform message/experience integration, searchable long-tail knowledge building blocks, transactional pull, and performance measurement with defined KPIs.

4. Attract, retain, and empower “new majority” talent

As difficult as it may seem, the problem of hiring and retaining “new majority” talent is solvable when you learn and follow best practices. Talent development requires integration across experiences, facilitated collaboration, and application of proven practices for diversity, equality, and inclusion across teams. MediaVillage has identified 24 DE&I initiatives that have proven to be good for business, and are recommending six for industry adoption at the Advancing Diversity Hall of Honors Induction Experience at CES.

5. Incorporate market intelligence and meeting preparation tools effectively

Education and talent development must be your highest priorities. Growth requires investments in and resources dedicated to:

o An understanding of how your talent and B2B stakeholders are responding to problems confronting them individually, their business categories, and their companies;

* In-depth credible communications of your differentiated solutions to those problems;

* Ongoing intelligence to identify marketplace shifts;

* Rapid response to marketplace shifts that impact your go-to-market strategies;

* Turnkey tools and resources for activating custom B2B marketing solutions; and,

* Online educational support for your teams, clients and stakeholders.

At MediaVillage, we’ve reinvented B2B marketing around these five principles for growth, built around our B2B Solutions Marketplace that connects professionals across the corporate, educational, and nonprofit communities. Through collaboration, solutions-based B2B marketing intelligence, and talent development and education, we custom-build your B2B solutions and support your go-to-market strategy. Today, more than 150 companies, organizations, and industry leaders are members of the MediaVillage Knowledge Exchange and Solutions Marketplace.

Photo credit: Tero Vesalainen / Pixabay