B2B marketing strategy
A marketing strategy isn’t a list of actions. It’s deciding who to target, what to say, where to say it, and what you’re going to stop doing. It gets built with your team, over several months. Not in a single workshop.
When should you rethink your marketing strategy?
- “We need more leads.”It’s the request I hear most often. But when you look at the pipeline, the problem is usually somewhere else: leads that don’t match the target, which sales end up ignoring. Generating more of them just pushes up your acquisition cost.
- “We already do a lot of marketing.”Trade shows, LinkedIn posts, a newsletter, webinars, paid campaigns… In most teams I meet, nobody can say which of these actually bring in revenue. A strategy starts with deciding what to stop.
- “We’ve just raised, so we need to speed up.”A funding round puts a lot of pressure on marketing. If you haven’t worked out which channels work, the extra budget mostly speeds up your spending.
- “Our target is every company that needs us.”A target that broad forces a vague message that doesn’t really convince anyone. Choosing an ICP means accepting that you’ll leave some customers aside so you can speak properly to the rest.
- “Marketing will follow the launch.”When marketing discovers an offer on launch day, positioning, messaging and targets all get decided in a rush. That work needs to happen beforehand.
What we work on
Your ICP
We start from your CRM: the deals you won and lost over the last twelve months, sales cycle length and contract size. That’s often where we find out the ideal customer isn’t the one the team had in mind.
Your positioning
I ask leadership, sales and marketing to explain in one sentence why a customer chooses you. The answers rarely match, and that’s where the work begins.
Your channels and budget
Channel choices should follow from the ICP, not from the team’s habits. A trade show that draws 300 visitors can bring in less than an outbound campaign aimed at 40 accounts. We look at what each channel costs and what it adds to the pipeline before deciding where the budget goes.
Your metrics
Every channel is tracked against metrics tied to the sales pipeline: opportunities created, conversion rates, acquisition cost. Followers and impressions are useful for day-to-day steering, not for making decisions.
How it works
- 3 months to a year
- At least one weekly check-in
- Monthly on-site visit available
- Summary and PDF recap
An engagement usually runs from 3 months to a year. The pace depends on what you need: a check-in every week at minimum, and more during busy phases. I can also come to your offices, in France or abroad, once a month for the whole engagement. After each session, you get a summary by email and a PDF recap of the decisions made. A few months in, your team has a written strategy that has been tested in the field, and knows how to keep it evolving without me.
FAQ
Why several months?
The first weeks are for making the choices: target, positioning, channels. The following months are for checking they hold up in the field and adjusting. A strategy that has never been tested against results is still just a hypothesis.
Do we need market research first?
I always recommend it. It’s what gives the strategy solid foundations, built on data rather than gut feeling: the size of your market, what your customers actually expect, what your competitors are doing. Without it, you’re building on assumptions. See market research →
What if we don’t have a marketing team?
We build the strategy with leadership and sales, and work out together which profiles you need to hire to carry it out. See marketing team structure →
How much does it cost?
It depends on the length of the engagement and the pace. I’ll send you a detailed proposal after a first call.
Let’s talk about your marketing strategy
A 30-minute call to review your current marketing and see where to start.