8 Steps To Creating a B2B Integrated Marketing Campaign That Drives Results

61% of marketers believe that generating qualified leads is their topmost challenge, according to a HubSpot report. Yet, 58% of the businesses reportedly prioritize lead quality over quantity. 

This inherent conflict of interest is further exacerbated by the fact that the word "campaign" has different meanings to different people. Some prefer to use social media, while others are still fans of traditional display ads. 

The only solution to this dilemma is building an integrated B2B marketing campaign that combines multiple channels for B2B companies to get their message across to the right audience.  The aim is to generate traffic, awareness and ultimately drive higher conversions using as many channels as possible, i.e., email, display ads, social media, micro websites, and content.

What is B2B Integrated Marketing

B2B Integrated Marketing is a comprehensive strategic approach where you develop coordinated marketing efforts across multiple channels to effectively communicate with other businesses as their target audience.

Unlike traditional B2B marketing that might rely on single-channel communication, integrated B2B marketing ensures that all marketing tactics (such as digital advertising, content marketing, email campaigns, social media, public relations, and direct sales outreach) work together seamlessly to deliver a consistent message and brand experience.

Why Integrated Marketing Is Good For B2B Companies?

Integrated marketing provides B2B companies with a powerful strategy to cut through the noise of an increasingly complex business communication landscape. By creating a consistent, synchronized approach across multiple channels, you can deliver more compelling and memorable messages that resonate deeply with your potential clients, effectively amplifying the brand's reach and impact while ensuring that every touchpoint tells a coherent, strategic story.

The primary advantages are enhanced brand credibility, more efficient marketing spending, and improved customer engagement and conversions.

8 Steps to Develop An Integrated B2B Marketing Campaign

If you are any good as a marketer, you've heard of the 'Rule of 7'. It tells us that your prospective clients must come across your brand at least seven times until they notice it and do something about it. Remember, that's only at the awareness stage of the buyer journey. 

Converting these leads into actual buyers takes interacting with them at another 5 to 7 touchpoints over the long and complicated B2B sales cycle. 

An integrated marketing campaign builds all this hard work into your strategy, ensuring that every interaction you have with the potential client is connected and intentional. 

Let's cover the steps you need to develop an integrated marketing campaign and interrelated tactics that can help you amplify your reach, message, and marketing goals.

1. Outline Your Campaign Goals

Like all other B2B campaigns, the success and performance of integrated B2B marketing campaigns aren't just gauged by the number of leads you could generate or the number of qualified leads. It is essentially measured by full-funnel success, which shows how it impacted the opportunities and how much revenue the campaign drive. 

In order to assess the overall effectiveness of your campaign, it is imperative to clearly define your campaign goals so that you can measure the results against those goals.

Once you have defined your campaign's objectives, ensure that your goals align with your B2B business's needs.

2. Know Your B2B Customer Personas And Target Accounts 

Your target audience is the cornerstone of your marketing campaigns, so it is vital to know and understand who you are reaching out to. This helps you enhance your targeted marketing efforts and get qualified leads.

B2B Content Marketing report stated that 77% of the top-performing B2B marketers leverage buyer personas compared to just 36% of the average-performing marketers.

Customer profiles better help you structure the data you will create in a way that is relevant to your audience.

Speak to your prospective clients and get to know their preferences and pain points to figure out how your offerings can help them. You could do this by straight-up speaking to them — even if that's just a few people. 

Additionally, prepare your sales team to contact prospects, what sells, and what they are interested in.

3. Ensure You Have the Right Team Members

A successful integrated marketing campaign for lead generation demands a detailed analysis of people, technology, and processes – it all starts with the right team members. 

Every integrated program plan team needs to have a resilient leader and some contributors and collaborators. 

If you don't have a proficient team, you need to execute the plan. You can consider outsourcing the functions. If you have competent B2B marketers, you can effectively accomplish your goals and objectives. 

4. Develop A Relevant B2B Message

A message is a story and idea that revolves around your offering and aims to communicate in the market. 

For instance, suppose you want to develop a B2B integrated campaign about the specific capabilities of your offerings. In that case, your messaging should center on your target audience's pain points and provide them with a solution.

This part of the process will require you to determine your product differentiators, the strengths of your solution or offerings, and what sets you apart from your competitors.

This type of data can help you create a message that relates and resonates with your target audience. You can then leverage this messaging content to develop a campaign slogan and theme.

Your B2B integrated campaign should work on the following aspects:

• Awareness – you can discuss the primary challenges that your existing and new customers are currently facing
• Consideration – you can host a webinar on how your product helps the target audience resolve their potential problem and benefit them
• Decision assets – you can make a video to highlight the features and aspects of your product capabilities and why they should opt for your solution rather than competitors'

The end goal should be to deliver a consistent message and uphold your theme in the entire campaign across all channels.

5. Nail the Design

Once you have decided on your campaign theme, align your ideas with the design team. This is the first step to creating a cohesive feel and look for your integrated marketing campaign across multiple platforms, from the banner ads to the landing pages.

A unified design grounds the entire campaign and allows you to better connect with your target audience across touchpoints.

6. Determine The Right Channels for B2B Marketing

An integrated marketing campaign is multichannel. Today, B2B marketers adopt an increasingly high number of paid, earned, and owned channels for full-fledged demand generation.

Ultimately, the most powerful channels for you can vary depending on buyer personas, industry, brand, and other related factors. For instance, the media that can perform well at the top of your marketing funnel may not be the most productive ones for your bottom funnel lead conversions.

B2B marketers' survey in The Demand Generation Benchmark Survey Report reported that the following channels rank as the most powerful at each B2B funnel stage:

The top five Engagement Channels (Early-Stage):

• Email (59%)
• Search (56%)
• Website (51%)
• Social (44%)
• Online Ads (27%)

The top five Conversion Channels (Later-Stage):

• Email - 81%
• Website - 50%
• Telemarketing - 45%
• Retargeting - 27%
• Direct Mail - 20%

Remember that your execution plan involves various channels to improve your ability to connect and interact with your target audiences. So don't be fearful to experiment with new media and let the gathered data be your guide.

Regarding search, this starts out with detailed keyword research that can be with through tools such as Semrush.

If you're including virtual events as a channel, then don't forget to create a virtual event portfolio that streamlines operations at your company.

7. Create A Plan To Nurture Your Leads

Once your leads start to roll in, have a firm plan in place to process, route, nurture, and qualify your B2B leads. 

In order to drive conversions, it is essential to nurture your leads that acquire from the campaign. Remember not to overwhelm your leads with abundant emails, but make efforts to stay on top of their mind.

Your messaging of lead nurturing workflows should align with your campaign content to ensure the prospective clients have a seamless experience that feels seamless to your prospects. Continue to share value and build trust through follow up emails.

Additionally, you can also leverage marketing automation tools to ensure a higher level of engagement 

8. Measure And Track The Overall Campaign

A successful integrated marketing campaign requires consistent efforts. Once you publish your content, get the most of its results to improve your next campaign. Measure the performance of sales funnels to analyze the effectiveness of your campaign.

Overseeing every stage of the sales funnel, B2B marketers can gauge their campaign efforts and business performance and modify their campaigns accordingly.

After all, sales teams aren't able to close a deal for months or even a year. The 2018-2019 Sales Performance Study by CSO Insights reported that 74.6% of B2B leads take at least four months to convert into actual paying customers, while 46.4% need seven months or more.

Wrapping Up

Orchestrating a well-rounded B2B integrated marketing campaign is imperative to capture your prospects' attention and convert them into customers. Like all other marketing aspects, the key to a successful campaign is persistence.

Modern processes and technologies can holistically structure your lead generation strategy and achieve consistency and efficiency.

Repeat, reiterate, measure, learn, adapt, and improve — with the right approach, your B2B marketing campaign outcomes can be impactful.