A great B2B go to market strategy is actually pretty simple, but it’s amazing how many technology marketing companies manage to complicate it. Even the best marketers sometimes take a simple process, make it seem complex, and then spend an inordinate amount of time turning it back into a new, shiny, simplified process – all in hopes of impressing the client.

I have to admit, I have been guilty of succumbing to this reinventing of the process wheel. New Breed is a technology marketing agency, and we have developed some crazy diagrams in the past to try and explain what we do. I remember our New Breed “Marketing Engine,” which was so complicated it was even hard for us to explain it.

When you give your clients a lot of smoke and mirrors, they’re going to see through it. In truth, it is your expertise in an industry – especially in the technology marketing industry – that will win over clients, not a fancy process.

3 simple elements of a successful B2B go to market strategy are:

  • Market Intelligence
  • Market Segmentation
  • Brand Promise

Market Intelligence

For any B2B go to market strategy, a basic demonstrated understanding of the market is needed. The best way to ascertain this information is a combination of primary and secondary market research. In the technology marketing space, there are so many resources available – from publishers like IDG and UBM to research companies like Forrester – that finding the information is the easy part.

The elements of thorough Market Intelligence analysis include:

Customer Research:

  • Who are my customers?
  • Where are they?
  • What is their job title?
  • And most importantly, what is it that keeps them up at night?

Market Research:

  • What is my market?
  • Is it a young market or a more mature market?
  • Who are my competitors and what are they saying?
  • How am I competing within this market with regard to price, expertise, functionality, etc.?

Market Segmentation

The second element in a successful B2B go to market strategy is market segmentation. The findings from the market research you completed in the Market Intelligence phase determine who is most likely to purchase your product, solution, or service. Many clients initially tell us that their target market is CIO’s in midsized IT companies, but the market is usually more narrow than that. What you are looking for is not just someone that could potentially buy, but someone that needs to buy your product, solution, or service.

Brand Promise

The final B2B go to market strategy element is your Brand Promise. This is the juncture where your market research, the target market, and your client’s technology solution meet.

Questions to keep in mind:

  • Is what you are bringing to market something that is needed by your target market?
  • What supports your claim that your solution will fulfill their need?
  • Why should your target market believe you?

In technology marketing, this is where the rubber hits the road. This space is very crowded, and it is not easy to craft a Brand Promise that is different enough from competitors but still resonates with the target market.

Once these three elements are established, every decision and every tactic used to bring your product to market should keep your market research in mind and be aimed at reaching your target market to further support your brand promise.

For all you technology marketing folks, I hope this was simple enough. If not, leave a comment and I’d be happy to explain further!