The B2B Tech CMO's Strategic Planning Process: How to Create a Market-Leading Strategy

As the CMO of a B2B technology company, crafting an effective marketing strategy is critical for driving growth and achieving long-term success. However, many marketing teams jump right into tactical planning without first auditing past performance and researching the external market environment.

This lack of upfront strategic planning leads to reactive “firefighting” down the road as the marketing program fails to align to corporate strategy and resonance with customers. However, there is a more effective 4-step process B2B CMOs should follow:

1. Marketing Audit

2. Market Research

3. Marketing Strategy Formulation

4. Marketing Action Plan

Marketing Audit

The first step is conducting an objective audit of your internal marketing performance over the past 12 months. Specifically, you’ll want to:

• Recognize past campaign performance - What marketing initiatives drove success or failure? Score each and use insights to upgrade or remove tactics.

• Evaluate product-market fit - Has the alignment to your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) needs/wants changed? What tweaks are required?

• Assess marketing alignment to corporate strategy - Is your positioning and messaging still aligned as corporate priorities shift?

• Analyze program ROI - Rank and stack to identify low performing campaigns to cut investment from.

• Review marketing channel mix effectiveness - Which channels are engaging which segments? How have behaviors shifted?

• Highlight marketing team capabilities - What unique skills can be better leveraged? Any gaps in martech/analytics?

• Evaluate sales enablement - How tightly aligned are marketing and sales? Where is handoff breaking down?

• Pinpoint bottlenecks - What internal roadblocks are slowing campaign velocity?

From this audit, you will outline priority upgrades and recommendations for the next planning cycle. But an inward only view is insufficient. Next we must research the external market dynamics.

Market Research

Here you explore 4 facets: Customers, Market, Competitors, and Product.

• Customers: Conduct buyer persona segmentation and map detailed journeys. Directly interview at least 10 customers on needs/painpoints.

• Market: Research industry trends, innovations, partnerships. Identify key problems/needs. How is TAM/SAM growing?

• Competitors: Benchmark positioning/offers. What drives success of high performers? Examine product alternatives.

• Product: Identify unmet needs and validate new concepts for product launches.

These external insights combined with internal audit learnings fuel development of your go-forward marketing strategy.

Marketing Strategy

With a data-driven foundation, here you will:

• Establish a “North Star” metric - What is #1 objective? Growth? Retention? Focus on a rallying call to get the team immersed.

• Determine audience segmentation/targeting - Who will you focus on with messaging?

• Map customer problems-solutions - Deeply understand pains to resolve with precise messaging.

• Create differentiated messaging - Where is our value proposition unique? What is our “edge?”

• Build narratives - Tell positioning stories tailored to each segment.

• Devise content strategy - What mix of channels/formats works best per persona?

• Align campaigns to funnel - Optimize programs to growth goals and metrics.

• Setup analytics tracking - Ensure ability to monitor KPIs and react.

Marketing Action Plan

With strategy set, build an agile, test-and-learn plan:

• Identify 3-5 channels/tactics for pilots - Use research insights to pick new areas for experiments with control groups.

• Design rigorous measurable tests - Have disciplined approach to innovation investment (8-10% of budget).

• Scout new partnership opportunities - Can ecosystem relationships expand reach of messaging?

• Map long-term programs to KPIs - Plot out what needs to be done quarter-by-quarter to achieve goals.

• Manage performance rigorously - Continuously monitor, assess, refine tactic efficacy as you execute.

Following this 4-step strategic planning process ensures your marketing investments and activities align to corporate priorities, resonate in the market, and drive better performance. Of course, advanced market research helps create an accurate picture of the external dynamics.

My firm, Tech Growth Insights, offers services to fuel this process further with quantitative buyer interviews, journey mapping, competitive positioning analysis and more.

Book a call with me by CLICKING HERE

I will send out more insights growth insights to help scale your technology firm over the coming days!