Media Buying For B2B

As Annabel Rake, CMO of Deloitte put in the B2B Summit 2015 keynote session, B2B (Business to Business) is becoming P2P (people to people) and I strongly agree with this. When approaching a digital media strategy, I believe that we need to remember that we are primarily dealing with people so not only do we need to deliver creative and messaging that is tailored to the audience we want to reach but we need to understand how and what media they interact within the digital space. I would recommend following the following steps:

1. Research, understand and immerse yourself in the business and its market. Whether you do this with online research, by shadowing your client to better understand their challenges or contacting their clients or potential clients and having brief interviews to understand their requirements.
2. Identify a detailed audience profile – know who you need to talk to, their hobbies, their education, where their kids go to school etc
3. Establish and agree on the objective (either awareness or completed sales). If there are multiple objectives you need multiple media strategies.
4. Understand the user journey, the creative and the message as this will impact your media plan. You can’t run a video campaign for education if the client provides you with static banners with a hard sell message.
5. Go live, test and learn as you go along. It will never be perfect as digital is dynamic and lives within an ever-changing environment… This is why you need to have a flexible strategy that can be optimized and modified as the digital environment changes while still being able to achieve the core and agreed objective.

So where is the magic? – well, you are the magic. How well do you understand your client’s business? Are you your client’s client? Is your research sound? Can you identify and connect with the target audience? Does your client trust you with their business? And are you worthy of that trust? Do you put your client’s business first and your own ego, objective and itinerary second? If you answer: well, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes and yes then you are leaps ahead to running a successful campaign.