3 Planning Tools for B2B Marketing Success

Dedicating ample time upfront to effectively plan out the components that will comprise your B2B marketing efforts for a given period is time well spent. Proper planning is highly correlated to marketing that is carried out with greater efficiency and ease, focused more directly on the right audiences and simply more effective overall. But surprisingly, many leaders and organizations do not devote the time required for upfront marketing planning that supports success.

Here, we take a look at three of the planning tools we use most to carry out successful marketing programs for our clients: the content (editorial) calendar, social media calendar and email marketing planner. To be sure, these are not the only tools used to plan B2B marketing efforts, but they are essential for creating a repeatable framework for effective B2B marketing.

B2B Marketing Content (Editorial) Calendar

Content is the lifeblood of virtually every B2B marketing program. Some begin the year with aspirational ideas or declarations of “we want to post two to three blogs per month, get a few eBooks done, create an infographic and publish a couple white papers.” These are fine goals, but without planning they can all too easily slip away because of shifting priorities. A content calendar helps an organization answer key “W” questions:

• What will be the format (blog, eBook, white paper) and focus (theme) of the content?
• When will the content be published? When does work on it need to begin?
• Who (internally & externally) will be responsible for developing and contributing to the content?
• Which audience segments and personas is the content being developed for?
• Where will the content be published and promoted (company website/blog, external outlet)?

For every piece of content, one should also be able to answer the question of “why are we creating this content,” with a reply of “because it supports our prospects, clients and marketing objectives. There are paid tools containing content calendar creators (Contently, Content Snare, etc.) but for many organizations a well-constructed and maintained spreadsheet can suffice.

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