Everybody has their own way to build a b-to-b marketing budget. Our newest eBook lists best practices from some of the most successful marketers we can find, and from several b-to-b industry analysts. The benchmark stats are important – and perhaps even a little shocking!

Who doesn't like the movie classic The Dirty Dozen?  While it would be boastful to say our
ownDirty Dozen Lead Generation Ideas will achieve the same classic status, there are some tremendous, proven nuggets of ideas that just might make you into a Marketing Superstar in your own right.  A few previews:

“People get hired for what they know, and fired for who they are.”  That maxim for making the right employee hiring decisions holds true for making a good decision when hiring a b-to-b marketing agency today.

Have you set your 2014 objectives yet for marketing?  Most of us have.  But beyond publishing a list of campaigns and trade shows, have you identified the math behind your programs?  Every meaningful business initiative can always be translated into KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators, even marketing, especially marketing.  So what are your marketing KPIs?

The athletes in Sochi aren’t the only ones who perform at a high level – we all do as marketers.  So if we all understand that proving ROI in marketing is senior management’s #1 concerns, which every study says is the case, it’s worthwhile to use the Olympic season as an opportunity to benchmark your own performance.  Would you score a 10 on your last trade show?  Is your website performing at the level of a true gold medalist?  Are your email rates stable or declining, and what’s typical?

I collect marketing experiences.  I love hearing stories about what works for companies, and what doesn’t, because everything’s changing so rapidly today that the list of “marketing must-haves” is quite a moving target today.

So, as we move into 2014 and finalize our plans, here’s a few things we’re hearing from the front lines of some of our most clever client marketers and media partners:

It’s coming – social and mobile. No, wait, it’s already here. Mobile’s long been a play for consumer marketing, but now it’s relevant for B-to-B as well. In fact, our own B-to-B client base saw the portion of tablet and smartphone traffic to their sites just about double in the past 12 months, going from 5.2% in July 2012 to 9.2% one year later. At our agency, every new site today features “responsive design,” so the site automatically re-sizes whether it’s being viewed on a PC, table or phone. And, we’re experimenting with new CRM and lead tracking programs optimized for smartphones that are showing higher participation rates from salespeople, simply because it’s mobile and so much faster and easier to use.

What can you do that I can’t do better for myself?

A salesperson for one of our clients came back from a sales call with that question ringing in her head.  She had a good answer, fortunately, but it’s a shocking question to hear from a customer.  It certainly applies to marketing agencies as well, of course, particularly today where everything changes so rapidly.  And we ask ourselves that every day to make sure we’re relevant, that we’re not old-school.

So what’s the role of an agency today?  Why hire an agency instead of building your own staff internally?  Good question.  Here’s some good answers:

1. More efficient use of resources.  That may surprise some of you, since agencies aren’t known as being inexpensive. But we are.  When you hire a new marketing executive today, each hire had better bring to the table eleven specific skills to the job:
   • Writing capability
   • PR/media skills
   • Social media
   • Email
   • Paid Search
   • SEO
   • Graphic design
   • Web development
   • Trade shows
   • Video
   • Marketing strategy

   Hired anyone like that lately?  Of course not, and neither have I.  It’s impossible to find one person who brings all of those capabilities, so the agency model of bringing all that to the table with a team of “hyperspecialists” is particularly efficient.  As a corporation, you can duplicate that team by hiring 11 people, perhaps at $50K in salary, with a 12^th as supervisor, and you’ve staffed a full service department for $600,000, conservatively.  Now, of course those people are available for you full time, while you’re only getting part of an agency’s time.  And that’s the point.  You only use what you need.  And the right agency brings you hyperspecialist capabilities that are hard to maintain on your staff.

2. Focus and Accountability.  We’re hired to do one thing, or one area of tasks.  We’re not pulled by the president into a new project, or diverted over to help launch a new division or product.  Take PR:  I’m a PR guy from way back, and I’ve never seen a PR manager who has the time to work with media to generate as much coverage as an agency can.  The internal PR executive is pulled in too many different directions, and those story pitches can always be done tomorrow -- but tomorrow never comes.  Agencies don’t have that luxury.  We’d better have something to show in this current monthly report.  And we know that. 
   
   
3. Best Practices.  Agencies work with a few dozen companies just like you.  They see inside so many organizations, and are in a prime position to bring you the ideas that work best (and keep you away from the ideas that fail).  You can't really do that with your own, in-house, marketing team (unless you spend all your free time networking with colleagues, time you can’t afford.)  The best agencies embrace best practices, harvest those ideas, and bring them to your door faster than if you had to travel to conferences and discover them yourself. 
   
   
4. A View of What’s Next.  In our shop, we’ve realized that every 2 years our jobs will be different.  Marketing changes today that fast, so we’re constantly using and applying new technologies from last year’s Twitter initiative to today’s marketing automation to tomorrow’s WeChat (see Asia!) platforms that are starting to replace email.  Think you have it figured out?  Don’t get cocky -- next year, when Google Glass comes out, it will all change again.
   
   
5. Freedom To Be Creative and Take a Risk. Risk-taking and creativity usually are sucked out of most corporate environments.  That’s not a fault, that’s just how they’re built and how executives are compensated.  And that’s why they need agencies, where we’re encouraged to bring creative ideas that just can’t grow in 99% of corporations. 
   
   
6. Accelerated Learning Curves for Implementing New Ideas.  There’s no shortage of new ideas and programs to put in place.  And most agencies have done them a few times already.  You’ve done them once – or never.  Why learn on the fly when your agency can tell you the eight mistakes to avoid, or get you up and running with faster results in less time.  That new sales portal?  Hubspot Marketing Automation?  Remarketing banners?  Don’t waste time reinventing the wheel or learning from scratch.  You don’t have time.
   
   
7. Objectivity.  A good agency tells you when you’re wrong.  And embraces that role.  There’s enough yes people in life.  An agency isn’t one of them.