As a business-to-business marketer, your goal is to develop a platform that targets businesses directly where they are most challenged. You can boost B2B sales through the power of understanding your audience. But getting there is easier said than done. 

Fortunately, intentional marketing is here to help. By honing your messaging across channels and platforms to create the ideal narrative, you can more powerfully reach your audience. 

Intentional marketing takes care, data, and expertise to pull off effectively. Explore the relationship between this approach and sales, then learn how to implement useful strategies. 

The Relationship Between Sales and Intentional Marketing

Intentional marketing is defined as the ability of your brand to maintain a consistent message across channels. It makes use of data insights and analytics to craft cleverly targeted campaigns for all your users. With the right intentional marketing approach, you can improve your inbound and outbound messaging to reach and retain all kinds of clients for your B2B products.

As a result, you can experience higher conversion rates and improve your ability to retain customers. With a data-driven decision-making process, you can derive essential connections between micro-markets to appeal on both a broader and more targeted level all at the same time. Here’s how it works.

First, your B2B company needs the framework in place to cultivate and analyze data. Analytics platforms from Google’s free offering to paid services can help you get there. Expand your research by exploring keywords, demographic data, and industry trends that can inform your marketing approach.

Then, adopt an agile methodology for applying your findings. An agile approach to B2B marketing takes into account the rapidly changing needs of the tech world and gives you a framework to address these changes — all in the context of on-brand, intentional marketing.

Agile methodology consists of four primary principles. Applied to the messaging and values of your brand and services overall, these can direct you towards marketing that is both targeted and consistent. These principles are:

1. Individuals and interactions over processes.
2. Functional software over documentation.
3. Customer collaboration over negotiation.
4. Adapting to change over adhering to a set plan.

With the power of data applied to an agile business plan, B2B marketers have increased their lead generation rates by as much as 30%. This is instrumental in improving your sales and locking in new customers for long-term success.

But how can you implement intentional marketing that is both data-driven and agile?

How to Implement Intentional Marketing

Ideally, your intentional marketing approach begins with the formation of your business plan. From your company values to the services you offer, your business model should be built to serve all kinds of clients while allowing for customization. 

Here’s how you can go about implementing marketing that is intentional and focused from the ground up:

1 Align your brand with client expectations.

Intentional marketing cannot be effective without consistent brand messaging. Beginning with your company values, you need to cultivate a persona that will align with client needs and address their concerns. 

One great way to go about this is to conduct keyword and survey research regarding what companies look for in a B2B service. From product quality to time-saving measures, your service should be looking out for the clients you serve. Measure the importance of distinct values across your target markets to know where to focus your messaging. 

2 Mine the right data.

Data mining is key to turning customer information into useable insights. Without the right approach to mining data, your awareness of client needs, challenges, and desires will fall short. 

Fortunately, mining data doesn’t have to be as complex as it might sound. By researching who your target businesses are and what platforms they are on, you can better set yourself up to generate data from valuable sources. From there, you can classify, cluster, associate, and analyze information to target marketing that matches your values with client needs.

3 Never stop researching. 

Research is always the best way to generate more quality B2B sales leads. Mine for data, but ensure that you are following up on trends across platforms. This includes social media channels, emailing lists, business directories, search engine algorithms, and wherever else your clients happen to be interacting.

By conducting thorough research all the time, you can intentionally craft messaging that meets the needs of the rapidly changing market. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic shifted business concerns suddenly. A well-implemented intentional marketing campaign would be set up to detect these changes, explore upticks in keyword searches like “home delivery,” and address these shifts with corresponding messaging. 

4 Create a narrative and a plan.

Now that you have research under your belt, it’s time to develop a tactical approach for applying your data-mined insights into actionable strategies. This is best done by starting with a narrative, then breaking that narrative down into step-by-step goals. 

Data is only as valuable as it is communicable. That is, if you can’t articulate what it is your research is telling you about your clients and target audience, that data really isn’t worth much. Storytelling helps us cultivate empathy and communicate with clients and coworkers, so turning data into a narrative is highly valuable. 

For instance, if data shows that target businesses are increasingly exploring cloud data services, put yourself in their shoes and ask why. What are client needs? What are their challenges? What is driving this digital growth? The answers to these questions allow you to build a marketing plan in which every step comes with an intentional outcome that solves a real-world problem.

5 Track your success.

Finally, you need a plan in place for tracking the success of your intentional marketing strategy. Set goals defined by market research and dictated by clearly measurable indicators — for example, a 30% increase in lead generation. 

From there, you can compare the success of tracked key performance indicators at regular intervals and look for ways to improve if you aren’t experiencing the success you want. Intentional marketing isn’t intentional if it isn’t working towards an objective outcome. Set your sights on a prize and work towards that goal in collaboration with the businesses you serve. 

By implementing intentional marketing into your B2B services, you build a pattern for improved lead generation and subsequent sales. As the increasingly connected world demands a more data-focused approach, these strategies offer your business the means to adapt to current trends while promoting consistent and on-target brand messaging.

No matter what products and services you offer businesses, an intentional marketing strategy meets them where they are. Apply data, agile frameworks, and consistent research to make the most of this approach.