For those of us who’ve been in the business for a while, it can feel like a merry-go-round. One moment, business is booming, and then out of the blue, the next threat, challenge, or pandemic comes along.
As the IT industry tightens its belt once again, you can almost hear the collective sighs, followed by quiet (and not so quiet) mutterings of ‘are you beeping serious,’ and the sound of annual marketing strategies being unearthed, dusted off, and reviewed in the hope there will be some ‘easy to lose’ items or ‘cheaper’ alternatives.
It’s time to buckle up
From mass redundancies to the staggering fact that 28% of MSPs/TSPs are operating at break-even or a loss at any given time, it’s pretty clear that the days of blow-out junkets and bottomless expense accounts are (mostly) relics of the past.
And that’s not a bad thing given the year ahead. While it pains me to admit it, in terms of spending money and making a return, you can generally do better than serving margaritas around the pool at a luxury resort.
Given the dire forecasts, it’s no surprise that marketing teams are being asked to deliver to higher growth targets with the same (if not a lower) budgetary spend. Yep, once again, they’re tasked with doing much more with way less - and that includes a red line through most wish lists asking for additional marketing resources.
So, what are the biggest worries for today’s B2B marketers under pressure?
The results of a new study are likely not a surprise. Budget constraints rank no. 1, followed by the ongoing debate about investing in brand-building vs sales-driven marketing, and higher expectations of output without onboarding more resources.ery driver, you’re probably not being paid to use your navigation skills at work.
Are dark days ahead?
It may all sound a bit dire, but it isn’t all doom and gloom.
As our beloved leader Kristal discussed in a previous blog post, you can also see it as an invitation to step up and be bold. At OLS, we talk a lot about marketing earning a seat at the management table. Part of this responsibility is the ability to have the hard conversations about dollars, results and value added to the business.
While showing ROI can be challenging, in my experience, whenever I’m expected to report on metrics on a fortnightly basis, the feedback about what’s been achieved with the available budget is overwhelmingly positive.
Thankfully, in these clients' businesses at least, the role of marketing and its value to the business is clear and understood every step of the way – but that doesn’t stop the question being asked: “How can we get even more value for our money?”
Marketing is always the first to go (or is it?)
What does ‘doing more for less’ mean for us, as IT industry marketers?
First - what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean panic. And it certainly doesn’t mean letting you indiscriminately slash and burn your marketing budget and all the good things you’ve done so far to make your brand shine and grow.
So, what does it mean from our perspective? It’s about helping you to find wriggle room, looking for ways to improve what you do and your marketing ROI, rationalising what’s working and what’s not, and making your dollar go further. And you can trust us to be brutally honest about what qualifies as a junket.
That said - here are some of my top tips on where and how you can get more marketing bang for your buck..
Make the most out of your marketing money
1. First, evaluate your spend
Are you measuring ROI? Take the time to review all your tools to ensure you’re making the most of all the available features and deriving every possible gram of value from them.
Consider taking a tour of your tools and exploring the features you’ve previously skipped over. Or deep dive into recently added or AI-enhanced features and see where you can leverage apps you already have rather than subscribing to new ones. Most marketing tool vendors operate in a highly competitive space, so they voluntarily commit to continually improving and developing their solutions.
While celebrating new features from your favourites, be hard-nosed about those apps that are just so last decade. If they haven’t improved or significantly overlap the capabilities of another solution you already have or have been eyeing up, choose the best one (in terms of functionality, usability, and cost) and move on.
2. Consider efficiency, automation, and, of course, AI
Obviously, we can’t talk about marketing efficiency without talking about AI and automation. There are a multitude of tools out there that can speed up your workflows. However, don’t make the mistake of thinking AI can generate all your content – especially if you (and your customers and prospects) value your distinctive, trustworthy, and authentic voice.
Instead, I’d highly recommend analysing which administrative tasks are your biggest time suck and starting there. We’re talking about tasks like video editing, subtitling, reporting, gathering market trends, and social media scheduling – here, AI will add value and help you maintain momentum without destroying your investment in thought leadership.
3. Don’t confuse availability with best use of resources
If you ask us nicely, we’ll always help pack goody bags, set up name tags, or help sort out speakers. And we’ll do it with a smile.
But bear in mind – when you use an outsourced specialist senior resource (i.e. your One Little Seed marketing manager) vs your in-house admin resources for the small stuff, you’re spending money better invested in a high-return strategy.
4. Leverage vendor MDF
Just like the rest of the industry, the criteria for the Market Development Fund are becoming tighter, and there are more hurdles to overcome. However, the financial and brand benefits of co-funded partner marketing should still prompt you to ask, “How high and how often?”
Partner marketing and co-funded campaigns have always been a crucial part of marketing success for B2B organisations in the IT channel. However, you need to plan ahead, demonstrate how your business goals align with the vendor's goals, provide clear proof of execution, and be able to report back with tangible results. As vendor budgets tighten, it’s important to have a firm grasp on how you can engage with them in a meaningful way and demonstrate that you can tell your tactical activities from those with a long-term impact.
Luckily, here’s a video we prepared earlier where Kristal and Tanya from CrowdStrike share some real-world insights into co-marketing that actually works.
5. Explore contra deals
An exchange of services can be a great way to make your budget stretch further. What is critical, though, is that you:
- Partner with the right people - like the golden rule of Black Friday sales (just because it’s on sale doesn’t mean you need it), there’s no point spending time and energy on a contra deal that doesn’t serve you. If the offer doesn’t align with your business goals, a polite ‘no thanks’ can leave more time in your schedule for the activities that will deliver results.
- Use ALL the benefits and inclusions of your company sponsorships – make sure you leverage every opportunity to the max, not treat them as afterthoughts. We had a client with a multitude of sponsorship benefits that they weren’t using, and by leveraging those benefits strategically, they were able to save money elsewhere.
- Stay on brand and on message – before you commit, ask yourself whether the potential partner’s brand aligns with yours. Think about their brand values, their audience, their communication style and their reputation in the market.
If you can tick off all of those considerations and put a watertight contract in place to formalise the arrangement, it could be the foundation for win-win collaborations.
6. Hold events that pay off
I’ll say this once: An underwhelming and poorly run event is a waste of your money. And at a time when every marketing dollar must work that bit harder and smarter, it’s critical that your events are remembered for the right reasons – not because they’ve given you a bad rep.
To make it worthwhile, ensure you capitalise on your event or campaign investment by following through. You need to capture and chase every lead, know where it came from, and be able to report on it.
One of the biggest mistakes that we see companies make is poor follow-through. You ask them how successful the event they sponsored last year was, and they shrug their shoulders and say something along the lines of “from memory, the feedback from the team was pretty good? Dave, how was that event last year?” (And what makes us truly rage into our cold brew is when a client shows us a big box of business cards they collected from an event and never looked at again.)
Yes, it can be challenging to track B2B ROI on events due to the long lead time between the first touch and a buying decision, but it is possible. If you’re using a CRM like HubSpot or ActiveCampaign, you can set up automations to measure the average time-to-conversion from first touch to sale.
Events aren’t easy – it takes a lot of time, effort and attention to detail to make them look effortlessly engaging. And that means making sure that everyone is on board with doing their bit to make it run perfectly. Otherwise, ROI…RIP..
Final thoughts
It can feel exhausting at times - we know that we all work harder (and smarter) and drink more coffee when times are tough. But there are always practical (and even creative) ways to streamline operational efficiency, support your internal resources, leverage partner opportunities, and be more accountable and strategic without losing hard-won marketing ground.
