Marketing can work wonders for many B2B software companies, but it is not always a magic bullet that can fix anything such as lagging revenue or a poorly-performing product.
Marketing ranks among the essential things a business can do to grow. It builds brand awareness and loyalty, increases sales, and engages customers. Due to its distinct and numerous benefits, many people believe it is the fix for all business problems.
However, sometimes the real issue with the business is more profound, and marketing alone cannot help. In such cases, increasing the sales and marketing budget is just burning money. Read on to find out the signs, instances, and problems that even the best marketing strategies cannot fix.
Signs You Have a Problem That Marketing Cannot Fix
1. Unhappy Customers or a Bad Experience
Marketing cannot fix a bad customer experience. Whether it is with your products or services, customer service representatives, or salespeople, a bad experience is often the end of a business relationship. Worse still, you stand to lose a customer, his or her referrals, and any other potential customers that they tell about their bad experience.
Marketing gets people through the door, but it cannot ensure they will receive an experience they will want to repeat. So before you think of increasing your marketing efforts, take time to ensure that current customers are satisfied.
2. Ineffective Sales Teams
Marketing generates leads, but the sales process converts and closes. Therefore, you cannot use marketing to fix a weak sales team or process. Sure it can help you cover some ground by bringing in ready customers, but it does little in closing the sale.
Uninformed, unprofessional, unmotivated, or underperforming sales reps are a management problem. Cultivating leads that your sales team cannot convert does little to help you grow or sustain your business. Businesses lose 15% of their customer base annually through natural attrition. So your sales team must generate more than 15% in new sales yearly to grow your B2B software company.
3. Undefined Competitive Advantage
Your business needs to define its competitive edge and value proposition and communicate it in its marketing message. Statements like “we’re just better” or “twenty years of serving our customers” are not a competitive advantage but the outcome of one. Besides, many of your competitors can also assert similar statements.
It is necessary to dig deeper into your business to discover what makes it better. Consider things like:
- What you do well
- Areas where customers compliment you
- How you conduct business
- Why customers leave your business
- What you provide or offer that your competitors do not
The answers you get can help your business define its competitive advantage and craft a compelling marketing message.
4. Cash Flow Problems
It’s tempting to think that by increasing your marketing budget and efforts will increase your revenue and resolve your cash flow problem.
After all, marketing is all about increasing sales and revenue. It makes sense on the surface. However, when you take a closer look, you might discover that the real problem may be your expenses or not getting invoices out on time. You should fix your accounting problems first before changing your marketing.
5. Lack of Vision
Marketing is ineffective without a clear vision for your business. You must determine why you are in business and what value proposition you offer to the market. Having a strategic plan in place with well-defined short-term and long-term goals will help your marketing team to plan around and achieve them.
While a business plan is an excellent place to start, it usually has immediate goals, say for only one year. Your business goals may change and adapt with time, but they are the backbone on which all other departments build from and make decisions. They are also a benchmark for your performance and progress.
The Essence of a Great Product
Marketing cannot fix an inferior product, despite how much money you throw into it. Selling your product or service is every entrepreneur’s dream. Having a brilliant idea, building it, and selling it is thrilling.
As an entrepreneur, you want to grow and scale as quickly as possible, so naturally, you switch your focus to marketing and start hitting the phones daily. However, the reality of building a B2B software company is far from a stereotypical rocket ship startup dream.
Your first ten customers should never be the product of sales and marketing but rather the function of your product team. That way, you get product-market fit and achieve real growth. Its common knowledge that a great product can sell itself.
You see, a sales and marketing campaign costs money, whether you decide to outsource the function or execute it in-house. Therefore, if you have not achieved product-market fit before you dive into marketing and sales, you risk spending a lot of resources on campaigns that will not convert at the rate you expect.
On top of your marketing and sales efforts, you should also employ other methods of ascertaining the necessity and effectiveness of your product. For example:
- The toothbrush test – It helps you understand how regularly users use your product daily.
- Understanding what features users routinely use and what tasks you are helping them accomplish. Consequently, you can craft your marketing message about what your product does. Here, it would be best if you had precise statements and not abstractions. Consumers respond better to quantifiable outcomes.
The Bottom Line
If you want to grow and scale your B2B software company, you need to market it consistently. However, using marketing for expediency or as a Band-Aid for other deep-rooted business problems could spell trouble in the end.
Sales and marketing campaigns do not grow and transform your business overnight. Growth and scaling are the results of several things, including a great product, a defined competitive advantage, a reliable management function, clear goals and vision, and a capable sales team. Once you find the perfect balance, the sales will come. Need help to determine the right marketing strategies to scale your B2B software firm? Contact us today for information about our products and how we can help your marketing efforts fit your business needs and grow your revenue.
