Three Critical B2B Marketing Mistakes to Avoid with Vention
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
0 likes•25 views
The document outlines a branding timeline starting in December 2021 with work at Pentagram, followed by an internal brand launch in February 2023 and an external launch in March. From May 2023 advertising, sponsorships, and owned media will deploy through the end of the year to promote the brand.
Recommended
More Related Content
More from saastr
More from saastr (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Three Critical B2B Marketing Mistakes to Avoid with Vention
- 4. December 2021 Start work with Pentagram March 22, 2023 External brand launch May 2023 Deploy digital, print, and OOH advertising, event sponsorships, and owned media strategy through EOY February 2023 Internal brand launch
- 5. ○ ○
Editor's Notes
- o Let’s jump in: our first mistake is one that unfortunately probably applies to just about all of us here today, and that is thinking the marketing roadmap we so painstakingly perfected at the beginning of this year would be the one that we follow to the letter.
- Here’s how I imagined 2023 was going to go: we were going to launch our new brand in March, we’d be doing big paid media pushes in tech hubs worldwide by summer, and by end of year, we’d have cemented Vention in hearts, minds, and media across all our target markets.
- But, as anyone with ties whatsoever to SVB can attest, the third week of March wasn’t exactly a great time to be trying to make headlines with a rebrand. Plus, as a company that works with great number of startups, we sensed that SVB was only the beginning and that engineering investment was about to get a whole lot tighter industry-wide. As for the cherry on top, for a company like ours with a sizable chunk of development centers located Eastern Europe, the war in Ukraine further — and appropriately — diverted our focus from getting out name out in the world to protecting our impacted or at-risk teams.
- We pivoted to focus on organic, low-cost tactics: SEO, account-based marketing, organic social media, tightening up our lead-to-account conversion funnel, attending events like this where you can forge human connections. It’s fun and a luxury to spend a lot of money on advertising, but if the media cycle is turbulent and no one has the cognitive bandwidth (not to mention the bankroll) to act on what’s put in front of them, then you’re wasting your money and reinforcing the faulty myth that brand marketing has low or incalculable ROI, which is simply not true
- Alright, on to Mistake #2: overestimating the difficulty of building a globally resonant brand.
- Vention has 20+ offices in over a dozen countries, and has been around for nearly 20 years, with a fiercely loyal, highly-retained employee base. When we decided in mid-2021 to undergo a major rebrand, we knew that the challenge wouldn’t be building a brand that our target audience would love; it would be building one that our teams worldwide could connect with and would feel reflects them as much as it does our US-based clients.
- You might be wondering how this is important apart from a rebrand, but what I took away from the experience was that expanding your target demographic definition isn’t nearly as complicated or lofty as it may seem, at least from a branding perspective. And when it comes to SaaS products, that work just about anywhere on earth with internet connectivity, we really do have the luxury of marketing to an almost limitless target audience
- This brings us to mistake #3: not diversifying your marketing strategy enough.
- We had to invest heavily in brand to strike that balance, but just as many companies — especially startups — have over-invested in brand at the expense of less sexy, but ultimately more trackable, profitable performance marketing tactics. Conversely, though, a bad brand is like a poison that will cloud every single thing you do or don’t do well — people don’t always know or appreciate what it takes to build a strong brand, but they sure will know a bad one when they see it.
- How do you know if you have a balanced marketing mix, then? You rely on metrics. If you see that your organic traffic is high, but people bounce fast, it’s a good bet your SEO team is killing it, but maybe your content is lacking. If you see that your content converts, but has low traffic, look closer at your user acquisition strategy. And so on and so forth — the numbers are the ultimate polygraph; they’ll tell you where to invest more time and money vs where you’re doing fine.
- So to sum up...
- Be prepared to pivot, think bigger and broader when it comes to your prospective audience, and rely on metrics to strike the right marketing mix for maximum impact. Simple as that!
- If anyone has questions or wants to say hello, stop by the Vention booth — I’d love to meet you. Otherwise, thanks so much for your time and enjoy the rest of SaaStr 2023!