Enterprise Marketing: Best Practices for Big Brands

One of the primary differences between enterprise-level and conventional marketing is that the former is conducted on a larger scale, which implies that it is allocated a larger budget compared to a typical marketing campaign.

Marketing is common in mid-market firms that are new to such elements as digital advertising and content marketing. On the other hand, enterprise marketing is common in larger firms that are experienced when it comes to working in competitive marketing landscapes. As such, it is presumed that enterprise marketing efforts will produce predetermined results within a specific time frame.

The collaboration from different departments when it comes to enterprise marketing has the potential to attract a larger and more loyal audience than what a marketing program could achieve.

Best enterprise marketing practices for big brands

Here the best enterprise marketing practices in various marketing domains:

Social media marketing

Social media marketing is the easiest way to promote visibility and customer engagement. After all, there are a total of 3.8 billion active social media users worldwide, which translates to around 60% of the world’s population.

However, social media is no longer as straight forward as it used to be. As an entity, you should first establish what’s the right channel is and come up with a digital marketing strategy. Rather than focusing on purely product or service promotions, companies must focus on content that is in line with brand values and show their personality.

Unlike other enterprise marketing media, social media marketing inspires interactions that build customer loyalty and trust.

Content marketing strategy

According to recent statistics, more 70% of companies across the globe are using content marketing to:

• Increase brand awareness
• Engage buyer personas
• Increase brand visibility
• Connect with the target audience

While content marketing focuses on the creation and sharing of valuable and relevant content, a content marketing strategy goes a step further to answer such questions as:

• Why are you using content marketing?
• Who do you aim to help?
• How will you differentiate yourself from the competition in the way you help them?

Having a plan alongside your content marketing strategy helps the enterprise manage its content efficiently and effectively. The content plan documents how you will execute the strategy. For instance, it points out what teams are responsible for what tasks to avoid duplicating efforts. It should entail such details as; key topic areas to be covered, what kind of content the different teams will create, when and how the content will be shared, and what CTAs will be included.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO improves an enterprise’s online presence and improves its rankings on major search engines such as Google and Bing, resulting in more clicks and, subsequently, more website visits. The more the people who access your website, the higher your chances of converting them into buying customers by presenting products or services that might appeal to them.

Today, enterprises must use both on-page and off-page SEO strategies. On-page SEO entails such things as keyword targeting, page speed optimization, content creation, and other changes that make your website rank higher. On the other hand, off-site SEO are efforts that do not necessarily take place on your website but improve its rankings and visibility anyway. It may include social media marketing, email marketing, and link building.

Enterprise marketers using this strategy must carry out continuous keyword research, consistently create content, and track the strategy’s success.

Omnichannel marketing

Unlike the conventional customer, the modern client is not confined to a single communication or interaction channel with brands. Unfortunately, even big brands struggle to keep up with the multiple channels available today. The more the channels an enterprise has, the better their chances of catering to a wider audience. However, multi-channel marketing is not always seamless. Therefore, you need omnichannel marketing to complement your multi-channel marketing efforts.

Omnichannel marketing aligns your cross-channel marketing efforts to deliver consistent and seamless content experiences throughout the buying process and beyond. The words’ consistent’ and ‘seamless’ are important as 67% of customers are likely to switch brands due to poor customer experience.

For an enterprise’s omnichannel marketing strategy to be effective, the enterprise marketing team needs to balance the right content at the right time. For this to happen, the company must have a deep understanding of their customers’ needs. Observe their preferred shopping platforms, their purchasing behaviors, how they interact with the brand across multiple touchpoints, the challenges they face, and the devices they use to shop.

With such data, enterprises can use marketing automation to segment users based on their behaviors and preferences. Segmentation helps personalize the buying journey for each customer by ensuring that they receive contextual messages through the right channel.

How to build a successful enterprise marketing strategy

The 3 critical pillars of a successful enterprise marketing campaign are:

Knowing your enterprise marketing goals and objectives

What’s the goal of your campaign? Do you want to achieve better brand awareness? Enhanced social engagement with customers? Or more sales? Understanding your goals and objectives is the first step towards building a successful enterprise marketing campaign.

While goals and objectives are sometimes used interchangeably, they are quite different. Goals refer to the all-encompassing results. They help guide and give direction to your enterprise marketing efforts. On the other hand, objectives spell out small, actionable actions that the team must take to achieve the laid down goals. If possible, the goals and objectives should be well documented.

Knowing your target audience

Who are your enterprise marketing efforts geared towards? Knowing your audience helps you tailor your campaign to suit their requirements, which often involves the creation of a buyer persona. The buyer persona features your audiences’:

• Location
• Gender
• Age
• Education level
• Interests
• Marital status
• Level of income
• Hobbies and interests
• Buying motivations as well as concerns

Depending on the nature of your business and the products you offer, you may have multiple types of target customers or even market segments you want to target. In that case, you would have to create multiple buyer personas and adapt your enterprise marketing campaign accordingly.

An agile enterprise should be able to revise and refine their definitions of an ideal customer as it grows.

Come up with a message.

Before executing your enterprise marketing campaign, you first need to come up with a clear message. Doing this helps you be consistent all through your marketing channels. The message should be derived from your goals and objectives, but it should be centered on the buyer’s persona.

Should I use enterprise management software?

Enterprise Management Systems or (EMS) or simply Enterprise Systems (ES) are more or less like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. Most EMS systems will take care of such functions as Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Human Resource Management (HRM), accounting, supply chain management, sales, and logistics.

EMS systems are suitable for large organizations. SMEs might find it challenging to implement such systems due to the implementation costs and the complex IT infrastructure required.

Some of the key features you should look into before settling on an EMS software are:

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Likely, your enterprise’s customer base has already outgrown spreadsheets. CRM is a tool that businesses use to manage their interactions with customers. It helps them build and nurture customer relationships, improve customer service, streamline processes, and increase sales or profitability. A CRM system captures customers’ information, including their email addresses, phone numbers, place of residence, social media profiles, and so on. Such information helps you understand your relationship with your clients over time.

Integration

To get the most out of your EMS system, you need to make sure that it can be integrated with current processes and infrastructure. While there are standalone solutions that promise that they can be integrated with existing systems, nothing beats the seamlessness of application suites meant to work together.

Through a fully integrated platform, you can carry out data-driven tasks as well as analyze and monitor processes. In essence, integration enhances seamless communications between teams, which reduces the chances of communication discrepancies.

Visibility and tracking

A good EMS system should have the ability to track the cycle of goods from raw materials until when the final product is consumed. It should also be able to track such information as production and sales statistics, among others.

Scalability

How well will your preferred EMS adapt to your enterprise’s growth needs? It is recommended that you choose a flexible software where you can add modules that adapt to current marketing needs.

Localization

Although it is often complex, your EMS needs to be easily optimizable to minimize the chances of human error. Localization goes beyond mere interface translation. Although it is a key component, a good EMS software needs to adapt to the needs and preferences of your organization fully.

Localization comes in handy should you decide to expand your operations to other regions as it ensures that you adapt to the local culture, language, and regulations. It is, in most cases, viewed as a way of attracting potential clients.

Data analysis

As an EMS should collect and processes data from the different functions within the enterprise, it only makes sense to leverage this information. Data analysis helps you identify patterns and trends in your processes. Such information helps you know what tasks are effective and provides you with future enterprise forecasts.

An EMS should analyze all data relating to the enterprise, including production, sales, customer data, and so on. For example, it should have the ability to predict demand, come up with a budget, and analyze the effectiveness of the enterprise marketing strategies.

Challenges faced by enterprise marketers today

Misaligned executive goals and objectives

This challenge is prevalent in enterprises where the executive comes up with the goals or objectives of the enterprise marketing campaign. In some cases, the goals are handed over to the team, and it’s upon them to define the objectives. The team may find it hard to come up with objectives that sit well with the set goals.

Expansion to new limits

An enterprise that’s first starting on enterprise marketing has to deal with the challenge of venturing into new limits while grappling with such functions as inventory management, human resource management, bookkeeping, and so on. Being new, it is likely that such organizations do not have the budget to produce the expected results. Also, marketing teams have little or no experience in enterprise marketing.

Executive buy-in

When the goals and objectives of the campaign aren’t aligned or optimal, the team may decide to resend the executives to the drawing board. While some executives are open to new ideas and tactics, others are risk-averse. Although they may be comfortable with the team’s suggestions, the approvals may take weeks or even months due to bureaucracy.

Lack of proper communication

If the teams’ requests have to be submitted to the chief marketing officer who then has to talk to the chief strategic officer, how do you align this communication? Improper communication is often the source of team politics and squabbles.

In a nutshell, enterprise marketing in 2021 should be consumer-focused as more consumers want to be involved in the buying process. In essence, to convert more prospects, big brands should craft their marketing strategies based on specific consumer needs and preferences. This way, brands can differentiate themselves better in an increasingly competitive business environment.