Strategy

What Is a Real Marketing Strategy? A Guide for B2B

In a world full of marketing noise, B2B companies are often left wondering:

What counts as strategy?
How do we create one?

This article breaks down marketing strategy into 10 practical steps, each one essential for building a marketing strategy that actually works.

Step 1: Market Orientation

Real strategy starts by turning the company outward. Market orientation means putting the customer at the center of everything you do.

That means:

Solving real problems, not pushing features
Talking to customers, not just about them
Focusing on value, not vanity

Barriers: Many companies default to internal politics, product obsession, or competitive mimicry. But customers don’t care about your org chart. They care about what you can do for them.

💡 "Most customers don't care about your brand. They care about their own problems."

Step 2: Market Research

You can’t build a strategy in the dark. Research turns the lights on.

According to Professor Mark Ritson, former faculty member at London Business School, if you don’t invest 5% of your budget in research, “you don’t know what you’re doing.”

For a service business, that means you’re probably making decisions based on assumptions rather than evidence. You may be building campaigns around what you think matters, instead of what your market truly values.

🔑 Key: Use a representative sample—not just your best clients or internal opinions.

Good research means understanding the whole market, not just the warmest leads.

According to the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, 95% of buyers are not in-market today. As such, research must go beyond your current pipeline. It should help you understand the broader category and future customers.

If you only focus on the 5% actively looking, you’re missing the far bigger opportunity to build future demand.

Step 3: Segmentation

Not all customers are the same. Segmentation is how you identify the most meaningful differences between them.

Good segmentation:

Bad segmentation:

A strong segmentation strategy helps you see where demand is, where spillover happens, and which groups are worth targeting.

Step 4: Targeting

Who are you actually trying to reach?

Targeting doesn’t always mean narrowing down to a micro-niche. In fact, sophisticated mass marketing—a concept championed by Professor Ritson and supported by Byron Sharp’s research—suggests you aim to reach the whole market while prioritizing key segments.

This approach works because light buyers (those who buy infrequently) make up a large portion of most markets. Ignoring them means ignoring growth.

Smart targeting means:

Reaching broadly but with relevance
Balancing light and heavy buyers
Using tailored messages without splintering your brand

💡 "Don't go narrow. Go wide—but smart."

Step 5: Positioning

Positioning is how your brand lives in the customer’s mind.

It sits at the intersection of:

Customer needs
Your strengths
Competitor claims

A good position is:

Simple
Relevant
Defensible
Easy to communicate

💡 "If you don't position yourself, the market will do it for you."

Step 6: Objectives

Strategy means deciding what success looks like—and where to focus.

Use the funnel to set goals across:

Awareness (long-term brand building)
Consideration
Conversion (short-term activation)

Les Binet and Peter Field, renowned marketing effectiveness researchers, analyzed hundreds of campaigns through the IPA databank.

Their findings are clear: campaigns that balance long-term brand building (60%) and short-term activation (40%) significantly outperform those that don’t.

This matters especially in B2B and professional services. If 95% of your market isn’t ready to buy today (Ehrenberg-Bass), your long-term brand building keeps you in their minds for when they are.

💡 "If everything is a priority, nothing is."

Step 7: Product

The first of the Four Ps. In services, your product is the offer: the service experience, how it’s packaged, how it delivers value.

Key questions:

Are we solving a real customer need?
Are we focused, or offering too many variants?
Is our service easy to understand and buy?

💡 "Great products come from deciding what not to offer."

Step 8: Price

Pricing is a strategic signal. Get it wrong, and no amount of marketing will save you.

3 ways to set price:

Cost-based – Safe, but doesn’t reflect value
Competitor-based – Keeps you average
Customer-based – Charges based on perceived value (best option)

Watch out:

Overusing discounts trains customers to wait
Sales teams can erode pricing in the field

💡 "When you stop managing price, you stop managing marketing."

Step 9: Promotion (Marketing Communications)

Promotion is what you say—and where you say it.

Media neutrality matters: Don’t default to your favorite channel. Let your strategy choose the mix based on who you’re targeting and what they need to hear.

📊 Research from Kantar and Nielsen shows that 5–7 media channels is the sweet spot for effectiveness.

Less than that risks underexposure. More than that risks spreading budget too thin.

💡 "The medium doesn't matter until the message is clear."

Step 10: Place

For service businesses, Place means how and where clients can access you.

Ask:

Are we online, offline, or hybrid?
Is our service easy to find and engage with?
Are we using partners or selling directly?

Access shapes perception. The easier you are to work with, the more likely people are to choose you.

💡 "If they can't find you, they can't buy you."

Final Thought

Marketing strategy isn’t about doing more. It’s about making smarter choices, understanding your customers, and being consistent.

🔍 Diagnosis (33%)

Understand the market and your customer

🎯 Strategy (33%)

Choose who to target, how to position, and what to focus on

⚙️ Tactics (33%)

Deliver through the Four Ps, consistently

Consistency beats cleverness. The brands that stay visible grow. The ones that disappear? They fall behind—and pay more to catch up.

💡 "Strategy gives you direction. Consistency gives you results."

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Marketing Strategy Guide (FREE Download)

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