Cairns’ B2B Marketing Strategy Model

Cairns’ B2B Marketing Strategy Model

1. Marketing Landscape

A1. Situation Analysis

Cairns’ model surmises that the starting point of any strategic marketing plan is defining the broader situational context in which the market strategy is or will be developed. Ignoring this preliminary step would render the task of new marketing persons not involved in the marketing process, learning and adopting the marketing strategy robustly difficult.

The process of defining said context, which Cairns’ labels as ‘situational analysis’ can be swiftly compiled based on answering a set of questions:

1. What is the age and history of the company including all M&A (Merge & Acquisition) activites?
2. What are the products manufactured and/or services provided?
3. What market sectors does this company target?
4. What are the intended applications of their product/services?
5. What is the maturity level of these target market sectors?
6. What are the company’s recent sales figures, revenue breakdown across business areas, and overall profitability?
7. How are the internal sales and product support teams currently structured and composed?
8. What does the company’s reseller and distribution network look like?
9. What key marketing activities has the company undertaken over the last 1-2 years?

B1. Dolnicar et al.’s Market Segmentation Analysis QA Model

Approach: Hybrid Segmentation

In B2B marketing, marketing segements (i.e. customers groups that share the same market needs) are typically defined by job titles in similar industries, and the drivers behind their market needs is defined around corporate business goals.

Phase 0: Defining Scope

1. Unit of Analysis: Are we segmenting accounts (the buying firm), buying centers (the DMU), or the individual roles within the buying centre?
2. Approach: Choose which approach to take for market segmentation: Commonsense segmentation, which uses a single segmentation variable chosen in advance (e.g. industry, company size, etc.), Data-driven segmentation uses multiple segmentation variables at once (needs, soughted benefits, usuage patterns, spend, etc.), or Hybrid segmentation, which combines both approaches.
3. Appetite for Change. Are we willing to start from scratcn (revolution), sharpen the segements we already serve (evolution), or simply act on segments that surface opportunistically from existing data?

Phase 1: Deciding Market Segmentation

1. Is the culture genuinely market-oriented, or is it product, engineering, or sales-led?
2. Is the organization genuinely willing to change, not just hear the analytical market findings?
3. Does it take a long-term view, or is planning bounded by the quarter and the quota cycle?
4. Is it open to new ideas, i cluding ones that contradict long-held convictions about who the customer is?
5. Do marketing, sales, product, customerr success, finance, and channel actually share information? Will sales release CRM Data and accept segment-driven changes to territories and coverage?
6. Can the organization make structural changes, reorganize around market segments rather than products, regions, re-cut territories, or change comp plans?
7. Are there sufficient financial resoources for both the analysis and the long-term strategy? Is the expected margin uplift larger than the full cost of segmenting?
8. Is there visible, active commitment from the CEO or equivalent and named sponsors and stakeholders?
9. Are the objectives of this exercise written down and agreed? Is there a structured process with responsibilites assigned?

Phase 2: Define The Ideal Target Segment

Knock-out Criteria (Ensures the segment is homogeneous, distinct, large enough, matched to your strenghts, identifiable, and reachable)

1. What is the minimum viable segment size expressed in number of accounts, addressable revenue, or both. Give a number.
2. What does reachable mean concretely here: a buyable list, a sales route, a trade body, an event, a partner, a procurement portal?
3. What does identifiable mean: can we glag an account as a segment member in the CRM from data we can obtain without request?
4. What needs would disqualify a segment because we cannot serve them? (e.g. compliance regime, geography SLA, certification, integration, capacity?)

Attractiveness Criteria (Ensures the analysis is negotiable and weighted)

1. Which candidate criteria matter to us? (Segment size; growth rate; win rate; sales cycle length; price sensitivity; retention and churn; contract length; expansion potential; competitive intensity; barriers to entry and exit; switching costs; cost to serve; strategic or reference value; regulatory and technology risk; cyclicality; buyer and supplier bargaining power; fit with our stated strategy?).
2. Have we cut the weighted list to up to six criteria and has this weighted set been approved?

Phase 3: Collecting Data

CS

1. Which single variable defines the frame? (e.g. industry code, size band, region, buying situation, channel, or customer-vs-prospect status?)
2. Is that variable a plausible cause of differing needs or only a convenient label?
3. Is it populated, current, and consistent for every account in scope, incluing prospects and competitors’ customers, not just our CRM?

D-D

1. Which one segmentation criterion will the clustering use? (benefits sought, decision criteria, use case/workload, purchasing approach, or observed consumption behavior?)
2. Which specific variables will be used as measurement and which candidate variables are unecessary or redundant?
3. Whose answers from the buying centre represent the account? A single informant or several roles within the buying centre? Is disagreement within an account the signal?
4. Do we have roughly 100 accounts per segmentation variable in the post=filter population?
5. Can internal behavioral data repalce or supplement a survey (order history, product mix, usuage telemetry, support tickets, contract terms, renewal behavior)?
6. If surveying: are response options binary or metric rather than 5 or 7-point agreement scales?
7. Which descriptor variables are we collecting but deliberately withholding from clustering,for use later?
8. Does the sample over-represent exisiting customers and won deals? What coverage do we have of prospects, lost deals, and competitors’ accounts?

Phase 4: Exploring Data

1. In one row exactly one buying entity? Are parent/subsidiary hierarchies, multiple sites, and duplicate account records resolved to a consistent level?*
2. What is inconsistent, stale or missing, and what is the rule for handling each case?
3. Are the segmentation variables correlated with each other? If so, drop or combine down to an uncorrelated subset.
4. Is the variable-to-account ratio still acceptable after the commonsense filter is applied?
5. Do skewed metric variables (revenue, headocunt, spend) need transformation or standardization before distance is computed?
6. Are there acounts with mechanical or implausible response patterns that should be removed?
7. Does the filtered population still have enough accounts to cluster meaningfully? If not, widen the commonsense filter or reduce the variable count? Do not proceed-as-is*

Phase 5: Extracting Segments

1. Which extraction methods are admissible given our scale level, data size, and strcuture, and have we run more then one? (No algorithm is best in both cases).
2. Have we computed solutions across a range of segment numbers rather than assuming one? What does the range tell us?
3. What does stability-based data structure analysis show? Natural, reproducible, or constructive structure?*
4. Has these findings been communicated in those terms to leadership?
5. Which individual segments reappear consistently across repeated runs and across different algorithms?
6. Do the candidate segments pass the Step 2 knock-out criteria (size floor in both accounts and revenue, homogeneity, and distinctness?)

Phase 6: Profiling Segments

1. For each segment, which variables sit above or below the overall average, that is what makes it distinct, not merely what is common within it (A characteristic shared by every segments describes the market, not the segment itself)
2. Can each segment be given a plain-language name that a salesperson would recognize from their own accounts?
3. How well seperated are the segments? (genuinely different groups, or arbitrary slices of one continuum?)
4. Does the segment now visibily fail a knock-out criterion? (too small, not distinct, or requiring something that we cannot deliver?)
5. Is the profile presented visually rather than as tables of percentages?

Phase 7: Describing Segements

1. How do segments differ on firmographics (industry, size, geography, growth, ownership), technographics (installed stack, integration surface), buying process (cycle length, buying-centre size, procurement route, contract vehicle), and economics (ACV, gross margin, discount depth, support cost, churn)?
2. Are those differences statistically significant, with correction applied for testing many variables at once?
3. Can we build a classification model that predicts segment membership from descriptors we hold for all accounts, including prospects we’ve never spoken to? What is the accuracy?*
4. Which descriptors identify a segment, and which ones actually reach them? (job titles, channels, publications, associations, partner networks, events?)
5. Given an unlabelled account, could a rep place it correctly using observable characteristics? Have we tested this on real accounts with real reps?
6. Where is our picture of a segment still too thin to act on, and what would fill the gap?

Phase 8: Selecting the Target Segment(s)

1. Do all remaining segments still pass the knockout criteria? (homogeneity, distinctness, sizne, match, identifiability, reachability)*
2. What is each segment’s attractiveness score? (critertion values × Step 2 weights summed)?
3. What is each segment’s relative organizational competitiveness score?
4. Plotted on the evalutaion matrix, where does each segment land? Does the picture match the team’s intuition?
5. How many segments can we genuinely serve, given sales headcount, product and configuration capacity, support capacity, and marketing budget?
6. If targeting more than one: are they compatible? Check for channel conflict, price leakage between segments in a market where buyers talk to each other, contradictory positioning, most-favoured-nation clause, and direct competitors sitting in the same segment.
7. What happens to non-target accounts already in the base? (retain, harvest, migrate, or exit?) What are the revenue, contractual, and reputational consequences of each?

Phase 9: Customizing the Marketing Mix

1. Which configuration, feature set, integrations, SLA, onboarding path, and support tier does this segment get? And what do we deliberately stop offering them? What is the pricing metric, tier structure, contract length, discount authority, and payment terms for this segment and what mechanism prevents cross-segment price leakage when buyers compare notes?
2. What is the route to market? (field sales, inside sales, self-serve, reseller, systems intergrator marketplace? Who owns the account, and what coverage ratio does that imply?
3. What message foes to each role in the buying centre, what proof does this segment require? (same-vertical references, same-size references, certifications), through which channels, and with what sales enablement training?
4. Does the mix hold together as a whole, and does it match how this segment actually buys? Who initiates, who evaluates, who approves, and what event triggers purchase?
5. Have sales compensation, territory design, account assignment, and the CRM segment field been updated to match?*
6. If targeting several segments: has this been completely seperated for each, and are the resulting mixes mututally compatible?

Phase 10: Evaluation and Monitoring

1. Which short-term indicators measure success tracked per segment? (win rate, ACV, sales cycle length, CAC, pipeline coverage, share of wallet)
2. Which long-term indicators measure success tracked per segment? (retention/NRR, gross margin, expansion rate, and perceived positioning within the segment (win-loss analysis)?
3. What is the baseline for every indicator, recorded before implementation? Without it, attribution is impossible.
4. Who collects each indicator, in which system, how often, and who reviews it on what cadence?
5. Which indicators capture marketin dynamics? (segment size and growth, new entrants, technology shifts, regulatory change, competitor repositioning)
6. How often are accounts re-scored, and what happens operationally when one move segments as it grows or changes? Who reassigns coverage and does pricing change?
7. What was the baseline stability from earlier?
8. What is the adaptation checklist? If a critical change is detected, exactly what happens, in which units, how quickly and who decides?

C1. Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and Buyer Personas

Following marketing segmentation analysis, once target market segment(s) are determined and selected, we survey the market segment and embedded customer groups to construct two key customer profiles: Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and Buyer Personas.

In B2B marketing, Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is the benchmark description of the ideal client business, you’d want your product/service to be sold to. Buyer personas, on the other hand, are more central to B2C marketing, but nevertheless still play an important role in B2B marketing. Buyer personas is the de facto representation of your ideal customer. For either ICP or BPs, the same set of key questions can be used to survey ideal customer profiles on the business or individual client side:

1. What prompts you to buy products and services like ours?
2. What are your current challenges?
3. What are the problems that our product or service solves for you?
4. What could happen if these problems were not solved?
5. Where did you hear about us?
6. What do you appreciate most about our product or service?
7. Are you satisfied with everything (quality, service, support, results, etc.) or is there something that can be improved?
8. What features would you like to see in our product or service?
9. Would you recommend our company?
10. Which industry blogs, websites, or experts do you turn to for knowledge building?
11. Who are the key stakeholders in your company?

Together, ICPs and BPs help B2B enterprises determine not only the ideal businesses to sell to within a target market segment, but the individuals within those businesses to specifically reach out to.

D1. Macro-Environmental Analysis (PESTEL)

Macro-enviornment in marketing refers to the overarching external factors that affect an organization’s marketing standing, performance, decision and strategy profiles which the organization cannot directly influence or control. Macro-environmental analysis, therefore, seeks to determine these idiosyncratic external factors under specific categories, represented by the PESTEL acronym, which stands for Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, and Legal. PESTEL is a methodological framework through which businesses can define external PESTEL factors for their own unique market situation.

As a general principle of PESTEL research, the research that goes into PESTEL analysis should be thorough, credible, accurate and grounded in primary sources. The following techniques are suggested by the author:

• News results and articles
• Market statistics in industry association reports
• Review summaries of market reports to ground some basic, high-level market statistics
• Different perspectives of product positioning in the broader market (e.g., a manufacturer)
• Browse the content of digital trade publications and feature lists to get an overview of main topics and trends
• Look at trade fair content, defined exhibition zones, and seminar topics to get a feel for the main focuses of the industry.
• Consult your own colleagues an employees in various departments.

The information extracted from the analysis should paint the broader yet closely pertinent context your business and marketing operations will operate under.

E1. Marketing SWOT Analysis

The SWOT analysis, an acronym that stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats is a simple framework that allows marketers to more cohesively and usefully survey and assess the business enviroment of under the SWOT framework and determine your company’s competitve position. This analysis should be simple, as the situation analysis coupled with the marketing segmentation, ICP and BP analysis, and macro-environemtnal analysis should already form the basis of your SWOT framework.

As a general observation of common trends in SWOT categories, from the perspective of Strengths and Weaknesses, elements such as finance, marketing, management and production occur as recurring themes. Opportunities and threats are typically embedded with PESTEL categorical changes in the market along with either competitor M&A activities or new market participants and product developments.

2. Competitor Analysis

Competitor analysis in B2B marketing is a critical weapon for B2B marketing entities because it equips businesses with a fruitful understand of their marketing positioning compared to adjacent competitors, and awareness of competitor strategies and tactics that can serve as a lighthouse to improve a businesses' own marketing strategy profile.

At the prinicpal level, there are fundamentals questions within several distinct key area of the competitor matrix, one should ask when conducting competitior analysis:

The first key area focuses on brand and positioning:

1. What are the key compoenents of a competitor’s value proposition that appear on their landing page? (also typically found in the 'About Us’ section). Be sure through dig through their value propositions thoroughly.
2. What does your competitors’ digital literature look like?
3. What does the messaging on their digital advertising and social posts look like?
4. What else do your competitors stand for?
5. What consistent messages are at the foreground of their digital prescence?
6. How are your competitors trying to be perceived in the market?

The second key area encompasses size and segmentation to create context:

1. Is the competitor a smaller area of a larger company with many more product lines?
2. How do your competitors segment the market?
3. What market shares do thet own?
4. What are their strengths and weaknesses in terms of product novelties, R&D, innovation, etc.?

The third key area concerns the level of their marketing techniques and the frequency of updates. Collect the information and compare it with other key competitors, so you can create a benchmark which can be leveraged to identify your own marketing weaknesses.

a. Main features or areas of their website

b. Downloading of company and technical brochures

c. Seminars or webinars

d. Rich content such as blog entries

e. Technical data sheets and documentation

f. Building credibility through case studies or media work and PR activites

g. Social channels

h. Explainer vidoes and web content

i. Regularity of news content

j. Links to subscribe to e-newsletters

k. List of the channels “where you heard about us” on their contact form

l. Live chat functionality

m. Login or customized functionality for resellers or customers

n. List of the trade fairs where they exhibit

The fourth key area investigates how do they compare to your own company on a digital basis? We’re looking at things like:

a. Website domain authority

b. Estimated traffic on the website

c. Backlinks to the website

d. Website Keywords

e. Greater SEO performance of the website

f. Digital brand names can partially be used for benchmarking PR efforts

g. Channel engagement rates will provide a benchmark for social performance

3. Brand, Positioning, and Message

At the center of any decent B2B marketing strategy, must be a brand. A brand is the set of trust, experiences, and associations that other client businesses hold about your company. It’s the reputational trademark that any company seeks to either uphold or develop and evolve. There are five central pillars that represent the values of a brand and your value proposition:

1. Brand Core: The defining idea, a short-form that explains what makes up the brand
2. Brand Purpose: Why is what your brand does useful and why is it valuable to your customers and to the market?
3. Value Promise: The value and benefit that your brand provides to your customers.
4. Brand Personality: How one interacts with your brand and how the brand presents itself.
5. Brand Principles: What the compant values and what drives company culture.

There are three core elements that should be used for benchamrking and refining your company’s value proposition (and thereby their brand):

Value Proposition Analysis

a. Your own company’s strenghts and USPs (Unique Selling Propositions)

b. The strenghts and USPs of your competitors: Compare key product/service features.

c. The general market expectation of your product/service: Collect market and customer information

The information for A and B is already compiled from earlier analytical steps in our model, however as for C, that is, establishing general market expectation, a digital survey from three interest groups: internal employees, resellers and end users can easily determine such expectation.

4. Media and Marketing Channel Selection

A B2B marketing channel is the platform, method or medium used to promote products/services to client businesses. There are two types of B2B marketing channels and their differentiating factor is simply the direction of communication and attention capture: An inbound marketing channel draws customers towards your brand to promote it. An outbound marketing channel pushes out your brand and/or product messaging directly to your target audience to promote your band.

The following are the main B2B media and marketing channels:

Inbound (Primary)

• SEO (Search Engine Optimization) - This channel optimizes site structure, content and technical performance so your landing pages rank in organic search results. It’s the foundation for being found by buyers actively researching a problem.

• Social Media - This channel focuses on organic posting and engagement on B2B platforms such as LinkedIn, X, or YouTube to build target audience, creibility/reputation, and referral traffic.

• Website - This channel represents your company’s own hub where every other marketing channel involved in the mix sends their leads to turn warm leads to converted customers, or a “lead-capture engine"

• Earned Digital PR & Editorial Features - The channel is the product of earning digital coverage through pitching stories, exper comments or data to journalists and trade publications.

• Personalized Micro-sites or Landing Pages - The channel builds standalone, isolated pages designated for a single marketing campaign, segmet, or named account, to focus on driving a single action, which is why this channel is primarily employed for lifting conversion rates and tailor messaging, for a specific buyer account.

• Paid Search (PPC & Re-Marketing) - This channel bids on search terms to appear above organic results, plus re-targeting ads that follow previous users around the web, which grants immediate visibility for high-intent keywords while SEO matures organically.

• Automation/Email - This channel triggers scheduled email sequences driven through a marketing automation platform, based on beahviour or lifecycle stage, allowing leads that aren’t necessarily “sales-qualified” to be nurtured and scored for handover.

• Commerical PDF Downloads (Case Studies & Infographics) - This channel distributes gated or ungated commerically-oriented digital (or physical) assets that prove results and make complex propositional digestible and easy to grasp.

Outbound (Primary)

• Printed Marketing Collateral (Brochures, Catalogues, Flyers & POS) - This channel focuses on physical sales materials handed out by reps, at events, or in-store point-of-sale displays.

• Throaway Press Releases - This channel distributes routinely, low-effort announcements (new hires, minor product updates) issued to wire services and trade titles.

• Digital Trade Press Advertising - This channel uses paid banners, newsletter placements and sponsored articles on industry publication websites to reach target audiences.

• Technical PDF Downloads (Technical Documents, Brochures) - This channel utlizes spec sheets, data sheets, and technical brochures aimed at engineers and specifiers rather than commerical buyers. Decisive during the shortlisting stage.

• Social Advertising - This channel depends on the paid and targeted placements of a company’s brand and/or product/service on social platforms using job titles, and company, industry, or account-list targeting.

• Print Trade Press Advertising - This channel displayds ads in physical industry magazines and journals. A great channel in secotrs where printed titles remain the trusted reference.

• Digital Trade Directory Advertising - This channel pushes paid lisitings and enhanced profiles on sector directories and buyer platforms, used to gauge procurment teams shopping through categories.

• Direct Mail - This channel distributes physical items and posts them to named prospects, from letters to high-value “lumpy mail” packages. This channel is ideal for cutting through digital saturation and works for account-based targeting of hard-to-reach decision makers.

• Exhibitions This channel uses trade show stands where you meet prospects, demo products and gather leads in concentrated bursts. This channel has an expensive cost-per-lead figure but is unmatched for face-to-face discovery.

Inbound (Secondary)

• Blog - This channel pushes out regularly published articles answering buying questions and expanding keyword coverage, directly feeding SEO, soecial and email channels with a steady supply of content.

• Webinars - This channel pushes out live or on-demand online sessions covering certain topics, demos or pannel discussions, thereby egenrating registration data and demonstrates expertise to a self-selecting audience.

• Sales Enablement/Reseller Portal - This channel is a gated hub giving sales teams and channel partners access to approved assets, pricing, training and campaign kits. This keeps distributed sellers on-message and reduces requests to markets.

• Podcast Series - This channel is an ongoing audio show that features industry discussion or customer stories. This channel builds long-form familarity with a niche audience and is a strong pretext for reaching senior guests within your sector/industry.

• Apps - This channel builds and pushes out utility tools, configurators or calculators that solve a small task for your audience. This channel fosters repeated engagement by being useful rather than promotional.

• Video Series - This channel pushes out typically episodic video content such as explainers, product walkthroughs, customer stories, hosted on your website, YouTube, or other social platforms. This allows companies to better communicate complex propositions surrounding their brand or product/service to their audience.

• White Papers - This channel provides in-depth, research-led documents making an argument or analyzing an industry gap or problem. This is usually gated to capture high-value leads and used to shape how buyers frame their requirements.

• E-Books - This channel pushes long-form and accessible guides that package expertise into a designed, and easy-to-read asset.

Outbound (Secondary)

• Bespoke Face-to-Face Events - This channel pushes your own hosted rountables, dinners, site visits or customer days, designed around a target account list.

• Sponsorship - This channel pays to attach your brand to an industry event, award, publication or assocation program. It is buying association with a trusted institution or other forms of trusted outlets and access to their audiences, usually within your own target market segments.

When evaluating the available marketing channels to choose from, the essential motivations of a B2B client buyer should always be factored at the center of any marketing channel selection process. These drivers are fundamentally determined by:

• The lifecycle value or ROI of the product being sold and how the company will benefit from it

• Technical features and tangible benefits

• The desire to iteratively learn

• Detailed technical content

• Numerous decision-makers in the purchasing process

• Longer purchase cycle and longer contract term

Building a B2B Channel Mix

In B2B marketing, a common pattern observed among B2B marketing channels is the "Law of Lesser Returns". Essentially, pursuing the same marketing channel repeatedly does not merely produce stagnation but regression. Your marketing strategy will yield lesser clicks, and thereby lesser leads and conversions and overall result in shrinking pipeline value. To circumvent this, a marketing channel mix is critical, which is the strategic combination of several distinct marketing channels to reach and engage yout target business audience.

When considering any specific or combination of marketing channels, one should consider the following questions:

1. What is the cost profile in terms of the entry barrier for a particular channel?
2. What is the relative performance of the marketing currently used? Rank them.
3. How does the ranking look with respect to the proportion of competitors already using a particular channel?
4. Are there new marketing channels being used by competitors that can add value to the mix by effectivrly addressing key ideal customer profiles and buyer personas?
5. For any given potential channel, how well would that channel perform with respect to market adaptation and potential returns? (1-10)
6. Is the channel primarily used for drip-feed, one-time material, or both?

When selecting the optimal combination of marketing channels, it’s also logical to align the mix with the various stages of the buyer journey of B2B customers:

Gartner’s 6-Stage B2B Buyer Journey

1. Problem Identification
2. Solution Exploration
3. Requirement Building
4. Supplier Selection
5. Validation
6. Consensus Building

5. Selecting Your MarTech Stack

A MarTech or Marketing Technology stack is the collection of software and digital tools used by professional marketing bodies to assist in effectively automating, implementing and measuring various multi-channel marketing activities across the entire customer lifecycle.

Approach for an Optimal B2B MarTech Stack:

One should be aware of three aspet when building an optimal MarTech Stack:

1. There are six core groups: Advertising & Promotion, Content & Experience, Social & Relationships, Commerece & Sales, Data and Management. The 2026 MarTech Marketing Landscape adduces around 50 sub-categories and over 15,000 MarTech products to choose from.
2. You should expect your MarTech stack to evolve and not remain stagnant. Constantly test and iterate through your software and digital tools, and do not be afraid to try new tools as a means of further optimizing your stack (10-15 tools is the general but loosely-set rule of thumb for a MarTech Stack)
3. Consider deeply how your tech stack can be aligned and adapted to better provide personalized content to your prospects and audience.

It’s also worth asking certain questions that determine the framework of your MarTech framework:

• What does your company’s current MarTech stack look like?
• Do these tools face inward or outward?
• What am I trying to achieve in terms of content production?
• What collaboration will be required to meet these requirements?
• How will I distribute these contents to the main target groups?
• How can I measure content engagement and impact?
• Where are the priorities in terms of further development of the stack?
• Can I connect, integrate, and exchange data between different tools?
• Does the newly defined tech stack align with the strategy and meet our defined marketing objectives?

As a more practical template for a MarTech stack, you can divide your stack of 10-15 tools into three categories: Attract (Content Production & Collaboration), Engage (Sales and Marketing) and Analyse & Optimize (Data Analytics), which essentially merged the related categories from the previous MarTech Map.

6. Define and Achieve Smart B2B Objectives

SMART is a structured framework used to configure any B2B marketing objectivies prodcutively and conducively by setting five key critieria when setting said objectives:

Specific: What exactly is to be achieved (e.g. growting website traffic, etc.)

Measurable: How will the goal be measured (e.g. number of visitors)

Achievable: Is the target objective actually achievable within the assigned time frame?

Relevant: What will the change or result be? (e.g. +20%)

Time: By what deadline must the objective be achieved?

At the top level, B2B marketing objectives fall under three primary categories, and a broader inventory of secondary objectives:

Primary Objectives

1. Brand Awareness
2. Customer Retention, Loyalty, and Sales Return
3. New Customer Acquisition and Lead Generation

Secondary Objectives

1. Growth Market Shares
2. Launch New Products/Services
3. Enter New International or Local Markets
4. Improve Stakeholder Relations
5. Enhance Customer Relationships
6. Improve Internal Communications
7. Increase Profit

• For each SMART objective, there are a number of key areas that need to be considered:

• What is the driving force behind what you want to achieve, and why does a particular problem need to be solved?
• What does success look like?
• What steps need to be taken for this ambitious goal to be achieved?
• What industry benchmarks are there for each channel?
• What is the current performance of the company across the same channels? What tactics have been identified in this strategic framework that should be applied in the future?
• What is the desired level of performance across each channel, and is it achievable in the context of industry benchmarks?

And finally when it comes to evaluating ongoing B2B marketing performance, the following questions should be asked:

• What were the revenues or order value from marketing sources?

• What percentage of new customers were acquired through marketing initiatives?

• How many leads were generated for each pound spent on marketing? How much does it cost you to acquire a customer?

• What percentage of acquired customers can be attributed to your marketing efforts?

7. Define Marketing Plan, Budget, and Schedule

The is the final stage of Cairns' model presents the cumulative summary of every analytical step conducted in this mode:

1. Executive Summary: This is the summary of the insights extracted from the model which is a concise overview of market objectives, key target market segments, and budget allocation and constraints.
2. Situation Analysis: This section not only the initial situation analysis (or marketing audit), but also the Market Segmentation analysis, Macro-Environmental (PESTEL) analysis, Market SWOT analysis and Competitor Analysis and the key insights pulled from each stage.
3. Target Audience and Personas: This sections re-establishes the defined ICP (Ideal Customer Profiles) and Buyer Personas along with Gartner’s 6-Stage B2B Buyer Journey
4. Marketing Objectives: This section re-iterates the specific SMART objectives defined (usually brand awareness, customer retention and new customer acquisition/lead generation).
5. Marketing Channel Strategy and Position: This section re-iterates the selected mix of marketing channel strategies, value proposition, unique selling proposition (USP) brand core, purpose, positioning, promise personality and principles, and a dedicated roadmap for the specific channels, campaigns or content marketing employed.
6. Budget & Resource Allocation: This section establishes the total budget and resource pool available and breaks down how the marketing budget and resources will be allocated (e.g. 35% on paid social advertising, 30% on content production, etc.)
7. Measurement & Optimization: A simple KPI dashboard focusing on leading KPIs and lagging indicators (e.g. revenue)