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The structure and creation of a "BtoB marketing organization"

Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2024 7:15 am
by olivia25
The structure and creation of a "BtoB marketing organization"
As more and more means of communication with customers are moving online, it is advisable for salespeople to move away from cold calling as in the past and instead use marketing to efficiently acquire new customers .

To achieve this, it is necessary to strengthen the marketing organization. In this article, we will introduce what kind of relationship should exist between the marketing organization and the sales organization, and how to build it.

What does this mean for the marketing organization?
Until now, when it comes to marketing, sales representatives have mostly been responsible for everything from acquiring new customers to following up with customers after an order turkey b2b leads has been placed, with no division of labor. In many cases, they dealt mainly with customers with whom they already had transactions or whose needs had become apparent, making it difficult to approach potential customers.

Therefore, in order to increase the number of new customers acquired, it will be necessary to divide up the burdensome sales work and build an organization specialized in marketing that can approach potential customers whose needs have not yet become apparent.

The most common form of marketing organization in SaaS companies is to have three main functions: content creation, acquiring new leads, and nurturing leads .

Basically, the responsibilities of this position range from creating blog articles and white papers , to following up with potential customers who have inquired and determining whether or not the inquiry is likely, to nurturing potential customers through regular seminars and email newsletters.

In addition, in American SaaS companies, the team may not be called "development" but rather be given the name "Monetisation."

From here on, we will also explain the position of the marketing organization compared to the overall business organization and the sales organization.

Relationship between the overall business organization and the marketing organization
When you hear the term "marketing organization," you may often think of departments within a company such as the "marketing department" or "sales planning department." However, they are often only involved in providing support based on the decisions and policies made by the overall business organization or sales organization, and they rarely have a flat relationship with other organizations.

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However, foreign companies place a much higher importance on marketing activities than Japanese companies. In some companies, the expenses for marketing personnel are higher than those for sales personnel, and there are many marketing personnel with annual salaries of over 10 million yen (of course, they are excellent), depending on the product.

Furthermore, in Japan, while the overall business and sales goals, such as sales targets, are set, there may be cases where the marketing organization does not have clear goals. However, in foreign-affiliated companies, most activities are carried out with their own goals, such as the number of cases that lead to negotiations, rather than sales.

Within a company, the marketing organization will have goals related to sales, just like the sales organization, and the organizational structure is such that if the marketing organization is not functioning, the sales organization will not function either.Therefore, the role and responsibilities expected of the marketing organization are very high.

Many BtoB SaaS companies think of a flywheel type business model, but marketing and sales are inseparably linked to support the organization. Therefore, marketing should not be treated as an assistant to the sales organization, but should be given discretion and responsibility as an independent organization.

The inseparable relationship between marketing and sales
When building an organization that specializes in marketing, collaboration with sales is essential.

It is often said that poor relationships between the sales and marketing organizations due to lack of cooperation, such as pushing responsibility onto one another, can lead to dysfunction. Therefore, instead of loosely dividing roles into individual actions such as making an appointment, visiting, and negotiating, it is a good idea to break down the process from when a customer makes a deal into smaller steps and clarify which of the marketing and sales staff will be responsible for each step, as well as the specific goals, as shown below.