From the trenches: a B2B marketer's view of 2009

We are in the final stretch of executing our marketing plans for 2009, ensuring we are well positioned to take advantage of any seasonal rush. At the same time, this period is one of forward looking, planning and budgeting for 2010, so we are making sure we have our ducks in row to be included in our clients' budgets next year.  The industry media is also full of two of my favourite types of article: nostalgic reflections about the year and predictions for 2010. I love these articles as they give so much insight into the people in our industry and to where things could possibly go.   I, too, am getting my head around what we did well as a marketing team, supporting a B2B company, what we did not do well and what we should have done more of. Are we heavy chefs, do we walk the talk, and how do the lessons we learnt this year inform our plans for next year?  My colleagues have written a number of really excellent articles this year helping marketers, publishers and agencies to do and be better. And when I look back at my own experiences this year, I see that there are a few things that benefited us and a few areas I'd like to focus on in 2010. Three things that really benefited us this year: 1. Questioning the status quo
As budgets tightened we wanted to achieve more with less, so we had to have a really hard look at all our marketing efforts, both internally and externally. We reviewed each campaign and tactic critically, determining how it fitted into our business's objectives. Could we get the same results with a different approach, and most importantly, did it have to stay in the plan because it had always just been there? In order to do this, we needed to have a deep understanding of our business, our marketing objectives and the underlying marketing budget and data. Grant Keller touched on this in a recent article where he explained the importance of knowing where your revenue is coming from, what the campaign cross pollination is and how your campaigns affect each other. For example, as a brand you may always run a TV campaign in the same period, with the same percentage of your marketing budget. But what are the results and has it been worthwhile? Applying this thinking to our business, we reviewed our campaigns and their individual elements by themselves, and critically assessed the results, making a call on whether each initiative stayed and possibly got more budget allocated to it, or if it should go. We also looked for other channels that could reach the same objective more cost effectively, or with more scale. From a budget point of view this allowed us to achieve more with less. We had better results and had more meaningful engagements.  2. Our suppliers are our partners
Through the year we have written a number of articles on the agency/client relationship, talking about things like data ownership, skill requirements, briefing processes and the role agencies will play in the future. Many of our clients are agencies and, of course, we use a number of great agencies who support various marketing functions for Acceleration. Our open relationship with them has enabled us to be extremely effective this year without having to spend a fortune. They understand and love our business, they want us to be successful and they are part of our team. In turn, we have worked on keeping ourselves and them extremely focused -- 'less is more' became our adage. And fitting in with our brand identity, we chose to do fewer things really well. Recently, there have been a lot of articles on the future of agencies, and Sean Corcoran from Forrester is currently inviting opinion on this. I do believe that agencies of all kinds are being challenged and that their business models are changing. However, at the core of it, those that are successful in 2010 will be those that understand and love their clients' businesses and that work with them to help them achieve their success. Customer centric, media agnostic and revenue driven agencies helped us to drive results in 2009 and they will be our partners in 2010. 3. Boost the value of existing customers
My colleague Rebecca Bell-Ellis wrote an article titled 'Tips for boosting the value of existing customers', for iMedia in June. She wrote about taking a step back, looking around at current visitors or customers and realising their value. Which is exactly what we did with remarkable results. With insight into lifetime value, churn rates and penetration of our campaigns and into our clients’ businesses, we were able to optimise our marketing and client service efforts -- focusing on areas that drove the right behaviour and revenue for our business and theirs. This simple, grassroots strategy worked really well. Three things we will focus on in 2010 1. Data, data, data
Like any marketing team we have tons of data available to us. Most of it is not integrated and a lot is not that clean. We have great technology and even better integration skills at our disposal and working with our data in smarter ways will be a key focus for us. 'Keeping it simple' will be another focus. Because we have such great technology and ability to integrate systems -- by making the data work together and really understand what it means -- we have a tendency to overcomplicate things. There are, after all, an infinite number of possibilities and variations which would be really 'cool' to have. But I will look for quick wins in 2010 and divide projects into manageable chunks that deliver immediate effects. 2. Social media
We have dipped our toes into social media and initial results were positive, but we also found the medium extremely time consuming. Social media is a great tool for a company like Acceleration, which has 150 people in nine locations around the globe. The benefits to internal marketing and culture are evident in a brand like Zappos. It's certainly something I would like to leverage in 2010. In addition, social media offers a great way for us to position ourselves to prospects, clients, partners and the press, and there are two things I would like to get right next year:

• You guessed it -- better measurements and reporting
• More efficiency in posting and being an active member of our community.

3. Keeping it simple
Our industry is fantastically dynamic and the rate of change accelerates daily. It is easy to be distracted, there are just so many new 'cool' tools, strategies and gizmos out there. We will keep it simple in 2010, focusing on the fundamentals that underpin our business: investing in our staff and staying close to our clients (thanks to Iain Johnston for reminding me of this). This is a nostalgic, honest top-line review of 2009 from a marketer in the trenches. I'd be interested to know what worked for you this year and what your plans are for next year. Tracey Steyn is the marketing director at Acceleration.