Four questions to ask your B2B marketing partner

The world of B2B marketing is becoming increasingly complex. With digital innovations advancing at lightning speed, and new content and design trends emerging rapidly, it’s impossible to be a jack of all trades.

That’s why more and more companies are deciding to rely on specialised B2B marketing agencies to support their internal teams. This is even more crucial when campaigns require technical knowledge – such as familiarity with energy, tech or manufacturing or – or specialist expertise, such as an understanding of green marketing best practices.

But while relying on a team of B2B experts can make a huge difference in the success of your campaigns, there are some key aspects to consider when choosing your perfect marketing partner. We’ve asked some of our Podsters to give us an overview of the most important ones.

How do you manage your teams?

When planning to work with a marketing agency, it’s important to discuss their approach to creating a marketing strategy, content planning, and any other area you might want to focus on – such as social media management. But even if processes and strategies are critical, there’s another key aspect not to be overlooked: the team you’ll be working with.

“One of the most interesting questions we’ve been asked in a recent pitch is how we manage our team,” explains Kate Garratt, our Director of Client Services. “What’s our approach to wellbeing? And how do we make sure our people don’t burn out? This is because no client wants to work with an agency that’s sweating its assets.”

“It’s a real sign of the times now – and thank goodness it is – that not only the team, but the culture is becoming increasingly important to clients in terms of recognising who they want to work with,” adds our PR specialist, Sara Burgess. “They don’t want a churn of different people coming in and out of their team.”

Relationships are easier to build with people who find the work rewarding, and who have the time and energy to stay creative and keep learning. That’s why at Pod we’ve been working hard to create a supportive company culture – an achievement that enabled us rank 14th among the best small companies to work for in the UK.

How self-sufficient can you be?

Another element to consider is that busy B2B businesses might not want to juggle multiple service providers. That’s why it might be a good idea to deal with an agency that can offer all the services you need, under one roof.

“Something clients are asking more and more often in pitches is: how self-sufficient can you be?” comments Kate. “The reason why many people come to Pod is because we are very much a senior team and many of us have in-house experience, so we understand the trials and tribulations that come with that. But we’re increasingly seeing a demand for senior people because clients want people who can just crack on.”

Working with experienced people who can get the job done accurately and efficiently can be a real ace up your sleeve.

However, Kate also points out that it’s crucial to invest time and energy upfront to share knowledge about your business and brief your marketing agency appropriately. This is the foundation of all successful campaigns, as excellent communication between an agency and its clients ensures that the resulting work will meet the objectives.

Moreover, by investing time in knowledge-sharing early on, clients can review all subsequent work much faster, because the agency will already be familiar with their business’ tone of voice, messaging strategy, and marketing goals.

How do you keep up with marketing trends?

With marketing trends changing so rapidly, a commitment to staying up to date is paramount. An interesting example comes from the world of PR

“As someone who’s worked in PR for 20 years, it’s interesting to witness the convergence of digital and PR,” explains Sara. “For example, from an SEO perspective, clients increasingly ask how they can get backlinks from coverage.”

The lines between digital marketing, PR, content and other disciplines are rapidly blurring. So, it's important to make sure your agency keeps up with these trends and has the expertise to create an integrated strategy where different elements work towards reaching your wider business goals.

That’s why at Pod we have five centres of excellence – strategy, content, PR, creative and digital – where dedicated experts can immerse themselves completely in their chosen field, and be always one step ahead of the latest developments. The centres of excellence will then work together to offer a seamless experience to our clients, with our account managers and directors coordinating all communications and supervising the overall direction of a project.

For example, if you need to develop an app, our graphic designers will be able to provide a mock-up to give you an idea of how it will look like; our web developers will work on the background to make sure it is highly usable and bug-free; and our content specialists will add beautiful copy to create the best possible user experience. And when the app is ready, our PR specialists will support you in creating as much buzz as possible around its launch.

Underpinning it all, is our strategy centre of excellence, with specialists to advise on the reasons to build the app in the first place, and account managers to coordinate all the work so you don’t need to juggle multiple professionals or agencies.

AI: friend or foe?

With technology revolutionising all areas of B2B marketing, you may want to make sure your marketing partner is willing to invest in processes that can improve efficiency, saving time and money. However, while it’s easy to be blown away by recent developments, it’s important to not lose sight of best practice.

“From a content perspective, the one question we get asked time and again is whether we use AI to write our content. And the answer is no,” explains Emma Crofts, Head of Content and PR. “It’s not just to do with the fact that we deal with very technical topics. Even if you spend time properly researching the right inputs for AI, it would never really do a nuanced enough job or address the concerns of a very specific audience.

“Obviously there are privacy issues to consider, too. But the biggest consideration is transparency. If you are going to use AI, whether that is for idea generation or to create a blog structure, you need to be really transparent about that.”

However, there are areas of marketing where the use of AI is showing promising advances. “For clients that have long and protracted user journeys, AI could help,” suggests Kate. “It’s all still really embryonic, but we will be at the forefront of these changes.”

Whether you’re planning to revamp your B2B marketing campaign or need support with more niche projects, such as promoting your business’ sustainable practices, ensuring your agency has the people, the expertise and commitment you need is key.

If you’re writing a pitch request or looking for your next marketing partner, you can learn more about what to ask during a pitch in our PodCAST: What questions do we hear most in new client pitch meetings (and how do we respond)?

And if you’d like to chat about your marketing goals, our team will be happy to help.