With any marketing approach, you need to start at the end and work backwards. By fully understanding the desired outcome of all of these efforts, we can run some “backwards math” to figure out where to thoughtfully allocate a client’s investment in the most valuable tactics to ensure that outcome is reached.
Many clients come to us with a lens that we call “buying tactically” – meaning essentially that they know they need marketing to achieve a goal, and they’ve heard of certain types of marketing, so they went looking for the marketing they were already familiar with. For example, if I know that I want people to find my website so they can become new customers, and I also know that nobody is coming to my website, I might seek out someone who can provide me SEO (Search Engine Optimization) services to get more people to my website.
B2B Marketing Needs Assessment: Understanding Your Customers & Market
This is where the Needs Assessment really begins to shine. If a prospective client comes looking for SEO, we move the conversation along to the end goal.
“What are you hoping SEO can do for your business/organization?”
Now we can jump to the end and start working backwards. From here, we try to learn everything we can about your business – because we’re actually solving a business problem. The problem of “I need more customers because I need more revenue.” We begin to understand how you generate revenue:
- What products or services yield the biggest returns for your business?
- Tell me about the ideal customer. What makes them valuable to you?
- Tell me about the easiest sale you ever made – why was it so easy in that situation?
- Why do customers pick you over your competitors?
- Where do you think the biggest opportunities are?
…and on and on. We love the Needs Assessment conversation because we innately have what we call Furiosity. This driving curiosity that compels us to want to learn more about you. We work with many different clients of all kinds – and there’s no such thing as a boring client. EVERY business or organization is interesting and has something unique about them that their audience needs to understand. This passion drives us to deeply understand you and your organization.
By the end of the Needs Assessment, we should have a strong grasp on:
- Your unique challenges and opportunities
- Competitors, customer behaviors, and industry trends
- Marketing objectives that align with your business goals
Custom B2B Marketing Strategy Proposals for ROI & Lead Generation
Following the Needs Assessment phase, the FSM team is tasked with completing the puzzle. We have a certain level of investment to allocate – where can we find the most return with that investment? We start laying out our marketing tactics like pieces of a puzzle, analyzing how each one fits into the larger picture, and throwing the ones out that are either cost-prohibitive or don’t drive meaningful effort towards the goal we’ve identified.
Because Full Spectrum Marketing (FSM) is a—you guessed it—full service marketing agency, we have access to a huge number of tactical marketing levers we can pull. Each has a clear role in what’s called the “Marketing Funnel.” Depending on the goal we’re trying to achieve, we need to activate marketing tactics that support the region of the marketing funnel that’s most important.
If you’re unsure of what the marketing funnel is—don’t worry! That’s our job. But, for posterity’s sake, I’ll walk us through it at a high level so we’re all on the same page.
If we look at your entire audience – everyone who could be a potential customer – we can drop them in the top of this funnel and nurture them through it. When they come out the bottom, they are a new customer!
Awareness Phase
The Awareness Phase is the first and broadest phase of the marketing funnel. Here lies everyone who can be a customer. In this phase, the primary goal is to make sure that all of those people know about you – or they’re “aware” of you. This can include anything from billboard advertising and TV commercials to digital ads, magazines, and everything in between. Wherever the people are, an advertisement can be found there. This style of marketing is about collecting eyeballs on your brand. It’s all about preparing them for the next phase: Research.
Research Phase
The Research Phase is when the rubber begins to meet the road (FSM is in Akron, Ohio, so rubber and tires are kind of our thing here). In this phase, those people who were up in the awareness phase, previously going about their daily lives and seeing your ads from time-to-time are now actually in need of your services. This time has come! Now they’re actively looking to solve the problem that you are prepared to solve. They can be looking all over the place – on the internet, Google searches, Maps searches, Video searches. They may even be asking A.I. for guidance – something that is picking up speed at a ludicrous pace! But the best part is, these people have what’s called a “high intent.” They are highly likely to be intending to make a purchase. Marketing in this phase is highly measurable and the ROI can become almost scientific.
Selection Phase
The Selection Phase is the final phase before a person in your audience becomes a customer. In the Research Phase, they’ve found several competing options to solve their problem, and you’re one of them! Now we have to convince that person that you are the best option. Proving that you’re the highest quality, most affordable, longest lasting, most trusted, most well known, most well-reviewed provider of the desired service is the game here. It comes down to your visual appeal, professionalism, charm, messaging, brand—you name it. Anything that can work towards convincing someone that you’re the right choice.
There are a few other post-sale phases that FSM likes to strategize through, especially if you participate in FSM’s QuickStorm process. In this process, we journey not only through the above three stages, but also in the Delivery Phase and the Follow Up phase to make sure that once you capture a customer, you keep them, grow them, and get referrals from them.
Paid Advertising: Google, LinkedIn & Meta Campaigns
FSM offers Paid Advertising campaigns on platforms like Google, LinkedIn, Meta and even streaming network platforms like Mountain. These types of efforts are highly valuable to both the Awareness and Research parts of the marketing funnel. Depending on the goal, we’ll puzzle these components into the strategy in various amounts as budgeting allows. These tactics generally require an extremely technical approach to ensure the campaigns are targeting the right people in your audience at the right time.
The specific tactics offered by FSM:
Google Ads
- Search ads targeting high-intent buyers
- Display ads for brand awareness and remarketing
- YouTube video campaigns for engagement
- Performance Max campaigns for omni-channel reach
LinkedIn Ads
- Sponsored Content (single image, carousel, video)
- InMail campaigns for targeted outreach
- Lead Gen Forms with CRM integration
- Audience targeting by job title, industry, and company size
Meta Ads
- Awareness campaigns with brand-focused creative
- Lead generation campaigns with instant forms
- Retargeting campaigns for website visitors
- Lookalike audiences to scale new customer acquisition
Organic SEO & AI SEO: Ranking in Search and AI-Powered Results
FSM loves to implement Organic SEO and especially AI SEO to help our clients achieve their goals. These tactics aren’t quite as turnkey as Paid Advertising, though. Paid Advertising starts yielding results almost immediately; Organic and AI SEO take time, through consistent, strategic, efforts. This is all about building notoriety, credibility, and authority online. These efforts may be slow to start, but once they get going, they start momentum that really begin to carry your organization forward. These tactics generally yield more cost-effective and higher-quality prospects as well.
According to FirstPageSage, ~3.5% of people are going to click on the sponsored ads at the top of a search result, and almost 40% will instead click on the first organic result. This proves just how valuable a smart, intentional organic strategy can be for long term success.
The specific tactics offered by FSM:
Technical SEO
- Site audits for crawlability and indexation
- Core Web Vitals and page speed optimization
- Mobile-first and accessibility compliance
- Schema/structured data implementation (JSON-LD)
On-Page SEO
- Keyword and entity optimization for headings, meta tags, and copy
- Internal linking strategies for topic clusters
- Image optimization (alt text, compression, structured markup)
- AI-informed content layout for scannability and clarity
AI SEO (Next-Gen Search Visibility)
- Optimizing content for inclusion in AI-driven search results (Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity)
- Building knowledge graphs and structured data to strengthen entity recognition
- Authoritativeness signals: E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness)
- Monitoring emerging AI search trends and updating strategies
Website Performance & Functionality: UX, Mobile & Accessibility
FSM has a super talented web design and web development team to help our clients look incredible online. But it’s not just how you look – it’s also how quickly the site loads, how well it supports audiences with visual disabilities, and how well the technical underpinnings are assembled. Google monitors your website’s Web Vitals to score your website technically. As you may have guessed, low scoring websites don’t get ranked as well on Google – even if they have some really great content.
These tactics are essential for the Selection Phase. Potential customers are much more likely to engage with you if your website functions well and guides them to an interaction with you.
Some of the specific tactics offered by FSM:
- User Experience (UX) Optimization
- Performance Optimization
- Core Web Vital Optimization
- Mobile Responsiveness
- Accessibility Compliance
- Website Security & Reliability
- CRM Integrations
- Custom Website Functionality
Copywriting & Design Services: Clear Messaging & Brand Design
But code and design isn’t the only thing – and not even the most important thing – for the Selection Phase. Your brand needs to be immediately identifiable and deliver a clear message that resonates with your audience. They have to understand you and want to work with you, and having clear messaging is how that gets done. Sometimes having a really strong visual identity comes down to a logo and brand guide. Sometimes your brand is already in place but you need to present it with a new angle. FSM may recommend some brand work into the overall strategy if we believe that the brand needs to be strengthened before it will resonate with your audience.
FSM Storytelling & Design services may include:
- Brand Messaging & Positioning
- Content Writing & Copywriting
- Thought Leadership
- Digital Community Management
- Design & Creative Services
- Revitalized or All-New Brand Design
- Social Media Posting
- Blog Article Creation
- Email Newsletter Campaigns
- Email Drip Campaigns
Analytics & Reporting: Data-Driven Decisions & KPIs
A phrase we use at FSM to remind us of our role with our clients: “Do great work. Then, make sure they know you’re doing great work.” This is where Analytics and Reporting come into play. Within all the data we collect exists a story of the outcome of all of this effort and investment. Monitoring the progress and telling that story is essential to any sound marketing strategy. Like Peter Drucker said, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” As the strategy lives on, it must be measured, then optimized accordingly, to become more and more effective as time goes on. By collecting, analyzing and reporting on the data, the accuracy of everything we do becomes more and more complete.
Collaborative Marketing Strategy Review & Approval Process
So, that’s a dizzying amount of different tactics that can go into a marketing strategy. Fortunately, that Needs Assessment phase, combined with our experience, allows us to rather quickly identify the right mix of tactics to achieve your goals. We then translate that strategy into a proposal that we present to our potential new customer – usually less than two weeks after we’ve completed the Needs Assessment.
During this presentation, it’s key that we outline the overall approach. This is much more important than any one of the specific tactics that may be at play. By zooming out and providing a high-level image of how all of the proposed tactics fit together like a puzzle, then the picture that the puzzle creates becomes complete. If you can’t see the picture through the pieces, then we haven’t done a good job with Clear Communication – another one of our core values!
And because of our Partnership core value, we seek out your feedback and modify the strategy until you feel 100% confident moving forward.
Why FSM Is a Trusted B2B Marketing Partner
If you’re looking for a marketing partner who will work tirelessly to bring you value every single month, look for FSM. The diversity of our clients, the tenure of our experience, and our history of results make us the right choice to lead your marketing strategy. Did I mention that the average tenure for marking agencies is between 12 and 18 months? We’re proud that 94% of our clients choose to partner with FSM for 3 or more years.
Would you like to be one of them?
