We’re fast approaching the new year (faster than we’d typically like!), so now is the perfect time to start considering your B2B marketing plan for 2025. We often discuss marketing plans with our clients, and we encourage a simple but effective approach, especially for those planning for the first time.
Whether you’re new to this or an experienced marketer, our 2025 B2B marketing checklist will help you identify areas needing attention and give you some food for thought as we head into 2025. As always, we’re here to provide strategic guidance, tactical support, and everything in between.
Here are some key considerations:
1. Review Your Current Marketing Strategy
What have you done this year, and what have you achieved?
We know that some marketing efforts are difficult to track precisely. However, it’s good to gauge your B2B strategy using the tactics that you can report on, and the anecdotal evidence, such as feedback and customer recognition from those that aren’t so easy to track.
- Lead Quality and Conversion Rate: Assess the quality of the leads from this year’s marketing and your conversion rate. This analysis helps you identify the high-performing areas versus those where resources may be better allocated.
- Budget and Resource Allocation: For B2B marketing, channels like LinkedIn, Google Ads, and email marketing often produce the highest ROI. Consider which platforms performed best, then optimise your budget for these in 2025.
- Industry Trends: Look outside your business. Are there B2B marketing trends or shifts in the industry? For example, what are your competitors doing? Has anyone new entered the market, or has anyone left the market that could mean there are extra opportunities for you?
- Take stock: How has your budget fared this year? It’s important to take a moment and appreciate the things that have gone well, whilst understanding that some activities may have been better spent elsewhere.
As a team, one area that we re-evaluated in recent years was social media. We find that most people engage with us on LinkedIn or Instagram, so we decided not to continue with Facebook and X. We previously wanted to remain visible on all platforms so that our clients could engage with us everywhere that they chose, however, we instead decided that our efforts were better spent in producing a monthly newsletter that rounds up the messages we might have shared on those platforms. Our newsletter has enabled us to see open and click-through rates and facilitated numerous conversations with clients who read it.
2. Assess Your Brand Identity and Positioning
Your B2B brand identity significantly influences client perception. We often talk about brand perception and the importance of a trusted and recognised brand; clients and customers want to work with brands that appear knowledgeable, approachable, and leaders in their space.
- Customer Perception: Do you know how customers view your brand? Ask! Collecting feedback can provide essential insights.
- Relevance and Consistency: Is your brand image up to date and consistent? Ensure all visual and written materials follow brand guidelines to avoid confusing audiences or eroding trust.
- Time for a Refresh?: A brand refresh in 2025 could position your business for growth, from updating your logo to expanding your colour palette or adjusting your tone of voice.
This year we’ve worked with a number of clients that have come to us to bring their branding in line. It’s common to experience inconsistencies when working with multiple agencies/designers, or if there have been changes in your internal teams. One client, in particular, noticed that their logo font was different from one product to the next, and there was no consistency in brand colours.
This is why brand guidelines are such an important tool, and where possible, to be used by a trusted team that will work with you to bring all of your assets and messaging in line. If you’re not sure where to get started or you need some help with B2B branding, our team can bring consistency across all your channels.
3. Understand If Your Website Is Working for You
Your website is one of your most valuable B2B assets. Have you outlined its objectives and evaluated its performance recently? Many clients launch a new website, spending weeks and months on refreshing content and poring over every last detail. But once it’s live, you should also work to keep it fresh and revisit it regularly to understand the journey that your visitors take. Is it effective?
- SEO Strategy: Are you targeting keywords that your audience searches for? Optimise your content for relevant long-tail keywords, and consider dedicated FAQ pages to answer key searches and refine your B2B content strategy.
- User Experience: Assess navigation, mobile responsiveness, and load speed. A simple way to improve is to ask friends or colleagues to test how easily they can find specific information.
- Lead Generation: Is your website set up for lead capture? Use clear Calls To Action, easy-to-use forms, and valuable content like case studies and testimonials to encourage users to engage.
- Website Visitor Identification: These tools can provide deeper insights into visitor behaviour, showing you which companies are visiting your site and which pages they’re engaging with. We recently partnered with the leading visitor identification tracking provider, so we can help with this too!
Last month we spoke to a potential client in the building industry. Their website was over 20 years old and was only being used as a showcase of their work. Potential clients were submitting online forms but their sales team was becoming frustrated because they needed more information and every form required at least one follow-up call to understand their needs. By providing better information on the site and tweaking the form fields, this could easily be avoided. Visitors would also experience a significant improvement in their experience if the website was better optimised for other devices.
We can perform a comprehensive website audit for you, using our specialist software and our team’s in-depth experience to give you actionable insights.
4. Invest in Content
We can’t stress it enough – content, content, content! Content is the cornerstone of any successful B2B strategy, providing the foundation of all of your activities. Consistently publishing valuable resources like blogs, reports, and case studies will position your business as an industry leader and build trust with prospects.
- Thought Leadership and Engagement: Create engaging, authoritative content but also share your brand’s personality. Show the team behind the work, celebrate milestones, and highlight your values.
- Video Content: Video content is increasingly popular for B2B audiences, whether showcasing products, sharing case studies, or delivering short, informative clips. Wyzowl found in 2023 that 88% of people wanted more video content from brands, so now is the time to explore its potential.
As a marketing agency, we try to regularly produce content that brings genuine value to our audience (like this guide), however, we find that our connections want to know more about our team and often content centred around them is what receives the most engagement for us! If you’re unsure where to start, our SEO & Content team can develop a comprehensive 12-month content strategy for you.
5. Invest in Paid Advertising
Paid ads can be a great way to reach decision-makers and drive quality leads. We recommend Google Ads and LinkedIn advertising for most B2B clients:
- LinkedIn Advertising: Target by job title, industry, and company size to reach the right audience.
- Google Ads: High-intent keywords, combined with well-crafted ad campaigns, can boost visibility among your target prospects.
If these are areas that you have yet to explore, we recommend adding them to your 2025 B2B marketing plan. If you’re already utilising these advertising platforms, assess how they’re performing and evaluate whether you can dedicate more budget to driving awareness and bringing in qualified leads.
6. Communication is Key
Communication is essential to a successful B2B marketing strategy. How do you currently connect with your audience, and how effective are these methods?
- Email Marketing: A staple in B2B, email marketing allows you to nurture relationships and provide valuable updates to leads and clients. Consider a monthly newsletter or a schedule of campaigns that work for you to maintain consistency.
- GDPR Compliance: Be sure to keep databases segmented and ensure GDPR compliance, focusing only on those who will benefit from your communications.
When considering your 2025 plans, put together a simple schedule that might include a monthly newsletter, a weekly key messages campaign, or a personalised check-in every two weeks. Whatever works for you, make sure that it’s consistent and it adds value to the recipient.
7. Visibility Drives Awareness
Consistent visibility ensures customers remember your brand and helps you stay front of mind. Organic social media, paid ads, and email marketing can all boost visibility. Consider industry events or even host your own, if relevant.
B2B marketing in 2025 requires a balance between awareness and lead generation. Maintaining visibility will help ensure competitors don’t capture your market share. Whether you’re brand new to the market or an established leader, customers old and new need to see you to be reminded you’re there. Otherwise, you run the risk of a competitor stealing your market share.
8. Be SMART with your B2B Marketing Plan
When it comes to setting objectives, use the SMART acronym:
- Specific – make sure that your objectives are very specific to your goals, for example, if you want to achieve xx number of visitors to your website, think about why. A more specific goal would be to think about the quality of your visitors; so consider goals for your conversion and engagement rates instead. Having thousands of visitors looks great on your figures, but what you really want is high quality, engaged visitors that are more likely to convert.
- Measurable – what are goals if we can’t measure them? Consider how you can measure your success, whether that be through tracking codes and analytics or positive customer feedback.
- Achievable – it’s important to consider objectives that are possible. We’d all love our campaigns to go viral, but you can’t guarantee that. Instead, you should consider incremental improvements. So, consider increasing your social media posting by one per week for example; or implement a regular newsletter but consider how much time you have to dedicate to it, and instead of beginning with a weekly edition, set yourself a goal to share an update monthly.
- Relevant – we know marketing is often a ‘catch-all’ in business, but your objectives should be relevant to the work that you do. Make sure that the objective aligns with your team and wider organisation.
- Time-Bound – give yourself a realistic and achievable deadline for meeting your objectives. In marketing, it’s important to remember that results are not instant and they’re not always linear!
Final Checklist: Your 2025 B2B Marketing Essentials
- Review 2024 performance
- Set SMART objectives for 2025
- Think about:
- Communication methods
- Tracking and analysis
- Advertising channels and budget
- Brand identity and consistency
- Content strategy
- Your website’s role as a lead generation tool
