Creating a b2b marketing plan that works in 2025
Creating a b2b marketing plan that works in 2025
Your guide to building an actionable and focused marketing plan
Your guide to building an actionable and focused marketing plan
Last edited on:
Dec 31, 2024
Author:
Jordy Oost
Introduction: marketing plans anno 2025
Over my 10 years in marketing, I’ve seen countless marketing plans—most of them impractical and quickly outdated. Does that mean you should skip a marketing plan altogether? Absolutely not. A well-crafted marketing plan keeps your organization aligned, prioritizes impactful tactics, and establishes a system for continuous improvement.
In 2025 B2B marketing demands adaptive tactics and a focused working method. As marketing evolves, success will come from understanding your customers, using full-funnel strategies and the right technology, while maintaining the flexibility to adapt.
Rather than focusing on trends or channels, we aim on creating a marketing plan for systematic growth. This starts with tailoring your proposition towards customer needs with a full-funnel approach and scales through testing and optimization.
Introduction: marketing plans anno 2025
Over my 10 years in marketing, I’ve seen countless marketing plans—most of them impractical and quickly outdated. Does that mean you should skip a marketing plan altogether? Absolutely not. A well-crafted marketing plan keeps your organization aligned, prioritizes impactful tactics, and establishes a system for continuous improvement.
In 2025 B2B marketing demands adaptive tactics and a focused working method. As marketing evolves, success will come from understanding your customers, using full-funnel strategies and the right technology, while maintaining the flexibility to adapt.
Rather than focusing on trends or channels, we aim on creating a marketing plan for systematic growth. This starts with tailoring your proposition towards customer needs with a full-funnel approach and scales through testing and optimization.
The 4 steps in creating your 2025 marketing plan:
Laying the foundation: understand your customer
Channel strategy: craft a full-funnel strategy
Marketing operations: create a data-driven growth cadence
Software selection: implement tracking and automation
The 4 steps in creating your 2025 marketing plan:
Laying the foundation: understand your customer
Channel strategy: craft a full-funnel strategy
Marketing operations: create a data-driven growth cadence
Software selection: implement tracking and automation
Laying the foundation
Every successful marketing strategy begins with an assessment. Before diving into tactics we want to audit the existing performance, strategy and vision. This sets the starting point and direction of an actionable and effective marketing plan. This audit consists out of 4 questions.
2.1 Direction - Where are we going?
A solid marketing plan creates a competitive advantage and helps the organisation reach it’s yearly objectives. Without clear direction, even the best tactics will fail to deliver meaningful results. Start by defining:
Your company's long-term vision and mission
Product value proposition and how this compares to competitors
If available, company objectives for the upcoming year
2.2 Market - Who are we trying to reach?
Success in marketing depends on understanding who you're trying to reach. In order to effectively sell something to somebody we need to know who we are selling to. You want to define your ideal customer profile(s) as specific as possible, including:
Demographic and firmographic characteristics
Primary pain points and challenges
Budget and purchasing authority
2.3 Buying journey - How do customers purchase?
Today's buyers interact with your brand across multiple channels before making a decision. Understanding this journey is crucial for creating content that moves prospects through each stage effectively. A clear journey map outlines:
Initial awareness and consideration phases
Key decision-making triggers
Post-purchase engagement points
2.4 System - What's currently working and what isn't?
In order to learn, adapt and improve we examine the existing situation. What is currently working and what isn't?
The learnings from this analysis are used as input for our marketing strategy going forward. Review:
Channel effectiveness and return on investment
Conversion rates by touchpoint
Brand recognition among prospects
Laying the foundation
Every successful marketing strategy begins with an assessment. Before diving into tactics we want to audit the existing performance, strategy and vision. This sets the starting point and direction of an actionable and effective marketing plan. This audit consists out of 4 questions.
2.1 Direction - Where are we going?
A solid marketing plan creates a competitive advantage and helps the organisation reach it’s yearly objectives. Without clear direction, even the best tactics will fail to deliver meaningful results. Start by defining:
Your company's long-term vision and mission
Product value proposition and how this compares to competitors
If available, company objectives for the upcoming year
2.2 Market - Who are we trying to reach?
Success in marketing depends on understanding who you're trying to reach. In order to effectively sell something to somebody we need to know who we are selling to. You want to define your ideal customer profile(s) as specific as possible, including:
Demographic and firmographic characteristics
Primary pain points and challenges
Budget and purchasing authority
2.3 Buying journey - How do customers purchase?
Today's buyers interact with your brand across multiple channels before making a decision. Understanding this journey is crucial for creating content that moves prospects through each stage effectively. A clear journey map outlines:
Initial awareness and consideration phases
Key decision-making triggers
Post-purchase engagement points
2.4 System - What's currently working and what isn't?
In order to learn, adapt and improve we examine the existing situation. What is currently working and what isn't?
The learnings from this analysis are used as input for our marketing strategy going forward. Review:
Channel effectiveness and return on investment
Conversion rates by touchpoint
Brand recognition among prospects
Create a tailored full-funnel channel strategy
With our objectives and target audience defined, it's time to create an effective outreach plan. While traditional marketing plans often separate channels into isolated silos (social, SEO, paid, events), we'll take a more integrated approach that aligns how customers make purchase decisions in 2025.
This chapter addresses three key questions:
What channels are a fit with our target audience?
Can we optimize our existing channels?
Does it make sense to explore a new channel?
By focusing on these elements, we ensure every marketing investment targets our audience and supports our company objectives.
Create a tailored full-funnel channel strategy
With our objectives and target audience defined, it's time to create an effective outreach plan. While traditional marketing plans often separate channels into isolated silos (social, SEO, paid, events), we'll take a more integrated approach that aligns how customers make purchase decisions in 2025.
This chapter addresses three key questions:
What channels are a fit with our target audience?
Can we optimize our existing channels?
Does it make sense to explore a new channel?
By focusing on these elements, we ensure every marketing investment targets our audience and supports our company objectives.
3.1 Where does our audience engage?
Understanding your target audience's behavior is crucial. This knowledge informs where and how to reach them. Successful channel selection starts with mapping your customer journey and information seeking behavior. While competitors' channels can provide inspiration, their presence alone doesn't validate effectiveness. Take a look at your customer journey and the channels your competitors are using to see where you can engage with customers.
3.2 What's already working?
Following our performance analysis in section 2.4, we can identify opportunities to strengthen existing channels. Optimizing existing channels often yields better returns than exploring new channels. Focus on optimizing content, targeting, and landing pages based on the customer profile we developed earlier.
By taking a data-driven approach, analyzing metrics like customer acquisition costs, conversion rates, and engagement levels, we can make informed decisions about channel optimization. As a starting point: make sure you start tracking these metrics month over month in a data model so you're able to compare channels and estimate the impact of your marketing plan.
3.3 Where should we expand?
Using the customer journey mapping from section 2.3, and competitor analysis from 3.1, identify gaps in your current channel mix. Don't overcomplicate things here, create a minimum viable test: a small-scale experiment with clear success metrics and a defined timeframe. This data-driven approach helps to validate your assumptions and lowers the boundary to start with a new channel. For example, test a small paid advertising budget or limited content series to gauge audience response.
A business case for a new channel can look like the following:
When is the test a succes? Write down your assumption and define success metrics
What are our minimum viable test characteristics? Allocate a small budget and resources.
What is the timeframe? Include the test in your roadmap
3.1 Where does our audience engage?
Understanding your target audience's behavior is crucial. This knowledge informs where and how to reach them. Successful channel selection starts with mapping your customer journey and information seeking behavior. While competitors' channels can provide inspiration, their presence alone doesn't validate effectiveness. Take a look at your customer journey and the channels your competitors are using to see where you can engage with customers.
3.2 What's already working?
Following our performance analysis in section 2.4, we can identify opportunities to strengthen existing channels. Optimizing existing channels often yields better returns than exploring new channels. Focus on optimizing content, targeting, and landing pages based on the customer profile we developed earlier.
By taking a data-driven approach, analyzing metrics like customer acquisition costs, conversion rates, and engagement levels, we can make informed decisions about channel optimization. As a starting point: make sure you start tracking these metrics month over month in a data model so you're able to compare channels and estimate the impact of your marketing plan.
3.3 Where should we expand?
Using the customer journey mapping from section 2.3, and competitor analysis from 3.1, identify gaps in your current channel mix. Don't overcomplicate things here, create a minimum viable test: a small-scale experiment with clear success metrics and a defined timeframe. This data-driven approach helps to validate your assumptions and lowers the boundary to start with a new channel. For example, test a small paid advertising budget or limited content series to gauge audience response.
A business case for a new channel can look like the following:
When is the test a succes? Write down your assumption and define success metrics
What are our minimum viable test characteristics? Allocate a small budget and resources.
What is the timeframe? Include the test in your roadmap
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Marketing operations: creating a data-driven growth cadence
After establishing our starting point, strategy, and channel approach, we need a robust system to execute effectively. Your marketing operations transforms strategy into systematic action.
4.1 Objectives
It is important to clearly link your marketing activities to the objectives you want to reach. For this it makes sense to set clear OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) for each channel or strategy. Split these into quarterly, monthly and weekly targets to work towards your goals effectively.
4.2 Sprint cadence
To work in an efficient and agile way you work with weekly or bi-weekly marketing sprints. This way you align content production with channel execution each sprint. A way to give shape to your sprint cadence can be as following:
Tactical adjustments and feedback sessions per sprint
Monthly strategic reviews
Quarterly strategic planning sessions
4.3 Budget forecasting model
When it comes to budgeting you want to use a smart forecasting model. Start with a simple bottoms-up ROI spreadsheet that captures the full cost of customer acquisition across each channel. This granular approach allows you to both predict and measure ROI.
When channels prove successful through minimum viable tests, scale investment while maintaining efficiency. Keep a strategic reserve for emerging opportunities while establishing clear contingency triggers.
When forecasting your marketing budget, consider:
Strike a balance between investing in short term performance, and in long term opportunities such as SEO and brand. Don't forget the latter.
Keep an amount open for small, controlled experiments (10-15% of budget) to validate new channel and tactic assumptions.
Take into account that you will see seasonal fluctuations in both costs and conversion rates.
4.4 Roadmap
Map out your channels on timelines, content production cycles, and campaign launches in six-month horizons. Detailed planning should be done only per quarter. In this manner your roadmap gives you strategic direction. At the same time it stays agile enough to capitalize on emerging opportunities and seasonal fluctuations.
Marketing operations: creating a data-driven growth cadence
After establishing our starting point, strategy, and channel approach, we need a robust system to execute effectively. Your marketing operations transforms strategy into systematic action.
4.1 Objectives
It is important to clearly link your marketing activities to the objectives you want to reach. For this it makes sense to set clear OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) for each channel or strategy. Split these into quarterly, monthly and weekly targets to work towards your goals effectively.
4.2 Sprint cadence
To work in an efficient and agile way you work with weekly or bi-weekly marketing sprints. This way you align content production with channel execution each sprint. A way to give shape to your sprint cadence can be as following:
Tactical adjustments and feedback sessions per sprint
Monthly strategic reviews
Quarterly strategic planning sessions
4.3 Budget forecasting model
When it comes to budgeting you want to use a smart forecasting model. Start with a simple bottoms-up ROI spreadsheet that captures the full cost of customer acquisition across each channel. This granular approach allows you to both predict and measure ROI.
When channels prove successful through minimum viable tests, scale investment while maintaining efficiency. Keep a strategic reserve for emerging opportunities while establishing clear contingency triggers.
When forecasting your marketing budget, consider:
Strike a balance between investing in short term performance, and in long term opportunities such as SEO and brand. Don't forget the latter.
Keep an amount open for small, controlled experiments (10-15% of budget) to validate new channel and tactic assumptions.
Take into account that you will see seasonal fluctuations in both costs and conversion rates.
4.4 Roadmap
Map out your channels on timelines, content production cycles, and campaign launches in six-month horizons. Detailed planning should be done only per quarter. In this manner your roadmap gives you strategic direction. At the same time it stays agile enough to capitalize on emerging opportunities and seasonal fluctuations.
Technology stack
As tempting as it may be to start with tools, your tech stack should serve your strategy, not drive it. Only after establishing clear objectives (section 2.1), mapping the customer journey (section 2.3) and selecting a channel strategy (section 3) you can make informed decisions about technology investments.
It makes sense to map out your technology stack every year to look at what is used in which stage and which problem is solved by each tool. This clear mapping enables informed decisions about your marketing technology investments. Here's an example:
Technology stack
As tempting as it may be to start with tools, your tech stack should serve your strategy, not drive it. Only after establishing clear objectives (section 2.1), mapping the customer journey (section 2.3) and selecting a channel strategy (section 3) you can make informed decisions about technology investments.
It makes sense to map out your technology stack every year to look at what is used in which stage and which problem is solved by each tool. This clear mapping enables informed decisions about your marketing technology investments. Here's an example:
In conclusion
Your marketing success does not depend on your marketing plan, it depends on the system and methodology behind it: a strategic vision, knowledge of the customer, solid operational processes, and technology that is focused on solving the right problems.
Start small, test systematically, and scale what works. Remember that marketing in 2025 will not be about crafting perfect plans—it's about creating a responsive system that learns and improves continuously.
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Are you in search of a Growth Marketer?
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Blog
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Dec 31, 2024
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Blog
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Dec 31, 2024
Your guide to building an actionable and focused marketing plan
Oct 31, 2024
What is a North Star Metric and how to identify yours.
Sep 30, 2024
Staying focused and aligned with OKRs during (marketing) strategy implementation.
Blog
Latest articles
Dec 31, 2024
Your guide to building an actionable and focused marketing plan
Oct 31, 2024
What is a North Star Metric and how to identify yours.
Sep 30, 2024
Staying focused and aligned with OKRs during (marketing) strategy implementation.
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