Houston expert: How B2B industries can leverage go-to-market strategies for maximum impact

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By pinpointing and customizing efforts to meet the specific needs of the most lucrative customers, businesses can maximize ROI and achieve revenue objectives. Photo via Getty Images

Crafting a successful go-to-market strategy is a must for driving revenue and profit growth, especially for investor-backed, high-growth businesses. But there is no one size fits all approach. Companies need nuanced GTM strategies tailored to their unique products or services.

There are six key sales and marketing motions:

  • Inbound Marketing: Attract customers through valuable content like white papers, how-to guides, and market overviews and then deploy this content across blogs, social media, emails, and publications for broad engagement. Think about a client's needs, and then deliver them content that directly helps them.
  • Outbound Outreach: Employ targeted strategies for account engagement, reaching specific prospects through personalized emails, calls, and digital outreach. This pushes out that valuable content to the identified target accounts and markets.
  • Product-Led Marketing: Engage customers directly through the product with free trials or freemium models. This approach integrates marketing, sales, and the product itself. Encouraging hands-on interaction with the product or service is a great way to convert potential leads into buyers.
  • Channel Partner Marketing: Collaborate with distributors, resellers, or affiliates to advocate for products. Referrals, commissions, and "nearbound relationships" amplify market presence, turning partners into an extension of the sales team.
  • Event Marketing: Enhance visibility and connection through things like trade shows, webinars, and demo days. It’s an opportunity to reach a broad audience but also to get that one-on-one interaction.
  • Community Marketing: Foster advocacy through authentic engagement, leveraging social media influencers, user-generated content, and online forums. This is more common in B2C but can also be helpful with B2B.

Each company, characterized by unique products, budgets, and requirements, will employ these strategies in varying combinations. Using examples of three different types of companies — B2B services targeting the healthcare industry, an industrial services company, and SaaS (software as a service) — let’s see examples of how they can best leverage different tactics for maximum impact.

Strategic GTM Tactics for B2B Healthcare

We’ll start with a company that offers business services to healthcare organizations. Inbound marketing for this company means content that showcases specialized solutions, addressing unique pain points of the decision makers. Through blogs, social media posts, and targeted emails, the company demonstrates its expertise, attracting organizations seeking solutions.

To push this message out, the company identifies targeted healthcare institutions matching their ideal customer profile and begins more personalized outreach, like highly tailored emails or phone calls. A next step might be a complimentary trial of the company’s service, if that is possible within the business model. Are there any channel partners that could talk about the company’s product, or maybe even help sell it?

Healthcare industry trade shows provide a platform to showcase exactly how the service can benefit clients. To broaden the audience reach, webinars provide a digital platform for showcasing the service.If there are online communities for this target market, can your satisfied customers be there too? They can provide authentic advocacy for the service.

Strategic GTM Tactics for Industrial Services

This hypothetical company specializes in precision machining and fabrication services, serving clients from industries like automotive, aerospace, and general manufacturing. Inbound marketing includes case studies and industry-specific guides, showcasing how the company stacks up favorably to the competition.

Targeted follow up with key manufacturing and industrial companies emphasizes custom services based on in-depth industry research and analysis to determine target rich markets. Tell potential customers specifically how your company best meets their needs. Are you a better value? Best rated? How exactly are you different, or better?

Channel Partner Marketing looks for collaborations with distributors or resellers in industrial equipment. Leveraging existing distribution networks is another way to enhance market presence and accessibility. What unexplored avenues exist to broaden the company's reach?

Trade shows are an optimal way for this company to demonstrate its services. Preparation is the key to seek out targets in advance and set up one on one meetings.

Strategic GTM Tactics for SaaS

Lastly, consider a cloud-based project management software company that improves collaboration and boosts efficiency for businesses. The informative content potential buyers want to see includes software guides and case studies, highlighting the software's competitive edge and successful integration by other companies.

Look at how the company can further refine its outbound marketing strategy to effectively reach and engage its target audience. You want to forge one-on-one interactions with those prospects most likely to buy.

For SaaS, the free trial is a powerful strategy, while the freemium model, providing basic features for free and charging for premium options, boosts functionality and fosters adoption. Channel Partner Marketing can be a good strategy too, where consultants, resellers, or integrators endorse the SaaS product, and earn commissions for referrals.

Through webinars, the company directly demonstrates the capabilities of its solution to businesses who need more efficient software tools. Active involvement in virtual or industry-specific events can keep leads interested. In this case, this company has its own online forum where users share experiences and tips related to the SaaS software.

Conclusion

Once a company determines the ideal mix of marketing and sales tactics for optimal outcomes, it becomes necessary to prioritize them. This step in strategy is crucial for efficiency and profitability. There are always limits to budget and manpower. Companies can boost efficiency by prioritizing technology over manual processes in outreach strategies.

Strategic growth in revenue and margins, especially in challenging markets, entails concentrating on acquiring customers aligned with the company's ideal customer profile. By pinpointing and customizing efforts to meet the specific needs of the most lucrative customers, businesses can maximize ROI and achieve revenue objectives.

To achieve optimal results, Craig Group can help companies determine who these potential customers are and the best way to reach them, using a data-driven approach.

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Libby Covington is a partner with Craig Group, a technology-enabled sales and marketing advisory firm specializing in revenue growth for middle-market, private-equity-backed portfolio companies.

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These guest articles — with advice and perspective on topics ranging from quiet quitting to emotional intelligence — attracted the most readers throughout the year. Photo via Getty Images

These were the most-read guest columns by Houston innovators in 2022

2022 in review

Editor's note: Every week, InnovationMap — Houston's only news source and resource about and for startups — runs one or two guest columns written by tech entrepreneurs, public relations experts, data geniuses, and more. As Houston's innovation ecosystem gets ready for 2023, here are some of this year's top guest contributor pieces — each with pertinent information and advice for startups both at publishing and into the new year. Make sure to click "read more" to continue reading each piece.

Is your New Year's resolution to start contributing? Email natalie@innovationmap.com to learn more.

Houston expert: How to navigate Gen Z's quiet quitting movement at your company

Your perspective on quiet quitting is probably generational, says one Houston expert and startup founder. Photo via Getty Images

This month, the internet has been discussing "quiet quitting," the practice of employees setting hard boundaries about when they work and to what extent they are willing to go beyond the outlined expectations of their jobs.

The conversation around quiet quitting has also been lively at the Ampersand offices. As a training company that is dedicated to training new professionals for employers both big and small, it's critically important for our team to have a good grasp on the relationship employees have with their jobs, and what motivates them to succeed. So we had a long meeting where we discussed what quiet quitting meant to each of us. Read more.

Houston expert shares how small business leaders can encourage PTO use

Retaining employees is no easy feat these days. Encouraging a healthy PTO policy can help avoid burnout. Photo courtesy of Joe Aker

As many small businesses continue to operate in a challenging, fast-paced environment, one thing that has arrived at breakneck speed is midyear, along with the summer months. Theoretically, to ensure work-life balance, most employees should have 50 percent of their PTO remaining to use for summer vacations and during the second half of the year. In reality, that is probably not the case given workers are hesitant to use their PTO, leaving approximately five days of unused PTO on the table during 2020 and 2021.

While the pandemic affected PTO usage the last two years, the labor shortage appears to be a major contributor in 2022, which has led to PTO hoarding and increasing levels of employee burnout. Although these factors can be compounded for small business owners because there are fewer employees to handle daily responsibilities, it is imperative for workers to take PTO, returning recharged with a fresh perspective on the tasks at hand. Read more.

Houston expert: 3 emotional intelligence tips for improving patient-practitioner experience

A Houston expert shares how to improve on communication in the health care setting. Image via Getty Images

After spending hours with healthcare professionals as both a consultant and patient, I know that it takes a special kind of person to take care of others in their most distressing and vulnerable times. That responsibility has been in overdrive because of COVID, causing emotional burnout, which in turn affects patient care. By equipping yourself with emotional intelligence, you can be more resilient for yourself and patients.

Emotional intelligence is keeping your intelligence high, when emotions are high.

Health care sets up an environment for a tornado of emotions, and the rules and regulations centered around patient-provider interactions are often complex to navigate. This leaves many on the brink of emotional exhaustion, and for survival’s sake, depersonalization with patients becomes the status quo. Feeling a disconnect with their patients is another added weight, as few get into this industry for just the paycheck – it’s the impact of helping people get healthy and stay healthy that motivates them. I’ve seen it time and time again with people in my life, as well as on my own patient journey as I battled stage 3 cancer. Read more.

Here's what types of technology is going to disrupt the education sector, says this Houston founder

Edtech is expected to continue to make learning more interactive, fun, and inclusive for people around the world. Photo via Pexels

Technology has always maneuvered education in a certain direction but the COVID-19 pandemic has forced it to shift towards a new direction entirely.

What started off as a basic video lecture turned into a more hybrid and innovative form of education, enabling student engagement and interactivity like never before. Social media forums allow teachers to pay one-on-one attention to students boosting their learning process.

With an edtech boom on the rise, there is a question of what further expansion in educational technology is expected. Here are some technology breakthroughs currently underway in the education sector. Read more.

Houston expert weighs in on marketing from an investor’s perspective

What should Houston startups know about marketing? Photo via Getty Images

Just what do investors want to see from a startup with regards to the company’s marketing? I recently spoke on this topic to a cohort of early-stage technology startup entrepreneurs at Softeq Venture Studio, an accelerator program that helps founders build investable technologies and businesses. Read more.

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Pharma giant considers Houston for $1B manufacturing campus

in the works

Another pharmaceutical giant is considering Houston’s Generation Park for a manufacturing hub.

According to a recent filing with the Texas Jobs, Energy, Technology and Innovation (JETI) program, Bristol Myers Squibb Co. is considering the northeast Houston management district for a new $1 billion multi-modal pharmaceutical manufacturing campus.

If approved, the campus, known as Project Argonaut, could create 489 jobs in Texas by 2031. Jobs would include operations technicians, engineering roles, administrative and management roles, production specialists, maintenance support, and quality control/assurance. The company predicts annual average wages for these positions to be around $96,000, according to the filing.

The project currently includes the 600,000-square-foot facility, but according to the filing, Bristol Myers Squibb “envisions this site growing in scale and capability well beyond its opening configuration."

The Texas JETI program offers companies temporary school property tax limitations in exchange for major capital investment and job creation. E.R. Squibb & Sons LLC applied for a 10-year tax abatement agreement in the Sheldon Independent School District.

The agreement promises a $ 1 billion investment. Construction would begin in 2027 and wrap in 2029.

“The proposed project reflects [Bristol Myers Squibb Co.’s] enduring commitment to bringing innovative medicines to patients and ensuring the long-term supply reliability they depend on,” the filing says. “The proposed project is purpose-built to support and manufacture medicines spanning multiple therapeutic areas and modalities, positioning the site as a long-term launch and commercial campus for decades to come. These medicines will provide therapies to the [Bristol Myers Squibb Co.’s] patients located in markets both nationally and internationally.”

The Fortune 100 company is considering 16 other cities for the new manufacturing facility in the Central and Eastern markets in the U.S. According to the Houston Chronicle, Bristol Myers Squibb Co is still in the “evaluation process” for its potential manufacturing site.

Last fall, Eli Lilly and Co. selected Generation Park for its $6.5 billion manufacturing plant. More than 300 locations in the U.S. competed for the factory. Read more here.

Houston health tech co. lands NIH grant for AI cancer prediction tool

fresh funding

Houston-based CellChorus and Stanford Medicine were recently awarded a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research grant for the company's AI platform to test how certain cancer patients will respond to therapies.

The funding comes from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health. According to a filing, the grant totaled just under $400,000.

CellChorus, which spun out from the University of Houston’s Technology Bridge, has developed TIMING (Time-lapse Imaging Microscopy In Nanowell Grids), which analyzes the behavior of thousands of individual immune cells over time and can identify early indicators of treatment success or failure.

The company will work with Stanford's Dr. David Miklos and Dr. Saurabh Dahiya, who have built the Bone Marrow Transplantation and Cell Therapy Biobank. The biobank manages and stores biological samples from patients treated at their clinic and in clinical trials.

"Predicting which patients will achieve durable responses after CAR-T therapy remains one of the most important challenges in the field,” Miklos said in a news release. “We aim to uncover functional cellular signatures that can guide treatment decisions and improve patient outcomes.”

The project will specifically profile cells from patients with relapsed/refractory large B-cell lymphoma (r/rLBCL). According to CellChorus, only about half of r/rLBCL patients who receive CAR-T therapy "achieve a durable, long-term remission." Others do not respond to therapy or experience relapse.

“The sooner we know whether a cancer therapy is working, the better. To maximize patient benefit, we need technology that can provide a robust and early prediction of response to therapy. The technology needs to be scalable, cost-efficient, and capable of rapid turnaround times,” Rebecca Berdeaux, chief scientific officer of CellChorus, added in the release. “We are excited to work with Drs. David Miklos and Saurabh Dahiya and their colleagues on this very important project.”

CellChorus has previously received SBIR grants from federal agencies, including a $2.5 million award in 2024 from its National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) and a $2.3 million SBIR Fast-Track award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences in 2023.

Houston museum showcases America's founding documents in rare exhibit

Experience History

As the United States prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday, Houstonians have a chance to see rare documents from the founding of the nation. Freedom Plane National Tour: Documents That Forged a Nation, presented by the National Archives Foundation, will be on display at the Houston Museum of Natural Science through Monday, May 25.

The collection includes a rare engraving of the original Declaration of Independence; official Oaths of Allegiance signed by George Washington, Aaron Burr, and Alexander Hamilton; a draft of the Bill of Rights; the Treaty of Paris, the documented that recognized America's independence from Great Britain; and the tally of votes approving the Constitution.

The National Archives specifically chose Houston as one of only eight cities in the country to host the exhibit as a means to help the documents reach a wider audience outside of the main hub of semiquincentennial events in New England and the Washington, D.C. area.

"One of the things we decided when we put the tour together because we wanted to be off the East Coast," said Patrick Madden, CEO of the National Archives Foundation, who was onsite for the exhibit's opening in Houston. "There's a lot of 250th celebration stuff happening in the original 13 colonies. How do we get it to major markets where larger numbers of people can see it? So in the case of Houston, obviously, [is a] major market in this part of the country, but also we've partnered with the museum twice before with National Archives exhibits, so we knew that they would be up to the task of handling the exhibit and the crowds."

The star of the collection is a rare engraving of the original Declaration of Independence. Secretary of State and future president John Quincy Adams commissioned 200 exact replicas of the document from engraver William J. Stone in 1823. Less than 50 now remain. Madden joyfully pointed out that there are errors in this document, a potent reminder that the men who forged a nation made mistakes.

"There's a couple of typos in it where they had to make corrections," said Madden. "So even the founders, you know, they're all human. That resonates because here these people are making this move against the most powerful nation in the world and putting their lives on the line for a country based on ideas."

Other impressive parts of the collection include official Oaths of Allegiance signed by George Washington, Aaron Burr, and Alexander Hamilton, as well as one of the drafts of the Bill of Rights. Many states would not ratify the Constitution until certain rights were included in the document, leading to Washington going on a national tour assuring state leaders enshrining protections was first on the list. The draft copy on display specifically shows the First Amendment in progress.

Houston is the fourth stop on the exhibition's tour, which will take the documents to Denver, Miami, Dearborn, and Seattle through the summer. Freedom Plane is just one part of a larger patriotic celebration at the HMNS, which includes a film series celebrating American science and culture and general Americana decoration throughout the main hall.

Admission to Freedom Plane is free to the public, but separate from general admission to the museum. Space is limited, and passes are available on a first-come, first-serve basis. Non-members should expect long waits or the possibility that the day's passes are sold out. Only museum members can reserve passes for specific times. Flash photography is prohibited due to the fragile nature of the documents.

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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

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