What Does a Digital Marketing Coach Do for B2Bs?

“You fight great, but I’m a great fighter” – Apollo Creed, 1982

Digital marketing presents a unique set of problems for teams trying to train on it and execute it. Several disciplines need to weave and work together to form a cohesive strategy and process.

Your team might be full of subject matter experts. Doesn’t mean they’re experts in the subjects that matter.

That’s what Apollo Creed was trying to tell his protégé Mr. Balboa in the slightly nonsensical “Rocky III” quote above. Yes, even the former world champion boxer needed some outside motivation and advice to regain his eye of the tiger (and thrill of the fight).

That’s where a marketing coach can come in.

Some teams keep marketing in-house because they don’t want to pay an external team or don’t trust one to market their niche industry effectively. Maybe that’s OK for them. It’s not OK for your team if you don’t understand how to produce customer-first content, build a conversion-focused strategy, or keep pace with long-term goals.

Your team just needs a little nudge from you – and a coach!

What a Marketing Coach Does: Basic Roles

At their core, web marketing coaches fill gaps in your team’s availability or skill set. This is what makes coaching and consulting different from taking training courses online. You can customize the service agreement to fit your business, focusing on challenges unique to your product, industry, and target buyers.

Here are a few examples of B2B marketing consulting setups and situations:

Different team dynamics and goals call for different execution methods. Coaching support happens through a variety of avenues:

• One-off workshops
• Recurring conference calls
• On-own work
• Personalized tutorial videos
• Regular reports

As you can see, there are plenty of options for how you blend the level of coaching and delivery. For example, you might prefer a breakdown like this:

Not every agency is an expert in everything. The more expertise the marketing coaching agency has, the more you can mix and swap services as necessary.

What a Marketing Coach Does: Key Services

An inbound marketing coach focuses on digital- and customer-first strategies rather than outdated cold calling or black-hat SEO (search engine optimization). These are the kinds of services you can expect:

Strategic Planning

This is the biggest area where marketing coaching services can offer you something training courses can’t. The work will all focus on your company, your services, and your ideal customer.

For example, your coach will:

1. Work with you to identify short- and long-term business S.M.A.R.T. goals, which will become the “scorecard” used to measure success going forward.
2. Exhaustively research competitors, industry trends, and SEO opportunities
3. Develop a comprehensive marketing strategy that aligns with #1 and #2.
4. Develop an activity calendar that’s in alignment with #3 and your budget and capacity.
5. Meet with your team on an ongoing basis to provide education, updates, reporting, and more.

Even if you have a long-established B2B marketing plan, having an objective sounding board helps. A coach can provide non-judgmental feedback on what’s likely to work and not work based on experience and best practices.

Skill Development

“You write great, but I’m a great writer” – Me, 2024

This spin on the old Apollo-ism hints at why you can’t abruptly drop traditional marketers into an inbound content campaign. 

• A great writer might not know how to research and use keywords to get her articles found by Google searchers. 
• That amazing in-person seller might not know how to follow up with leads at scale in a way that won’t go straight to Trash.
• The web development/IT guy might not know layout and UX best practices for guiding visitors to becoming leads.

A dedicated agency has experience in juggling these needs. It can enhance the marketing team's skills in specific areas such as:

• PPC – Training on keyword selection, ad copywriting, and campaign ROI optimization
• SEO – Best practices for on-page optimization, linking, and creating rankable content
• Content marketing – How to take complex topics and turn them into traffic- and lead-generating emails, blog posts, and more 
• Conversion optimization – Identifying how to guide good-fit visitors toward the right places on your website at the right time, turning them into leads

Again, the exact training an agency can offer in content marketing, website-building, and promotion depends on its breadth of expertise. Either way, it’s probably more than one B2B industrial marketer or small in-house team can master alone. An agency offers specialized experts in each domain, ensuring you’re excelling in every aspect instead of just ticking off boxes.

Performance Analysis

Thought, feelings, and hunches sometimes work when you’ve got a track record of success. However, a coach can drill you on data-driven approaches to what worked yesterday and what’ll work tomorrow.

Your coach will work with you to evaluate performance on a recurring basis (say, 90 days), based on the agreed-upon scorecard. From there, you’ll learn how to improve for next quarter.

Do your 90-day campaigns tend to bleed into 120 days? Or 180 days? Good news: Part of the third-party coaching “service” suite is simply keeping team members accountable and on track.

Marketing people get pulled in so many directions. Being able to stay on task and produce what the business needs on time can be asking a lot. 

This is one way an outside voice and the scorecard can help. An agency isn’t bogged down by your internal operations. A coach can produce a rubric that helps keep your team on track with deadlines and metrics most pertinent to agreed-upon goals.

Technology Use

“How do I use this CMS platform to share content?” 

“How does this newfangled AI marketing tool work?”

You don’t need the birthday robot from “Rocky IV” to be capable of wooing your audience. By its very nature, an agency has to stay on top of ever-evolving best practices, Google Search algorithm updates, and testing new tools. Leave it to a coach to stay informed and train you on the best tools and software for streamlining the marketing process.

There are also trainers that specialize in onboarding teams in HubSpot and similar CRMs (customer relationship management systems). These massive platforms can amplify your reach big-time, but only if the team uses them correctly.

An CRM integration specialist can help your team with:

• Successful onboarding & CRM buy-in
• Effective use
• Ongoing maintenance
• Evaluating & adopting new features

If your team’s martech know-how is as dated as these “Rocky” references, talk to a digital marketing coach. A consultant can bridge your tech gap and help you run efficient, data-backed campaigns.

Sales & Service?

You’re reading this because your current marketing efforts aren’t doing enough for the business. Does the problem extend deeper?

Some inbound coaching agencies also offer sales and service support. This may include:

• Lead management – How to quality and score leads so that sellers can focus on those with the highest potential. How to make automated email sequences that retain a personal touch and genuinely help the buyer
  
  
• Sales and marketing alignment – Work to make strategies and goals symbiotic, creating a seamless buyer journey (Ex.: Helping the marketing team understand what assets would best help the sales team)
  
  
• Performance tracking – Wrangling your expensive CRM to track lead touchpoints and behavior. Fostering a more thorough, personalized process that doesn’t let good leads slip through the cracks.

Again, the more capabilities the consulting agency has, the more ways it can help grow your team. By giving attention to all of the “big three” – marketing, sales, and service – each will be better integrated. That creates a happier buyer experience – from before they even know you exist, to after the handshake and deal.

Finding a Web Marketing Coach

Rocky needed Apollo’s help to defeat his shortcomings and fears. In a way, Apollo also needed Rocky – to carry out his dreams and do what’s right for the industry.

Even the world’s best sports teams need coaches. It’s not that your team is necessarily doing anything wrong. Any rational, objective NFL analyst will tell you Bill Belichick and Tom Brady mutually benefited from working together. One wasn’t dragging the other’s carcass to the finish line.

Sometimes it simply takes an outside mind to spot inconsistencies, gaps, and areas that need improvement. (And enforce accountability to stay on target!)

Only you know your team’s blind spots and where you most need support attracting and closing leads. Play to everyone’s strengths and ensure you’re getting the business value you want. 

Are you a good fit for inbound marketing partners? Take the quiz and identify: 

• Your biggest marketing weakness
• Areas where coaching might bring the highest ROI