Global B2B Marketing on a Shoestring Budget

One of the biggest challenges we face in running a global B2B marketing program from New Zealand is generally having a fraction of the budget our competitors have in other markets. Not whinging, just a fact of exchange rates and the size of our home market forcing many B2B tech businesses to go offshore incredibly early.

Over a number of years’, I have developed a Hub and Spoke approach to build a virtual marketing team that is highly cost effective, highly productive and can be used by a sole marketer (or small team).

Why the Hub and Spoke model

The scope of marketing has grown to the point where very few of us (if we’re honest) have all the skills needed to deliver a global marketing program. And if you’re the sole marketer you simply don’t have the time to do everything, anyway. So how to fix this?

You need to build a team of experts (the ‘spokes’) around you (the ‘hub’) that act as if they were part of your internal team - but you are only paying them for the time you need them to be active. It means you can have a higher level of competency and experience and achieve a whole lot more than being limited by the skill set you can currently access. It also means they don’t necessarily need to sit in the same country you do.

The key to this is they ‘act as if they are part of your internal team’. One of the big points of difference in this model is that while you are engaging with external contractors, they need to be willing participants in your wider ‘team’. This means:

• Committing to a Quarterly Planning session (which will be billable time) where the team comes together to review the previous quarter and plan out the next.
• Ensuring there is capacity to deliver to their part of the plan – proactively ensuring requirements are understood, budget is agreed and time is ring-fenced to achieve what is needed.
• Working across the team as needed; engaging directly with other team members to ensure everyone’s contribution lands well - or there is shared understanding of any hold ups or issues.
• You are the team manager, coach and guide just as for your internal team. What you are not is the typical ‘client’. You are not the point of friction unintentionally holding things up - you are copied in – but not expected to be the man-in-the-middle translating and relaying information from one person to the next.

How does Hub and Spoke work in practice?

Think about everything that needs to come together to produce a video case study.
You need someone to build the brief, identify the key messaging, liaise with the customer - and that is most likely to be you.

You'll also need:

• Someone to script the question or narration pieces – plus content for any graphics slides
• Designer to create any graphics (front and end slides)
• Videographer to film the interviews / onsite content
• Editor to bring it all together
• A content writer to create a written version of the case study as well as a blog post and social posts to promote it
• A designer to create a downloadable pdf version of the case study and graphics to go with the blog and social posts
• Website content manager to put it up on the site
• Potentially a blog and/or social posts to promote it

While you can probably do some of this yourself – even with a team of AI Assistants there are still probably parts of this you would be better off outsourcing. If you have everyone involved working as a team with shared understanding of what the purpose is, how it is going to be applied, the kind of brand messaging you want to convey – you are going to get a better outcome.

If the team works together in achieving this – connecting the dots between themselves - you are potentially going to get an even better result with minimal need for you to be involved in the delivery mechanics…so long as your brief is sound.

So how do you set up a Hub and Spoke model?

Step 1: Assess what skills you need

List out all the marketing skill sets you will need to deliver against this year’s plan. While not exhaustive – think about:

• Strategy building
• Project management
• Reporting
• Content writing – technical / product
• Content writing – business / blog / editorial
• Content for social – written, image, video
• Video content
• Public Relations / communications
• CRM management
• Website front end
• Website back end
• Digital ads
• Print advertising
• SEO/AEO etc
• What else?

Next - asses your internal ‘team(s)’ strengths against those requirements. Where are your gaps? It doesn’t necessarily mean you couldn’t do it; just that given all you have on your plate there are other things that make more sense for you to own. Look to get someone else to do the rest – they are your ‘spokes’ that makes the wheels turn faster.

Step 2: Engage your team

You don’t need to identify team members all at once; but it gets increasingly easier to bring people on board once the model is up and working… so get your most critical players on board upfront.

Step 3: Put it into action

In running a Hub and Spoke approach, it is important to operate as if you were an internal team. Some things I found useful include:

• A communications channel (Slack or Teams) for the group.
• Getting everyone to introduce themselves at the start of each meeting. If it’s their first time it is useful for everyone to understand what their skill sets are and why they are there. Once engaged they can either talk about what they have been working on for you – or if they are not currently working on a project, they could share a new learning or potential opportunity they might have identified.
• Setting an agenda for the Quarterly Meeting and getting everyone to contribute to it – once you are up and running it is amazing how many great ideas can be generated from the wider group.
• Post meeting – clarity is everything. Not only sharing back the plan once it is signed off but creating briefs for each of the deliverables so everyone – internally and externally understands what is being worked on.
• Sticking to budget is a priority. Always build in a contingency for the unknown opportunities (or issues) that can come your way. You need to mutually agree the budget that is being worked to and the team should understand this is fixed and they need to flag any potential issues ahead of time.

So there you have it - the hub and spoke model. Why am I sharing it? If you’re trying to work marketing miracles – it can help to have some ideas as to how to make magic happen. I’ve no doubt there are variations on this you can put in play – but it can be useful to put a name to it and identify what did work.

If you’re reading this and not sure where to start (or you don’t have a marketer to lead this), it is certainly something I can help you set up for your business. I work as the Hub in the short term – setting up the spokes you need to execute on your plan. I'll then recruit the Hub you need to make this all happen on a long-term basis - because I will know exactly what skills they will need. Let’s talk.