Imagine a scenario where your boss comes up to you with the following request:

Scenario A: “Hey we need more leads. Could you run a campaign?”  :’)

Scenario B: “Hey we need fire support. Could you shoot some bombs? ” O.o

Intuitively, anyone hearing the second statement would firstly not shoot immediately, then secondly follow up with “shoot where?”. You don’t have to be in the artillery to know that following such instructions blindly has massive and fatal risks. Until clear instructions on the target are given, nothing would be done. No target? No fires!

In B2B marketing, sometimes we hear the first statement by boss A and are expected to figure things out. “That’s your job right? Figure it out?”. In an ideal world, this would have been done at a strategic level first before cascading to marketing. We don’t live in an ideal world. If you’re in a startup, it’s going to be doubly hard. The business strategy might not even be crystallized yet.

Yet interestingly enough, there are some uncanny parallels between marketing and artillery, and in my view as both a marketer and a gunner (gunners shoot big bombs using big guns over long distances), the artillery is to the army what marketing is to businesses. Lets see what lessons we can draw from the artillery booklet to improve the way we approach B2B marketing.

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Rounds. Resources.

During army operations, an artillery unit can only be firing at one place at a time. There are limited guns and limited ammunition. How these are used can be the difference between mission success or failure.

Similarly in a B2B startup, limited manpower, time and budget means a marketing team can likely really do only one big, high impact project at a time. How resources are deployed will determine whether your go-to-market team wins the client or fails. Which brings us to our next point.

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Targeting.

Step one in an artillery fire mission is to know what the target is, where it is and what to do about it. Eyes on the ground in the form of UAVs or forward observers will call the firing units and inform them of what was spotted, describing the target, its location and what needs to be done. With a clear picture of the task at hand, the units that are firing the bombs will know what to do.

In B2B marketing, having a clear understanding of the market, the ideal customer profile in the target segment and the persona of the critical stakeholder(s) is likewise critical for both marketing and sales teams to know who, where and how to engage. The eyes on the ground in this case can be both marketing and sales, using different data sources such as web information, research reports, CRM data, first hand information from speaking with clients and anything to paint a picture of what the “target” looks like.

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Appropriate ammo, appropriate situation.

Most modern armies have different ways to provide fire support for different situations. A 155mm howitzer battery of several guns might be able to bombard a large area with high explosive rounds, taking out targets like personnel walking in the open, but will not be able to fire very long distances and also have less likelihood of hitting a specific point target. Bombardments have to be followed up with infantry moving in to capture areas that were “softened” by the 155mm fires.

A HIMARS system on the other hand can take out long range targets with pinpoint accuracy and devastating results, but these weapons are far more expensive to operate, and ammunition is limited. The type of ground units that might be working with the HIMARS might likewise be far more specialized and highly trained.

The use of these systems will vary depending on the targeting brief. Target is far away, cost-to-benefit makes sense and precision is needed? HIMARS. Closer range, softer targets? 155mm howitzers work better.

Back to B2B marketing. Are we going after enterprise-level clients, with multiple senior stakeholders in the buying unit that all care about different things and require a multi-threaded sales approach? An account-based marketing approach, developed in tandem with the AE team might be better suited. High value, close coordination, high investment into a single target.

If the segment is SMBs, with many companies having similar characteristics and one common type of decision maker, then content marketing coupled with Google search ads might be a suitable approach. Follow up with email nurturing and a structured inbound sales process to close deals that don’t sign up on their own. Larger area, broader campaigns, smaller sales team to round up stragglers.

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Coordination between units, alignment between teams.

When artillery fires are called, feedback from the forward observer to the firing units has to be given immediately on whether the bombs have hit their target. Firing units will adjust to be more accurate and the feedback loop continues until the objective has been achieved.

If this loop isn’t closed, army commanders will not be able to know if it is feasible to proceed with other types of missions. Only when the observer has confirmed that targets are neutralized can the next steps be taken by the rest of the army. Nobody wants to walk into an area thinking everything is fine and be ambushed.

Likewise in B2B marketing, marketers need to know if marketing campaigns are working. Digital marketing tools allow for metrics to be monitored, but ultimately sales feedback is necessary to know if marketing efforts have revenue impact. Are the leads that are coming making sense for the business or do we need to adjust the creative or targeting? While it may be difficult for sales teams to provide real time feedback on lead quality or insights from sales conversations, a regular linkup is still necessary for teams to swap notes at a sensible cadence while campaigns are ongoing.

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Adjacent learning, for marketers and startup folk.

It wasn’t until 2 years into building a startup that I noticed these parallels. After spending a few weeks during in-camp-training hearing “targeting targeting, what’s the target” all day, I went back to the office and continued hearing “targeting targeting, what’s the target” all day. Coincidence? I think not.

The closer I reviewed my notes from both fields, the more they looked the same. If only I had come to that realization sooner! Many marketing discussions would have been so much smoother, especially those earlier in my career.

More interestingly for me, this set me down a path of looking for “adjacent learnings”, concepts and frameworks from one field which can apply to another. The purpose of these to me are twofold:

1) Accelerating the learning process in a new field. When adapting something familiar from an area of high familiarity and competence to an area of lower familiarity and competence, the learning curve becomes more forgiving. (Of course, this only works when there are sufficient parallels)

2) Greater confidence in the effectiveness of what I’m doing. If a way of thinking can be applied to multiple fields, the universality of the underlying principles and robustness of the frameworks used becomes much stronger.

Put these two together and you’re on a fast track to scaling yourself and your startup.

If you made it this far, I hope the military analogy was useful or at least entertaining. Do let me know if you have any feedback on the content or if you have suggestions for new topics to write about. Thank you for reading and stay tuned for more content on growth at a startup!

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Note:

1. Military service of ~2 years is mandatory for all male Singaporean citizens. I served in the artillery during my 2 years and continue to serve once per year as a National Servicemen. Every time I go back, I notice and learn something new which can be adapted to office life. I hope to write more of such topics as I draw more parallels across fields.

2. All information on artillery and its uses in this article are from publicly available sources. Military terminology and information have been simplified for ease of understanding e.g.rounds are referred to as bombs etc.

3. ChatGPT/AI did not write this.