“If you sell to businesses and other organizations, you cannot use the standard consumer marketing techniques. This program teaches you the business-to-business marketing tools that you need to design and implement a successful go-to-market strategy in a competitive environment.”
– The program's faculty director Miklos Sarvary

Because marketing to businesses is fundamentally different than marketing directly to consumers — namely a longer and more complex sales process — it requires a different approach. B2B Marketing Strategy (Online) is a six-week online program that provides the tools to successfully apply marketing strategies, bring value to your B2B relationships, and make a clear connection between marketing and sales functions.

The program provides professionals operating in B2B markets and those wanting to develop a B2B product line with a strategic yet practical framework to sustain a competitive advantage by understanding how to deploy the right marketing, pricing, sales force, and decision-making toolkit for each stage of your go-to-market strategy.

Participants discover the essentials of B2B brands, beginning with an overview of the differences between B2C and B2B brands and exploring the value of having a consistent marketing strategy as well as a solid platform for marketing implementation, especially when coordinating sales.

The program highlights the complex consumer decision-making process of B2B brands and the best way to develop your go-to-market strategies. It also delves into sales force management and how to address the challenges of channel distribution and variable compensation. You also learn about B2B pricing to address the complexity of contracts and brand strategies for competitive advantage.

Please Contact Us

Please contact our partners at Emeritus at columbia@emeritus.org, +1 315-982-5094, or +1 315-277-2746 for a personal conversation to learn more.

IMPACT

Throughout the program, you will develop a B2B management toolkit that provides key tools to increase B2B effectiveness.

By the end of the program you will be able to:

• Review the marketing process and identify the functional, process, and relationship benefits of your B2B brand, allowing you to discern the value proposition of any B2B brand
• Discern how the decision funnel is different for organizations and individuals (B2B decision funnel vs. individual decision funnel) and use this knowledge to capitalize on the decision-making process to provide your business with customer loyalty
• Identify and deploy your marketing weapons for each stage of the Go-to-Market process
• Design effective compensation systems to create motivated sales teams
• Identify basic pricing strategies and use these to control prices
• Discover how marketing strategy provides you with a sustainable competitive advantage and use this knowledge to make marketing relevant to your CEO

Upon completion of this program, you will earn one day towards a Certificate with select alumni and tuition benefits. Learn more.

PROGRAM STRUCTURE

The B2B Marketing Strategy (Online) program is distributed across six modules and made available on a weekly basis. The program will begin with an orientation week, which provides an overview of the key features and resources you will need for a successful start.

The program features a mix of faculty video lectures, required activities, discussions, and a video interview with a B2B industry expert. Our approach is to provide the tools and frameworks to improve the efficiency of your B2B marketing efforts and increase revenue and profitability.

Weekly program topics are:

• Week 1: B2B Brands
• Week 2: B2B Decision-Making Process
• Week 3: B2B Go-to-Market Strategies
• Week 4: B2B Sales Force Management
• Week 5: B2B Pricing
• Week 6: B2B Marketing Strategy and Competitive Advantage

For a complete program schedule, please download the agenda.

PARTICIPANT PROFILE

The B2B Marketing Strategy (Online) program is ideal for mid to senior-level marketing or business-unit managers, including:

• Managers from a technical or manufacturing background, now responsible for growth or marketing-driven functions
• Product managers and marketing leads transitioning from a consumer domain into a B2B environment
• Account managers seeking to make better customer-relationship decisions specific to B2B marketing
• Experienced and newly promoted product and business unit managers with technical expertise but limited marketing background

Columbia Business School Alumni and up to four of their colleagues are eligible for a 25 percent tuition benefit for this program. More on the Alumni Tuition Benefit.

FACULTY

Miklos Sarvary, Faculty Director
Carson Family Professor of Business
Co-Faculty Director, Media and Technology Program

Miklos Sarvary's broad research agenda focuses on media and information marketing. His most recent papers are studying agenda setting, user-generated content, social network competition and online/mobile advertising. Previously, he worked on media and telecommunications competition.

He is a member of the Editorial Boards of Marketing Science, Quantitative Marketing and Economics, International Journal of Research in Marketing, and Journal of Interactive Marketing.

Prior to joining Columbia, Miklos was the Deputy Dean for Executive Development Programs at INSEAD. He has taught executive courses and consulted in various parts of the world for large corporations, including IBM, INTEL, Nokia, Alcatel, Samsung, Pearson, McKinsey & Co., Dun & Bradstreet and PwC. Before joining INSEAD, Miklos was a faculty member at Harvard Business School and the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University.

He studied physics in Hungary’s Eotvos Lorand University, earned an MS in Statistics from École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris and a PhD in Management from INSEAD. Prior to becoming an academic, he worked for IBM.