Recommendations for a successful implementation of B2B marketing at ThyssenKrupp

After the successful relaunch of the brand thyssenkrupp in 2015, the company wants to implement a corporate B2B marketing. Therefore, the aim of this project is to come up with recommendations on how thyssenkrupp can implement a B2B marketing. This has been done by reviewing the literature about B2B marketing. Through the help of a best practice example of a successful B2B marketing company, an adapted version of the business model canvas has been used to create interview questions. Interviews have been conducted with one marketing expert from each business area of thyssenkrupp to analyse the whole matrix organization. The results of the interviews gave interesting insights about B2B marketing in general and about the customer segments, value propositions, channels and customer relationships. Some main findings are that branding, which is not seen as a critical success factor in the literature, should be seen as such. Furthermore, it could be seen that the knowledge about the customer, its needs and pain points is of bad quality. The different results made it possible to give several recommendations for thyssenkrupp such as to develop a corporate definition of B2B marketing and its critical success factors to create a common language and the implementation of a companywide CRM system and cross selling to improve customer knowledge and profitability