SVP Strategic Planning, B2B

The SVP of Strategic Planning owns the planning thinking that connects a B2B client’s commercial goals to a full funnel marketing and media strategy. The role sets the strategic direction across the buying group, the buyer journey, and the channel mix, defining how brand, demand, and account programs work together to create and progress pipeline. It sits within a media agency delivery model and partners closely with measurement, investment planning, client, and creative teams to turn business questions into a coherent plan that senior client stakeholders can back.

You will have in-depth knowledge of B2B buying, where multiple stakeholders, long and non-linear cycles, and a small addressable market shape strategy, and you will translate that view into audience definitions, channel roles, and investment direction. You will hold the strategic narrative that everything downstream is built from. Beyond individual accounts, you will help lead the growth of the B2B practice itself, shaping the demand management proposition, building the planning capability across the portfolio, and developing the team that delivers it.

Key Responsibilities:

Business and audience planning

• Set the planning strategy for B2B clients, starting from commercial objectives and working back to the role marketing and media play in pipeline creation, deal progression, and revenue.
• Define the target audience at account and buying-group level, mapping the roles within the buying committee, the questions each role asks, and where each sits in the journey from category awareness to vendor selection.
• Build the ideal customer profile and account framework with the client, segmenting the addressable market into tiers and setting the strategic intent for each tier across one-to-many, one-to-few, and one-to-one approaches.
• Bring intent and first-party signals into the planning picture, using CRM, engagement, and third-party intent data to shape who to reach, when, and with what.

Full funnel and channel strategy

• Own the full funnel strategy across brand and demand, balancing demand creation that builds future pipeline against demand capture that converts in-market accounts, and resisting the pull toward bottom-of-funnel tactics alone.
• Define the role of each channel in the mix, setting why each channel exists in the plan and what job it does across the journey, from broad-reach programmatic and professional social through search, content syndication, events, and ABM platforms.
• Connect media to the wider marketing motion, aligning paid media with sales enablement, demand generation, lead generation, and ABM so that the programs reinforce one another rather than running in parallel.
• Set the strategic frame for ABM, defining how account selection, message, and channel come together to move named accounts through engagement, opportunity, and revenue, in partnership with the client’s sales and marketing teams.

Practice and proposition leadership

• Help lead the B2B demand management practice, shaping how the practice defines demand creation and demand capture, and setting the standards, frameworks, and ways of working that planning across the portfolio is held to.
• Develop the B2B planning proposition, codifying the approach into repeatable methods, tools, and points of view that differentiate the offer and can be applied consistently across clients.
• Build B2B planning capability across the portfolio, raising the standard of thinking beyond the accounts you lead directly and equipping wider teams to plan against buying groups, account tiers, and full funnel demand.
• Shape the team structure and hiring for B2B planning, defining the roles and levels the practice needs, and partnering with leadership to bring in and grow the people who fill them.
• Contribute to portfolio growth, partnering with agency leadership on new business, cross-sell, and the case for B2B demand management with existing and prospective clients.

Client leadership and craft

• Act as a senior strategic advisor to clients, pushing the thinking beyond the brief and bringing a clear point of view on what will move the business.
• Translate analysis and insight into a clear planning narrative, turning audience, market, and performance data into a story that marketing and commercial audiences can act on.
• Lead the planning output in pitches and major client reviews, setting the strategic approach that the rest of the response is built around.
• Coach and develop planners, raising the standard of B2B planning craft across the team and mentoring the next generation.

Required Experience and Skills:

• Senior B2B planning experience across business, audience, and channel planning, with a track record of connecting marketing and media strategy to pipeline and revenue outcomes.
• Command of the full B2B marketing motion, including full funnel media, demand generation, ABM, and sales enablement, and how they fit together.
• Deep understanding of the B2B buyer journey and the distinct roles within buying committees, and how that shapes audience and message strategy.
• Strong audience and investment planning skills, including ICP and account-tier definition, channel-role design, and budget allocation logic across the funnel.
• Fluency with the B2B data and channel landscape, including first-party and CRM data, intent signals, professional social, programmatic, search, content syndication, and ABM platforms.
• Deep knowledge of the B2B data partner ecosystem, with hands-on experience of providers such as Dun & Bradstreet, Bombora, and LinkedIn, and how their firmographic, intent, and audience data feeds planning.
• Senior stakeholder presence, with the ability to advise marketing and commercial leaders and to defend strategic choices to client, sales, and finance audiences.
• Practice-building experience, having developed a proposition, methods, or capability that scaled beyond a single account, ideally within a demand management or B2B growth remit.
• Team leadership and development, with a record of shaping team structure, hiring senior planners, and raising craft across a group rather than only delivering as an individual.