How a Maintenance Plan Protects Your B2B Website Project and Your Brand’s Priorities

For any website project, B2B companies work with a design partner to determine its scope, budget, and launch date. Then, if you’re working with the right agency, you arrange for an ongoing maintenance plan to service your investment.

After all, websites don’t stand still any more than the marketplace. Along with incorporating needed security updates, you also need to keep your site aligned with its long-term goals. If you don’t have a capable team in your corner, you’ll lose access to crucial digital improvements. And, at the same time, you’ll fall out of step with your competitors.

But what if you shifted your perspective? Instead of waiting until your site is live to start an ongoing maintenance plan, your website should always be improving. You should ensure your company and your team maintain vital support as your project progresses.

Benefits of Introducing a Maintenance Plan in Parallel with a Website Project

The core advantages of introducing a maintenance plan alongside your website project comes down to flexibility. As a project progresses, conversations with other stakeholders in your organization often lead to additional feature requests. However, with the roadmap in place for your existing project, these additions are often out of scope of your budget and timeline.

By establishing a maintenance plan, you can reply to requests for new features with “not right now” instead of “no.” Establishing a separate budget in parallel with your website project allows the work on your digital needs to grow more efficient in the following ways:

1. Speed Development on New Features While Protecting Project Timelines

Any project requires a lot of time and energy, but teams across your organization also have needs that develop as work on your website progresses. A maintenance plan establishes a means to fulfill those requests in a way that also girds support for the digital side of your company.

Plus, if you consistently add new priorities to your backlog as a project goes on, your developers can’t start on new requests until the maintenance plans starts. With a plan already in place, your team can start developing what you need that much faster.

When you work with the right agency partner, your product manager will provide visibility into your project and its areas of focus. At the same time, PMs provide updates on how the hours of your maintenance plans are being used and the features they support. Your PM can also provide guidance to ensure your company allocates its budget in a way that will best serve your company’s larger goals.

Plus, at any time during the project, you have the flexibility to use the maintenance plan to support your project. If a feature must be available when the project launches, you can add its development time under your maintenance budget and ensure your goals are met.

2. Maintain Continuity and Consistency for Your B2B’s Digital Goals

A maintenance plan allows you to receive additional support from a team who is already immersed in your website project. You don’t have to “break in” new developers who don’t know your design, its back-end technology, or your brand. Instead, your maintenance needs are served by people who know your organization.

Maintaining a connection to specialists who are well-versed on the specifics of your brand is especially important during times of economic instability. As budgets get tighter, marketing teams at B2B companies like yours find themselves short handed when managing digital projects. Worse yet, staff turnover leads to internal gaps in experience and expertise with your website.

During times like these, you can rely on a maintenance team to keep your marketing initiatives moving. A maintenance plan offers more than a way to supplement your team. It also provides guidance during an unsettled period for your organization. The right digital agency can provide additional consistency by acting as an experienced extension of your company.

3. Establish Priorities for Future Digital Initiatives

During the discovery process, an agency partner will work with you to identify your goals and the purpose of your project. With a maintenance plan, your team gains an additional strategic resource for keeping your organization focused on those goals.

Your website project is the most important component of your B2B company’s marketing. But as impactful as a website project may be, it isn’t the end of the story. You have to maintain your momentum and continue fulfilling your organization’s long-term needs by enhancing your site to stay competitive.

For example, your organization may have a new CMO, which often shifts your marketing plans. You may want to place more focus on different products or target a new audience for services. Or, your company may pursue a rebranding and take a wider view of your business priorities and promote its products in a new way.

With a maintenance plan, you have a team in place who understands where your company has been and what it needs for the future. Then, you can work together to create and implement a plan to deliver the assets that will move your brand forward.

Maintenance and Support Plans Thrive on Long-Term Relationships

When established in parallel with a website project, maintenance plans offer added security for organizations like yours. Along with gaining the assurance your project will be completed on-time and on-budget, you also ensure its digital presentation continues to improve.

With the addition of Strategy and Goal planning sessions, your organization sees what’s working, what isn’t, and what’s next for your website. As the partnership goes on, both sides provide recommendations to serve your brand and take advantage of new technologies.

Just like your business, your B2B website should continually evolve to better serve your brand and your customers. If this sounds like the kind of working relationship that will serve your business, we should talk about how to get started.