Preparing for Q2: Marketing Planning
Why Q2 Deserves Its Own Marketing Strategy
The UK business calendar has a rhythm, and Q2 — April through June — has a distinct character that savvy marketers plan for deliberately. After the budgetary reset of January and the slow build of Q1, Q2 is when many UK businesses enter their most commercially active period. Decision makers are fully back in the office, budgets have been confirmed, and there is a genuine drive to show progress before the summer slowdown arrives in July and August.
For businesses running B2B lead generation campaigns, Q2 represents a prime window: buyers are receptive, pipelines need filling, and there is a natural urgency in the market that well-timed outreach can exploit. But this window only delivers results if you have planned ahead. Starting Q2 marketing conversations in April is too late — the groundwork needs to be laid in February and March.
Step One: Review Your Q1 Performance Honestly
Before planning forward, look back. A clear-eyed review of your Q1 marketing performance gives you the data you need to make better decisions for Q2. What did you set out to achieve in Q1? How did actual performance compare? Which channels, campaigns, and activities generated the best results?
Do not confuse activity with results. Many businesses measure marketing success by volume — emails sent, calls made, posts published — rather than by outcomes: leads generated, appointments set, pipeline created, revenue won. If your Q1 review reveals that significant activity produced little in the way of commercial outcomes, that is important intelligence for how you structure Q2.
Look at your lead quality as well as your lead volume. High volumes of poorly qualified leads waste sales time and create pipeline that never converts. If your Q1 leads were not converting at expected rates downstream, the problem may be in qualification, targeting, or the handoff between marketing and sales.
Setting Q2 Targets That Mean Something
Q2 targets should flow from your annual commercial objectives, not be set in isolation. If your business needs to generate 200 new clients over the year, and you won 40 in Q1, then Q2 needs to deliver roughly 50 to keep you on track — accounting for typical seasonal variation.
Work backwards from the revenue target to understand what your pipeline and lead generation activity need to deliver. If your average deal value is £5,000 and your close rate from qualified lead to won deal is 25%, you need 200 qualified leads to generate 50 closed deals. Understanding this maths precisely allows you to size your marketing investment correctly and identify quickly when you are falling behind pace.
Choosing Your Q2 Marketing Channels
The best Q2 marketing plans use a combination of channels that reinforce each other, rather than relying on a single approach. For B2B businesses, the most effective channel combinations typically include some form of outbound outreach — telemarketing or direct email — combined with digital presence to support credibility and conversion.
Outbound Telemarketing
Q2 is an excellent time for outbound telemarketing campaigns. Decision makers are accessible, budgets are active, and the urgency of "let us get something moving before summer" works in your favour. Well-targeted calling campaigns can generate a significant volume of qualified leads and appointments in a relatively short timeframe — making telemarketing one of the most cost-effective ways to build Q2 pipeline quickly.
Plan your telemarketing campaigns now, so you have your data selected, your scripts developed, and your calling team briefed and ready to go from the first week of April. Starting a week late can mean losing a week of prime calling time that is difficult to recover.
B2B Appointment Setting
If your sales team is the bottleneck, investing in outsourced B2B appointment setting through Q2 can dramatically accelerate pipeline growth. A dedicated appointment setting team working through Q2 can fill your sales calendar with qualified meetings, freeing your senior people to focus on converting rather than prospecting.
Digital Marketing
Q2 is also a sensible time to review your digital marketing activity. Is your website generating the enquiries it should? Are you visible in search results for the terms your target customers are using? Is your content supporting the buying journey of prospects who are evaluating suppliers? A well-functioning digital presence amplifies the results of your outbound activity — prospects who have been called or emailed will often look you up online before responding, and what they find shapes their decision.
Planning Your Campaigns Week by Week
Vague Q2 plans — "we will do more calling and push out more content" — rarely produce consistent results. Effective Q2 marketing planning means specifying what happens each week: which segment is being targeted, which channel is being used, what the offer or message is, and who is responsible for follow-up.
Build a simple campaign calendar that maps each of your Q2 marketing activities against a timeline. Include not just the outbound activity but the follow-up actions that determine whether activity converts into pipeline. A telemarketing campaign that generates 100 leads is only valuable if those leads are followed up promptly and systematically.
Aligning Sales and Marketing for Q2
The single most common cause of wasted marketing investment is poor alignment between marketing and sales. Marketing generates leads that sales does not follow up quickly enough. Leads are poorly defined, so sales and marketing have different views on what constitutes a qualified opportunity. There is no systematic process for nurturing leads that are not yet ready to buy.
Before Q2 begins, align explicitly with your sales team on the definition of a qualified lead, the expected follow-up timescale, and the process for leads that require nurturing rather than immediate action. A fifteen-minute joint planning session can prevent weeks of wasted activity and mutual frustration.
Resources: Do You Have What You Need?
An ambitious Q2 marketing plan requires the resources to execute it. Do you have the team, the budget, the data, and the tools in place? If internal resource is limited, Q2 is an excellent time to consider outsourcing specific functions — outbound calling, appointment setting, or digital marketing management — to a specialist partner who can deliver results without the overhead of building internal capability from scratch.
At XL Marketing, we work with businesses across the UK to plan and execute Q2 lead generation campaigns that build pipeline quickly and efficiently. Whether you need outbound telemarketing, appointment setting, or a broader digital marketing programme, our team is ready to help you make the most of this commercially important quarter. Get in touch to discuss your Q2 plans.