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How are leading marketers acting on new priorities? We partnered with eConsultancy and learned that top companies are employing three key trends, in which they:

• Use first-party data to forge stronger connection to consumers.
• Apply estimates or proxies to link real-time metrics with outcomes.
• Dedicate time and budget to strategic experimentation."

New research indicates where to focus digital investments so that they will reap rewards in online and face-to-face channels.

The right approach for SAS was a ground up renovation to better integrate channels and create a new customer-centric view of the market. We needed a way to monitor all of the campaigns in a centralized fashion. This meant creating unified experiences across all channels to deliver to customers the personalized attention they are asking for. And we started by establishing an Analytical Marketing Functional Framework that would serve as the foundational structure.

Learn about the newest member of the Demand Waterfall family and how it can help b-to-b companies
drive demand and revenue creation performance optimization throughout their organization.

"More than half of consumers across the U.S., Europe and Canada say company websites and e-mail remain their go-to channels — a sign one CMO Council exec says the “arrogance” of B2B marketers must come to an end.

While 38 per cent of respondents said brands are “getting there and know me better today than before,” the survey suggested mismanaging marketing channels or failing to invest in them could be costly. If they experience common frustrations such as not being treated like loyal customers (cited by 36 per cent of respondents) or deal with slow service from reps who don’t recognize them (33 per cent), they’re not afraid to walk. In fact, 47 per cent of customers said they would stop doing business with a brand that continues to frustrate them, and 45 per cent said they would spend their money with another brand."

The core cause of the B2B sales prospecting epidemic is an inability to create opportunities when buyers aren’t looking to buy. The reality is 90+% of potential buyers in your market aren’t actively looking.

A second reality exacerbates this situation. Professional purchasing agents have given way to teams of buyers. The 6 to 8 people on these teams typically represent multiple functional groups. Often they have never conducted a similar procurement process before.

A third reality complicates this situation. The digital trend to ubiquitous online information has produced self-educating buyers.

B2B is high stakes team buying. It’s a very different buying dynamic. If your marketing team isn’t clear and honest about these differences, and have a compelling strategy to address them, you’re probably in even deeper trouble than you think.

This is not a sales rep problem, per se. It is a business and sales leadership problem. B2B sellers must create value for customers through the way you sell. This starts with the way you create opportunities with prospective buyers who aren’t actively looking to buy what you are selling.

Check out trends in, and stats about, performance marketing - i.e., when the advertiser pays only if there are measurable results, such as a click or a lead-form completion - in Europe.

Despite the reach of email, asking in person is the significantly more effective approach; you need to ask six people in person to equal the power of a 200-recipient email blast. Still, most people tend to think the email ask will be more effective.

In research Mahdi Roghanizad of Western University and I conducted, recently published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, we have found that people tend to overestimate the power of their persuasiveness via text-based communication, and underestimate the power of their persuasiveness via face-to-face communication.

We found that people were much more likely to agree to complete a survey when they were asked in-person as opposed to over email. These findings are consistent with previous research showing that people are more likely to comply with requests in person than over email.

Marketing technology has become a fact of life, as new data from digital agency Squiz attests. Roughly two-thirds of senior marketers surveyed in Australia, the UK and the US have invested heavily in marketing technology over the past year, the study shows.

Another third of respondents said they have either invested a little to add to their existing marketing technology stack, or have taken their first steps in marketing technology.

In the digital economy, customers are socially connected with one another in horizontal webs of communities. Today, communities are the new segments. Unlike segments, communities are naturally formed by customers within the boundaries that they themselves define. Customer communities are immune to spamming and irrelevant advertising. In fact, they will reject a company’s attempt to force its way into these webs of relationship.

In the digital economy, customers are now facilitated and empowered to evaluate and even scrutinize any company’s brand-positioning promise. With this transparency (due to the rise of social media) brands can no longer make false, unverifiable promises. Companies can position themselves as anything, but unless there is essentially a community-driven consensus the positioning amounts to nothing more than corporate posturing.

• Content marketing (29% of marketers said content was top priority)—This entails providing educational/entertaining information that “grabs” people and gets them to engage with the brand. Content marketing tactics include webinars, how-to guides, blog posts and infographics, among others.
• Social media engagement (28%)—Shifting demographics and internet usage patterns are the culprit for increased focus on social. More than half (56%) of client-side respondents indicated that they’ll increase their social media marketing investment in 2017.
• Targeting and personalization (25%)—The value of personalization—such as an improved ability to connect customers with the most relevant offer or content for them, which leads to increased engagement and loyalty—is widely recognized. More than half (51%) of respondents plan to increase spend on personalization.

The increasing importance of content—especially video, both live and otherwise—is driving a renewed dependence on agencies. Facebook had an absolutely insane Q4 and Snap went public. Advertisers didn’t shy away from Super Bowl buys even with declining NFL ratings; they’re just going cross-platform, even if they won’t be able to measure its effectiveness.

Look, the marketing sky isn’t falling; but if we want to keep it that way marketers need to have the difficult conversations within their own companies and with outside peers. P&G and Coca-Cola are paving the way by going public with their renewed concerns about throwing money into digital without accountability. And Budweiser is facing its increasingly polarized customer base by trying to explain that its Super Bowl ad was never intended to be political.

Your own stance doesn’t have to be quite as bold or as public as these brands’, but you do have to have one to protect your brand reputation and relevance in these strange business times.

"Tactic 1: Customize Website Experience Based Upon Visitor Personas
Tactic 2: Make Your Campaign Hierarchy as Granular as Possible
Tactic 3: Smartly Segment Your Retargeting Audiences
Tactic 4: Consider LifeTime Value (LTV) While Optimizing Campaigns
Tactic 5: Make Use of Automation"

Last year, the Adobe Digital Trends report showed data-driven marketing to be the top priority for marketers, with 90% of survey respondents citing it as their number one choice.

The first startling discovery was that 55% of B2B marketers don’t have a marketing plan to begin with. 

About 52% of B2B marketers outsource their marketing in addition to doing the work in-house. Of the 52% of marketers that outsource, 49% contract work on a project basis, 24% utilize a retainer and 27% do both.

Approximately half of the respondents said their company spends more than 5% of revenue on marketing. In terms of digital budget allocation, respondents gave the following channels glowing reviews:

• Website development – 86% of respondents
• Email marketing – 73% of respondents
• Social media – 64% of respondents
• SEO– 50% of respondents

Although it’s reported to be the third most popular channel amongst B2B marketers at 64%, only 50% of B2B marketers truly value social media and its’ potential to positively affect their business model.