Why Over 75% of B2B Marketers Plan To Increase Their Investments in Martech
The B2B marketing landscape is changing fast, driven by several factors. How are marketers adjusting their strategies to generate quality leads and revenues? What challenges do they face, and what are their priorities for the year ahead? Ascend2 and Wpromote’s recent study provides some insights.
Customer expectations today are at an all-time high. There are impending changes to how marketers can use customer data and a continuously growing range of marketing technology (martech) solutions. All these are transforming the B2B marketing landscape rapidly. But how are B2B marketers adjusting their strategies and tactics to generate demand and quality leads, improve customer experiences, and drive revenues for their companies? What challenges are they facing, and what solutions are they pursuing?
Ascend2 and Wpromote recently conducted a study to answer these questions and determine what marketing teams should do to stay ahead in the competitive landscape. The following are the findings in detail.
Revenue Tops the List of Marketing Objectives
Increasing revenue is on the top of the list of marketing objectives for 2022. Brand awareness and customer experience (CX) rank second and third on the list. Generating more leads and good quality leads at the fourth and fifth ranks, respectively. This means marketers are focusing on the complete customer journey to drive bottom-line gains.
However, for B2B marketing executives, the priorities seemed different. For them, increasing retention was the second biggest objective. This long-term view is crucial for B2B businesses looking to transition into a more mature model that doesn’t rely only on new business to drive revenues.
See more: 4 Ways IT Professionals Can Help Fix the B2B Buyer Experience
Lead Quality Tops the List of Challenges
Overall, the top challenges marketers face are related to generating and delivering quality leads. This is followed by improving CX. But the top challenge also differs across the different segments of marketing, based on factors like marketing success, state of revenue growth, and even job role. For example, some of the top challenges across the segments besides quality leads and CX were aligning marketing and sales, producing quality content, and measuring and proving ROI.
When it comes to generating quality leads, the top three challenges are collecting quality data (41%), creating targeted/engaging content (37%), and managing and tracking leads (33%). Targeting with less third-party data is also a challenge. This is a problem considering the data privacy landscape is changing fast, and marketers will lose the ability to generate quality leads if they rely on third-party data. As such, they should focus on creating more first-party sources.
Failing to solve lead generation problems comes at a cost. About 57% of marketers report wasted resources and time as the biggest consequence. This is followed by missed opportunities for revenue (53%) and inefficient use of the marketing budget (48%).
Marketers Don’t Foresee Budget Cuts
The good thing is marketers are generally bullish on budgets; about 74% of them expect budgets to increase. That said, about 62% expect only moderate increases, which shows confidence in retaining and growing current programs. Marketing leaders seem less anxious, though. About 79% expect budgets to increase, and 27% expect them to increase significantly. Almost no one expects a budget cut.
Efficiency Metrics Lead the List of KPIs
According to marketers, ROI is the most effective way to evaluate performance. This is followed closely by conversion rate. This means that efficiency is on top of marketers’ minds. But measuring ROI can be challenging, especially as attribution windows have narrowed due to changes in data privacy. B2B marketing also tends to be more complex due to multiple channels, stakeholders, and a long sales cycle with many components.
Most effective KPIs to measure the performance of B2B marketing strategy
Source: 2022 State of B2B Digital Marketing
Top Priorities Evolve Over a Year
The study found that the top-of-mind priorities have evolved from 2021 to 2022. For example, the focus has shifted from lead volume to lead quality. Similarly, there has been a shift from long-term planning to agile, real-time decisions.
Top industry shifts of focus (2022 vs. 2021)
Source: 2022 State of B2B Digital Marketing
Besides these shifts, there are a few top priorities to improve account-based marketing (ABM) campaign performance. These include aligning marketing and sales, testing new contacts and tactics, shifting focus to client retention/growth, and improving personalization.
Regarding the trends for 2022, marketers are focusing on video marketing (38%), new social platforms (37%), and automation and data science (36%) as top priorities. Influencer marketing (27%) and AI and chatbots (21%) are in the fourth and sixth positions, respectively. AI and chatbots have risen in priority from 2021. While video marketing is a top trend, only 27% of executives are focusing on it.
Social Media Tops the List of Revenue-driving Channels
About 50% of marketers consider social media the top revenue-driving channel, followed by content marketing (47%) and email (41%). Display advertising (28%) has decreased in priority while streaming TV is growing (21%). On the other hand, email is the top revenue-driving channel for 53% of executives.
Interestingly, marketers reporting less or reduced revenue growth and less-successful marketing strategies place content marketing slightly higher than social media. This may indicate a disconnect between the lower and upper funnel arising from a lack of full-funnel strategic planning.
Increasing Investments in Martech Fuel Transformation
The coordinated use of data and technology provides opportunities to deliver more personalized content, target specific audiences, automate campaigns, and improve overall CX. As such, more than 75% of marketers plan to increase their investments in martech over the next year. About 61% expect it to be a moderate increase. While more investment doesn’t necessarily mean better, underinvestment may undermine some critical priorities.
Marketers Prioritize Content Marketing to Combat Loss of Third-party Cookies
The data privacy landscape is changing at a breakneck speed. The impending death of third-party cookies is forcing marketers to find alternate solutions. Marketers are prioritizing content marketing/interactive content (48%) and email marketing (45%) as strategic responses to combat third-party deprecation. Other strategies like first-party data (40%) and investing in technologies like CDPs and data clean rooms (30%) are lower priorities.
See more: 4 Ways To Improve Prospect Data Quality in the Wake of the Great Resignation
Companies Are Yet To Prepare for Privacy Changes
As tech giants roll out privacy solutions and legislations become stringent, marketers are forced to adapt their tools and tactics to target customers and track performance. But the degree of preparation for these changes varies widely. Fortunately, only 4% of respondents said they weren’t prepared at all. That said, 60% are only partially ready. According to another recent study by CYTRIO, 94% of companies are ill-prepared to comply with GDPR requirements. Complete preparation may be a big competitive differentiator in the future.
In response to data privacy changes, the top strategy B2B marketers are prioritizing in the year ahead is prioritizing first-party data collection and utilization (47%). About 39% are building independent, cross-channel measurement capabilities, and 31% are diversifying strategies across more channels. However, 27% are still trying to find new third-party data sources.
Continued dependency on third-party data is not a viable option in the long term. If marketers want to continue to serve relevant ads, they must focus on first-party data collection. While it complies with regulations, it also provides higher quality data to the sales team. That said, collecting first-party data requires investing time and resources into collection strategies, tech, and more. Marketers should calculate the data’s value against customer lifetime value (LTV) to understand what they are willing to pay to acquire the information.
Evolving Ahead of Trends
The B2B marketing landscape is continuously evolving. Staying abreast of the trends and priorities mentioned above for the year ahead will help you develop the right strategies to stay ahead of the competition. Simultaneously, given the fast-changing landscape of data privacy, focus on expanding first-party data sources and invest in marketing technology and content marketing to stay prepared for privacy changes, deliver seamless customer experiences, and generate higher revenues.
What are your strategies and priorities to navigate the changing B2B marketing landscape over the next year? Share with us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
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