The survey of marketers involved in enterprise B2B
businesses notes that although 42 percent have ongoing demand generation
campaigns, 11 percent feel that these goals are hindered by a lack of training,
resources and strategy. When surveyed, 81 percent of marketers said their top
three goals in their enterprise business are quality leads, customer cross sell
and volume of leads. Up to 44 percent said that limited resources were their
biggest obstacles to a successful demand generation campaign, while 22 percent
said they had no defined strategy, and only 8 percent cited a lack of
technology as an obstacle to achieving their goals.
When asked about the role of 'buyer personas' or the
demographics, behavior patterns, motivations and goals of the buyer, 55 percent
said they use the 'buyer persona model' and 14 percent said they did not follow
the buyer persona model. The survey states that the ‘buyer persona’ is an area
that B2B marketers struggle with, but notes that demand generation will lack
effectiveness if businesses do not understand the make up and design of their
buyers.
When developing a buyer persona, 64 percent do listen to
sales team recommendations, 53 percent take marketing team recommendations and
57 percent develop a buyers persona based on current customer interviews.
Despite the fact that most B2B buying decisions are made by a number of
stakeholders with different priorities and restrictions, the survey found that
because the 'buyer persona' is generally refreshed just once a year and there
are fewer companies developing buyers personas for all those involved, it
remains a B2B marketing strategy that is under-developed .
Content marketing is still a growth area for B2B marketers,
but again buyer committees are often not being reached by content marketing
strategies. 44 percent said their content aligns with their buyers' 'pain
points' with only 35 percent surveyed saying they create content to serve the
buying committee that considers their 'pain points.' While nearly 70 percent of
all content creation is decided by corporate marketing, only 8 percent of sales
departments have any influence on content marketing.
When asked how many different marketing tactics (email,
social media, direct mail, telemarketing) marketers use, 40 percent said 5 to 7
different channels while only 12 percent use 8 to 10 different marketing
tactics.
Meanwhile, although lead nurturing is widely recognized as a
key part of demand generation, up to 23 percent of organizations still do not
use it as part of their strategy. Lead Management is another key strategy that
requires attention and can serves as a great feedback loop between marketing
and sales, yet 40 percent of enterprise companies do not have any precedence of
lead management between marketing and sales. The most commonly used 'lead
stage' is inquiry/contact with 76 percent using this method and 48 percent
scoring a lead based on a white paper download, email click, event attendance
etc. Currently, 20 percent of the enterprise businesses surveyed have no
specific lead routing rules that send lead from marketing to the sales
department and 22 percent of companies process leads manually. Additionally,
only 19 percent of companies said that the sales department is involved in the
design, review and approval of demand generation strategies.
As far as marketing technology, only 20 percent of
enterprise respondents said their use of marketing automation was effective. 59
percent surveyed said they use blogging as a marketing application, while 85
percent say they use Google Analytics, Webtrends, etc. While 60 percent
surveyed said that the marketing departments are the most invested in the
marketing technology, 53 percent said they do not have a dedicated marketing
technologist.
Finally, 26 percent surveyed said they review their demand
generation KPIs monthly, while 26 percent said they do so when they have time.
The survey indicates that many organizations are slow to
realize value from their demand generation investments and may benefit from
marketing education and training to carry out complex demand generation. As the
B2B buying process becomes increasingly more complex, the survey notes that there
is a lot of room for improvement.
Article From: thedrum.com
