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3 Reasons Why B2B Digital

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Advertising Has Reached the 1 Presenting the Adweek 100:

Fastest Growing Agencies

Tipping Point
(https://www.adweek.com/agencies
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growing-agencies/)
Everything needed is finally here
2
These Painfully Accurate Spotify
By Jennifer Toton (https://www.adweek.com/contributor/jennifer-toton/) | March 26, 2018 Ads Want You to Get Back to
Raging, Not Just Aging
(https://www.adweek.com/creativity
painfully-accurate-spotify-ads-
B2B has officially reached its adapt-or-die scenario. want-you-to-get-back-to-raging-
Getty Images not-just-aging/)

3
Recently, eMarketer revealed (https://www.emarketer.com/content/b2b-ad- Facebook Details 3 New
Interactive Ad Options
spending-to-grow-13-in-2018) its first business-to-business digital ads forecast,
(https://www.adweek.com/digital/fa
estimating that the space will total $4.6 billion in 2018, up 13 percent from last details-3-new-interactive-ad-
year’s $4.07 billion. And when comparing this year’s forecast to 2013, B2B options/)
digital ad budgets will have grown by 111 percent in only five years.

4 For Rugby World Cup, Heineken

Celebrates Those of Us With No
/
 These numbers are important because they highlight how business-to-business Clue What’s Happening
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marketing is quickly becoming a digital player’s game. B2B has officially reached (https://www.adweek.com/creativity
(https://www.adweek.com/)
Subscribe rugby-world-cup-heineken-
its adapt-or-die scenario that consumer-facing brands have come to grips with
(https://www.adweek.com/subscribe- celebrates-those-of-us-with-no-
in recent years. clue-whats-happening/)
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5
Not totally convinced? Here’s another stat: Around 33 percent of the business Ikea Canada, a Champion of
customer’s journey to the point of purchase is happening online prior to an Reusing Old Items, Creates
interaction with a salesperson, per eConsultancy Heartwarming ‘Stuff Monster’
(https://econsultancy.com/blog/69512-b2b-digital-transformation-key-trends- (https://www.adweek.com/creativity
canada-a-champion-of-reusing-
recommendations).
old-items-created-a-
heartwarming-stuff-monster/)
So B2B has reached a tipping point, and here are three big reasons why:

1. The tools and data are here

Digital has remade how B2B companies buy and the way vendors market their
services. According to McKinsey (https://www.mckinsey.com/business-
functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/how-b2b-digital-leaders-drive-
five-times-more-revenue-growth-than-their-peers), turning your company into
a top quartile B2B digital player can increase revenue by 3.5 percent. Customer
relationship management (CRM) tools—with Salesforce often leading the way—
have been pushing the digital transformation frontier for B2B companies.

Now with the sales process digitized and data available on opportunities created,
deals won or lost and revenue attributed to each of those opportunities,
marketing’s influence on revenue can be tracked. Marketing automation tools

/
 (like Marketo) connected to CRM systems allow marketers to engage prospects
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along their customer’s journey and push them to sales and the CRM system at
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However, marketing automation tools are limited to email as the primary
engagement tactic. Connecting with other marketing platform technologies that
support inbound tactics, like advertising and social, to prospect and find new FEATURED JOBS
contacts, or re-engage and re-target existing contacts are essential to accelerate
engagement and grow opportunities. What’s particularly powerful about these
Visiting Endowed Faculty Position
kinds of software are they can accurately measure performance, which has in Advertising / Inte...
incentivized chief financial officers to allow their marketing leads to make the WVU Reed College of Media
investments necessary for digital transformation. Morgantown, West Virginia
(https://jobs.adweek.com/job/visiting-
endowed-faculty-position-in-
2. ABM leverages 1:1 engagement
advertising-integrated-marketing-
communications-morgantown-west-
Now with the tools in place for marketing and sales data to talk to one another,
virginia-277931)
it’s time that marketing programs evolve to set that focus on driving measurable
results. From this philosophy, accounts-based marketing, or ABM, has grown in Director of Marketing
popularity. Central Park

NEW YORK, New York

ABM’s key elements include creating engagement with a prospect early in the
(https://jobs.adweek.com/job/director-
sales cycle and seeing the process through to the time of transaction, as well as of-marketing-new-york-new-york-
aligning marketing and sales initiatives to help optimize budgets for the best 277927)
return on investment. ABM allows you to set big-picture objectives, set account-
specific goals, measure outcomes and use multiple sources of data to create your Vice President, Sales Strategy
GumGum
ideal customer profile. Business-to-business marketers need a suite of software
New York, New York
tools to take advantage of these opportunities. (https://jobs.adweek.com/job/vice- /
 It’s also worth noting that B2B marketers have always had relatively small president-sales-strategy-new-york-
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budgets. According to the CMO Survey last year
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(https://marketingland.com/much-b2b-companies-invest-digital-marketing-
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Breaking News Reporter (Remote)
204623), they spend 6 percent to 9 percent of company revenues on marketing. ADWEEK
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Therefore, it’s no surprise that digital is appealing—especially since cost-per- Remote, New York
thousand (CPM) rates are more compelling when compared to pouring dollars (https://jobs.adweek.com/job/breaking-
into television ads. news-reporter-remote-remote-new-
york-277935)

3. Content can now be mapped to the customer journey Senior Director of Marketing
Orthodox Union
Thanks to the maturation of the space, business-to-business companies can now New York, New York
also map out and measure the impact of how content works inside advertising (https://jobs.adweek.com/job/senior-
and in conjunction with advertising. According to BCG director-of-marketing-new-york-new-
(https://www.bcg.com/en-gb/default.aspx), more than three-quarters of all B2B york-277939)

purchases entail only limited interaction with salespeople—therefore, whether See More Jobs
via paid endeavors or organic social, a B2B brands’ message needs to be (http://jobs.adweek.com)
powerful and consistent during campaigns.

The good news is that content can be customized and tweaked on the fly to
deliver relevant advertising and marketing to sales prospects like never before.
The customer journey is no longer static, representing a huge opportunity to
B2B players who want to leverage bleeding-edge technologies’ best features.

Altogether, these three reasons for business-to-business digital enlightenment

underscore the need for players to have a holistic marketing strategy that
leverages best-in-class software. B2B companies need to have their mar-tech

/
 tools, their ad targeting, their sales software and their content
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marketing/messaging aligned for the ultimate chances of success in 2018. 
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In the end, such proper alignment will allow them to get the best return-on-
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investment from the advertising spends that eMarketer forecasts.

Jennifer Toton (https://www.adweek.com/contributor/jennifer-toton/)

is vp of marketing at RollWorks, a division of AdRoll Group.

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