2011 Trends Report: B2B Marketing

February 4, 2011 topics: 2011 trends expert content marketing b2b marketing marketing trends

Focus Research 2011

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2011 Trends Report: B2B Marketing

2011 Trends Report: B2B Marketing February 4, 2011 by Joe Chernov, Mark Feldman, Doug Kessler, Thomas Pisello, Tom Scearce, Holger Schulze topics: 2011 trends expert content marketing b2b marketing marketing trends
Executive Summary Marketing products or services to other companies and organizations is tough in any economy. In the current economic climate, staying on top of B2B marketing trends is more important than ever. What changes will we see in 2011 regarding B2B marketing? In this guide, Focus Experts Joe Chernov, Mark Feldman, Doug Kessler, Thomas Pisello, Tom Scearce and Holger Schulze share their 2011 predictions for B2B marketing. After reading this report, be sure to check out the entire discussion and join the conversation: http://www.focus.com/questions/marketing/b2b-marketing-trends-what-are-biggest-trends-b2b-marketing/.

B2B Marketing Trends for 2011 1. Accountability and ROI 2. Marketing automation goes mainstream 3. Content marketing takes center stage 4. Increased use of B2C tactics 5. B2B continues to adapt to a social media world 6. Marketing looks beyond its silo 7. The return of the funnel 8. New tools fight increased buyer frugality

2011 Trends Report: B2B Marketing

Focus Research 2011

2011 Trends Report: B2B Marketing

What are the biggest trends in B2B marketing to follow in 2011? 1. Accountability and ROI Marketing will be held more accountable for revenue goals. Quotas in the areas of leads, logos and revenue will be hung on the marketing department. The sun will continue in to set on brand marketing. (Chernov) The top of the list is ROI. Its more measurable than ever. CFOs and the board have taken note, so marketing dollars will be more scrutinized than ever. The plus side is that marketing has stepped up its game in the past few years, and theres a new wave of solutions out there that were designed with your corporate bean-counters in mind. (Feldman) B2B marketers increasingly will be judged by the money they generate. All other metrics will be eclipsed, as the best marketers feature dollar signs in their boardroom PowerPoints. (Kessler) 2. Marketing automation goes mainstream Automation becomes easier and less expensive. Once the purview of only a select few B2C firms doing internal builds, B2B marketing automation is becoming easier and simpler. Marketers will no longer need a team of PhDs in Data-ology to send out drip campaigns. (Feldman) Automation beds down. The pioneers have had some time to discover what works. The generous ones are sharing their experiences, so its time to jump Moores Chasm and go mainstream. (Kessler) Marketing automation is going mainstream in 2011 as companies are taking their online campaigns, lead scoring and email automation to the next level and integrating social media with traditional tactics. It will be interesting to watch how the decline of email usage and conversion rates will impact marketing automation effectiveness going forward. (Schulze) 3. Content marketing takes center stage Content marketing is going mainstream in 2011. If you are not thinking about (and implementing) a strategy that puts your buyers (with their persona and industry-driven pain points, preferences and buying stages) in the center of your marketing efforts (and creates compelling content as the currency of your engagement with buyers), chances are you will get left behind by more content-savvy competitors. With content moving into the center of attention, marketers struggle to create magnetic content in the right formats and quantities. Sophisticated marketers will apply systematic ways to repurpose existing content, create bite-size content for the short-attention-span executive, and design an efficient content waterfall that accelerates production times, quality and content consistency. (Schulze) The lines separating content/inbound marketing and demand gen will blur. Companies that have already begun to invest in content marketing efforts will look to attach conversion-related analytics to their efforts. Companies that have heretofore ignored these tactics will find that they are more measurable than initially thought, and that factor will draw them into the practice. In both cases, content marketing will fuse with demand gen. (Chernov)

2011 Trends Report: B2B Marketing

Focus Research 2011

According to SiriusDecisions, just looking at e-blasts alone, the typical buyer receives over 20 e-mail marketing messages a week, up 32 percent over the past four years. Better content targeting and personalization is required for 2011 to end carpet bombing B2B marketing techniques, evolving to create a dialogue with buyers to guide them through the decision-making process and buying lifecycle with personalized one-to-one advice. (Pisello) 4. Increased use of B2C tactics B2B marketers will look a lot more like consumer marketers. Many companies in many different B2B sectors are already starting to experiment with B2C-like campaigns, with viral videos, playful Facebook campaigns, innovative contests and these companies are getting noticed. Expect others to follow. (Chernov) In the B2C space, the consumer is now in charge: using the Internet to research specifications, configuring and customizing solutions, getting peer reviews and advice, comparing prices, and buying now. Now, in B2B, we have seen a similar dramatic shift toward prospects taking charge of the buying cycle. Savvy B2B marketers will recognize the consumerization of B2B, and in 2011 proactively increase content marketing investments to deliver the right content and interactive decision support tools at the appropriate right step in the buying cycle. (Pisello) 5. B2B continues to adapt to a social media world 2011 will be the year social media evolves from the experimental stage to become an established marketing tactic. This also means that more stringent demands for proof of ROI and revenue impact will be placed on social media investment. But that is not a bad thing; it keeps us on our toes. (Schulze) There will be a high-profile social media crisis in the B2B sector. Consumer marketers have taken their lumps, with negative articles about unethical or just naive practices in the court of public opinion (and sometimes even with the FTC). As their B2B counterparts try their hand at B2C-like tactics, expect some missteps, and expect some of them to be high profile. (Chernov) B2B marketers will realize that the real reason nobody can figure out how to measure ROI from social media is because it doesnt actually have an ROI. The dust will begin to settle in 2011, and marketers will see social media for what it really is (and is not); B2B marketers will spend less time proliferating truncated URLs into the Twitter echo-chamber and more time generating better leads for the sales team. (Feldman) 6. Marketing looks beyond its silo Now more than ever, we need to be comfortable challenging the way our companies and/or clients do business. Who cares if we decreased our average cost per lead 35 percent when our sales process lets 70 percent of those leads fall on the floor? And so what if booked revenue jumps 20 percent year-on-year when were too short-staffed to deploy customers and recognize that revenue? We as marketers have to take an interest in these not my department processes, even if it grates on our colleagues from time to time (and, yes, I speak from personal experience as both a grate-ee and a grate-or). Why? Because were spending the companys money and resources to attract new customers. And in the age of pervasive social media, peer reviews and quality scores, the smart self-educating buyers we seek wont be fooled by

2011 Trends Report: B2B Marketing

Focus Research 2011

clever marketing if they dont trust our business to take care of theirs. (Scearce) 7. The return of the funnel The funnel got a bad name this year as B2B thinkers started to question its linearity in a multi-vector social world. But as revenue marketing takes hold, well return to this useful metaphor: lots of contacts at the top, some rich engagement on the way and a sale at the end. (Kessler) 8. New tools fight increased buyer frugality B2B buyers are doing-more-with-less and are economic-focused, with over 90 percent of B2B buyers requiring quantifiable proof of bottom-line impact from significant investments. Even with a continued recovery and more financial optimism through 2011, the shift to frugality is fundamental and permanent. To fight Frugalnomics, savvy marketers will need to make even more investments in 2011 toward content and tools that help buyers assess and quantify the economic impact of implementing the proposed solutions, quantify the cost of doing nothing, and prove competitive cost advantages and value. (Pisello)

Read the entire discussion, and join the conversation: http://www.focus.com/questions/marketing/b2b-marketing-trends-what-are-biggest-trends-b2b-marketing/

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Contributing Experts

Joe Chernov

Director of Content Marketing, Eloqua www.focus.com/profiles/joe-chernov/public/

Mark Feldman

VP Marketing, NetProspex www.focus.com/profiles/mark-feldman/public/

Doug Kessler

Sales/Marketing, Velocity www.focus.com/profiles/doug-kessler/public/

Thomas Pisello

Chairman and Founder, Alinean, Inc. www.focus.com/profiles/thomas-pisello/public/

Tom Scearce

Principal, Scearce Market Development www.focus.com/profiles/tom-scearce/public/

Holger Schulze

Director Marketing, SafeNet www.focus.com/profiles/holger-schulze-2/public/

About this Report The 2011 Focus Trends Reports are designed to inform and help business professionals understand the current trends and progressions in a specific business area. The trends for these reports are sourced from Focus Experts who have superior insight and expertise in the designated topic. Trends Reports are designed to be practical, actionable and easy to consume.

2011 Trends Report: B2B Marketing

Focus Research 2011