rethinking the role of marketing

Ian MichielsPrincipal Analyst & CEO

Gleanster Research

Featured Speakers:

WEBINAR

Rethinking the Role of MarketingAn innovative look at the evolving link between Marketing and the end-to-end customer lifecycle

COMPLIMENTS OF:

Atri ChatterjeeCMO

Act-On Software

Rethinking the Role of Marketingin B2B Customer Engagement

Key Findings from over 750 Marketers in Midsize B2B Firms

Ian MichielsPrincipal & CEOGleanster Research

Agenda

Setting the Stage: The Ultimate Hypothesis

The Many Key Findings from the Survey

Practical Recommendations for Marketers

What’s keeping you up at night?

Empowered & Educated Buyers

Too Many Marketing Channels

Sales and Marketing Alignment

Lack of Time / Resources / Budget

Technology Fragmentation

LEADS & OPPORTUNITY CREATION

Difficulty with Attribution

Improve the Customer Experience

Marketing Executive

What’s keeping you up at night?

The customer experience is the sum total of all interactions a prospect or customer has with a brand.

Marketing

Sales

Service

Cust

om

er

Experie

nce

Marketing Executive

Partners & Affiliates

Improve the Customer Experience !?!

A Litany of Nebulous Concepts

Customer Relationship

Management (CRM)

Customer Experience

Customer Engagement

Customer Lifecycle

Customer Journey

Who is actually responsible for:

Marketing is the Only Function to Touch All Stages

MarketingSales Service

Key Questions to Explore

What is the state of CRM and marketing’s role in CRM?

How do marketers perceive their role in managing the customer lifecycle?

What are the major challenges with managing customer engagement?

Benchmark best practices and tactics used TODAY

Key Finding

Given what we know Top Performers are doing, it’s time to re-think the role of marketing in customer lifecycle engagement.

Ramifications on:

Measurement & Attribution

Technology

Compensation

Strategy & Tactics

REVENUE!

Survey Demographics

All results are biased by marketers perceptions.

Performance data is self-reported and anonymous.

Identifying Top Performers

Apply filters to the data and analyze how a subset of companies answered specific questions.

AVERAGE B2B FIRM

B2B

50-1000 Employees

All others excluding Top

Performers

TOP PERFORMERS

Top 2%

B2B

50-1000 Employees

Beat 2013 Revenue Objectives

“Very Effective” at managing end-to-end marketing lifecycle

Estimate >90% of customers are happy

Only 2% of respondents (15) companies did a “good” job at customer lifecycle engagement in marketing!?!

Here’s how the story unfolds:

1. What is the current state of affairs in customer lifecycle engagement?

2. What does customer lifecycle success look like?

3. What can we learn from these findings?

Marketers don’t feel like they are “primarily responsible” for

managing the customer lifecycle.

Breaking the Customer Lifecycle into Stages

Marketing

Marketing / Sales

Service

Sales

According to marketers – who is the

primary owner?

What do CMOs think?

56%

51%

79%

0% 50% 100%

Expansion

Retention

Awareness /Acqusition

CMO (n=56)

Percentage of CMOs who believe marketing holds primary responsibility for [x] activity?

* Multiple answers allowed

Should Marketing Own CRM?

Scratch that… how do marketers define CRM?

How much time, effort, and budget are allocated to different stages?

The average annual marketing spend - $1.3M.

11% 10% 14% 19% 18% 16% 7% 4% 3%

<$50k $50k -$75k

$75k -$100k

$101k -$500k

$500k -$1M

$1M -$2M

$2M –$5M

$5M -$10M

> $10M

Marketers generally feel like they are effective at

end-to-end customer engagement.

Marketers are Generally Confident –

But is it Justified

Are You Effective At Managing The End-to-end Customer Experience?

37% 50% 13%

Very Effective Effective

NotEffective

56% 44%

Very Effective Effective

AVERAGE

TOP PERFORMERS

Top Performers allocate more time and effort on retention and

expansion.

Top Performers spend more on awareness and up-selling.

How much time, effort, and budget are allocated to different stages?

Average Companies spend

Effort acquiring new customers:Average companies spend 67%Top Performers spend 52%

Average Companies spend

Budget acquiring new customers: Average companies spend 54%Top Performers spend 46%

Why Marketers Should Focus on Retention?

1. Finite products and services = Finite campaigns

2. You can automate campaigns with behavioral data to up-sell to existing customers

3. Attribution to real revenue!

What’s the difference between Top Performers and Average Firms?

What’s the difference between Top Performers and Average Firms?

Top challenges remain virtually the same as they did 10 years ago.

Themes: People, Process, Technology

What are the top challenges that cause you to struggle with current marketing objectives?

58%

60%

73%

80%

83%

90%

95%

Our processes are inefficient

We don't collect the rightcustomer data

Internal skills and expertise

Limitations with currenttechnologies

Fragmented marketing systems

Marketing alignment with sales

Access to existing customer data

All Respondents

Deeper Dive on People Challenges

39%

55%

48%

48%

50%

25%

28%

36%

41%

92%

Internal skills and expertise

No accountability for processimprovement

Leadership doesn't value emergingB2B tactics

Marketing and sales collaboration

Hiring skilled resources

Top Performers Average

Deeper Dive on Process Challenges

71%

82%

59%

30%

39%

50%

Lack of processimprovement

Decisions not metricbased

Legacy processes partof culture

Top Performers Average

Deeper Dive on Technology Challenges

84% 83% 59%41% 92% 56%

Configuringcampaigns

Multiple systemsmanage separate

channels

Marketing & salestechnology doesn't

integrate

Top Performers Average

90% of B2B firms still measure marketing on inquiries and marketing qualified leads

(Acquisition Metrics).

You can’t manage the customer lifecycle or make people accountable unless you

measure and compensate for the right behavior.

Where’s the accountability?

TOP PERFORMERS ARE 2X MORE LIKELY TO TIE MARKETING OBJECTIVES TO THE ENTIRE CUSTOMER LIFECYCLE

Marketers are in an ideal position to manage and optimize

the end-to-end customer lifecycle.

Marketers aren’t compensated appropriately for the effort.

Three key findings:

1. Marketing technology is the central conduit for monitoring, measuring, and engaging with customers across the entire customer lifecycle.

2. There is currently a massive misalignment of efforts at average B2B mid-size firms. Nobody is actually accountable for optimizing the holistic customer lifecycle.

3. The customer lifecycle needs a leader.

Managing the customer lifecycle is very difficult with fragmented

technologies.

B2B companies still rely heavily on legacy technologies like stand-alone

email.

What marketing technologies support the customer lifecycle?

Top Performers were 20% more likely to use Marketing Automation

* All Respondents

Other Marketing Automation Trends in the Research

2010-Present

Marketing automation helps to activate customer data (implicit & explicit) because it unifies fragmented channels.

Top Performers are typically 5-7x more likely to use marketing automation.

Marketing automation allows marketers to automate campaigns that capture more revenue from customers.

Companies report an average of 120% boost in sales-ready leads as a result of MA.

Marketing automation makes CRM more valuable and encourages reps to use CRM.

Top Performers are 2x more likely to use behavioral data to trigger

engagement.

BUT the vast majority of companies struggle with relevance.

How are companies leveraging personalization?

29%

39%

45%

36%

42%

39%

38%

56%

63%

63%

75%

75%

0% 50% 100%

Segmentation with psychographicattributes (interests)

Segmentation with demographicattributes (industry, role)

Segmentation with purchasehistory data

Personalizing customer campaignswith CRM data

Adjust messaging based onprospect behavior

Personalizing messaging by stagein the customer lifecycle

Top Performers Average

Recommendations

Prioritize Customer Engagement Efforts

Overcome the desire to cast the net wide

Struggling with segmentation in existing marketing tools – use CRM data to isolate trends sales conversions

Identify 1-5 target audiences

Refine content efforts to proven segments

Only 50% of B2B firms had a blog

Move from static campaigns to behavior-based and segmented engagement.

6 out of 10 companies used marketing automation

The right tools are not being used effectively

-or- the right tools don’t exist

87%

67%

13%

33%

0% 50% 100%

Top Performers

Average

Yes No

Take a stab at documenting the customer journey –

look for potholes

Attribution in Retention Efforts!

Marketing Attribution? 10%? 20%? 30%?

Sales

Hiring and Retaining Talent

90% of SMB companies that invested in marketing automation did not find it necessary to hire new headcount.

Additional Recommendations

Focus on new customer acquisition AND engagement with existing customers

Partner with an agency to get specialized help & step up your game

Segment and personalize to improve engagement

Marketers need to step up and showcase their impact on the end-to-end customer lifecycle. Make a case for more budget, financial incentives, and attribution.

Summary Findings

1 There is a massive misalignment of efforts and objectives at average B2B mid-size firms.

2 The customer lifecycle needs a leader

3 Marketing technology is key to monitoring,

measuring, and engaging with customers across the entire lifecycle

Q&AIan MichielsPrincipal & CEO@InsightFanatician.michiels@gleanster.com