7 Stages of B2B Marketing Sophistication - Marketo

Table of Contents

Introduction

1 | Martech

2 | Marketing Channels

3 | Strategy

4 | Analytics, Metrics & Reporting

Conclusion

pg. 3

pg. 5

pg. 9

pg. 12

pg. 14

pg. 16

7 STAGES OFB2B MARKETING SOPHISTICATION

http://www.bizible.com

7 Stages of B2B Marketing Sophistication 3

Do you think your marketing team is on the cutting edge? If you’re not sure,

where on the spectrum do you fit and how do you get better?

We created the sophistication framework to help marketers see where they are in

their development as a team. The framework is also intended as a roadmap to help

marketers continue to grow.

One things to note:

The framework is fluid. You may not find that you fit every single category within a

stage. Most of the rows are heavily connected (e.g. analytics and metrics), but not

all. The clearest example is number of marketing channels. You may currently be

using six marketing channels without optimization technology or you could be using

two marketing channels with optimization technology. Similarly, you may be using

six marketing channels with single-touch attribution or four marketing channels with

multi-touch attribution.

That’s ok. When trying to find which stage your marketing organization fits in, pick

the stage that you most identify with.

Let’s get started!

INTRODUCTION

One of the strongest signals that a B2B marketing organization is maturing and

growing in sophistication is their martech stack. While certainly not perfectly

correlated, a marketing team needs the resources (time and capital), experience,

and organization to derive value from additional technologies.

For example, if your team is already struggling to just manage and maintain the best

practices on table stakes marketing channels (e.g. AdWords, Facebook), it doesn’t

make sense to add an optimization tool on top of it.

Therefore, as companies move forward through stages of B2B marketing

sophistication, it stands to reason that their martech stacks will become larger and

more sophisticated as well.

GOOD: Basic Martech Stack

The basic martech stack for B2B marketing organizations includes the following

capabilities.

— CMS / Blogging platform

— Marketing Automation

— Channel Platforms

— Optimization Tech

While these are not lightweight technologies, they are the base of a well-functioning

B2B marketing organization. With the exception of possibly optimization technology,

these technologies are table stakes. This aligns with Stage IV in the chart.

CMS / Blogging Platform

Inbound lead generation is usually built on the base platform of CMS or blog. This

provides a web-based location for blog articles to be posted, downloads to be

offered, and other site pages to provide necessary information.

Occasionally, the CMS or blogging platform and marketing automation program will

be combined into one comprehensive martech service, and this integration can

help to facilitate more holistic analytics across top-of-funnel activities.

Marketing Automation

Automation of marketing activities increases efficiency and tracking simultaneously.

Lead nurturing is enabled, lead scores can be tracked based on engagement, and

top-of-funnel analytics (views, click-through, downloads, etc) are also provided.

Channel Platforms

Platforms for paid search, paid social, digital advertising, and other avenues of

marketing can provide additional metrics and data, though this data is siloed within

each ad platform. Each channel is assessed individually, regardless of any channel

overlap in lead generation, opportunity conversion, or revenue contribution.

Optimization Technology

Once a marketing team has a good handle on the previous three technologies, the

next step is to introduce an optimization tool to run experiments and try to improve

performance. This could mean A/B testing elements of your website design, or

optimizing landing pages for specific behaviors.

BETTER: + Attribution

Building on top of the base is the ability to connect marketing data to sales data,

which requires attribution technology.

While the CRM is a table stakes technology for the sales team, it’s not a given for the

marketing team. Attribution connects marketing to the CRM by integrating the

marketing technology.

However, not all attribution solutions are the same. At the most basic level,

attribution connects marketing data to sales data on a single-touch basis (Stage V).

That means that it only tracks and credits the opportunity and revenue credit (in the

CRM) based on one marketing touchpoint (first touch, lead creation touch, or last

touch).

A more advanced attribution solution has multi-touch capabilities (Stage VI), tracking

all the marketing touchpoints and dividing the credit according to a multi-touch

attribution model. This technology allows marketers to do much more granular

revenue analysis, which we will see in the chapter on Analytics, Metrics & Reporting.

BEST: + Custom & Predictive Technology

Finally, the most sophisticated B2B marketing teams are using custom and

predictive technology to get the most accurate and actionable data.

Custom marketing technology, like custom attribution modeling, allows marketing

teams to tailor how the technology models data specifically to their organization’s

buyer journey based on advanced data science modeling. While multi-touch

attribution models work for the large majority of organizations, custom modeling is

useful for organizations with truly unique buyer journeys.

Furthermore, predictive technology leverages historical data and advanced data

science modeling to deliver predictive insights while prospects are still in their buyer

journeys. Most marketing analytics technology allows marketers to analyze the data

only after the outcome is complete, enabling you to make adjustments and optimize

for future prospects. Predictive technology is different in that it allows for in-journey

optimizations.













capabilities.



















Channel Platforms




















touch).





CHAPTER 1:MARTECHFRAMEWORK














optimizations.


CHAPTER 1:MARTECH













capabilities.



















Channel Platforms




















touch).





CHAPTER 1:MARTECH














optimizations.


GOOD BESTBETTERBasic

Martech Stack

+ Custom and Predidctive

+ Attribution













capabilities.



















Channel Platforms




















touch).


















optimizations.














capabilities.



















Channel Platforms




















touch).


















optimizations.


Multi-touch attribution allows marketers to do much more granular revenue analysis.













capabilities.



















Channel Platforms




















touch).


















optimizations.


However, your blog isn’t a marketing channel in itself — it’s content that you use

throughout your marketing channels. Your blog subscription emails or RSS feed is

(or could be) a channel in itself. Note that you could also configure this demand

source to show up in your email or referral (for RSS) channels.

Your audience can find your content organically through a search engine, most

often called Organic Search. This itself isn’t a channel that you “choose” to do,

exactly. However, you can put an effort into making sure that your content is the

most discoverable on search engines. This practice is called search engine

optimization (SEO).

The same goes for referral marketing. If you create good content, you will

organically receive referral traffic. However, you can also put more effort into driving

referral traffic by reaching out to influencers and other websites to increase your

chances of getting a referring link.

All of these channels offer the ability to utilize them without much effort if you use

only the most basic features. However, if you do put in more effort and use some of

their more advanced capabilities, the potential is enormous. Therefore, there could

actually be quite a bit of a gap in sophistication in two marketing teams that both

use the same number of marketing channels.

GOOD: Core Channels

A Stage V level of sophistication in the chart means that a marketing team may not

be using all of these channels, or they may have just chosen a handful as their core

channels. Alternatively, this stage would also indicate that they are using more than

five channels, but they may not be investing much time or effort in most of them.

Furthermore, because they are using single touch attribution, they may be

struggling to be able to fully prove the value of all of their marketing channels due

to model bias.

BETTER: Breadth or Depth

A Stage VI marketing organization is using most, if not all, of these channels. They

are using attribution to prove the value of each of the channels, but may be

focusing on just a handful of them to fully optimize. This may be because they don’t

have dedicated members for each of the channels or don’t have the budget to fully

invest in all of them.

BEST: Breadth AND Depth

A Stage VII marketing organization is using as many marketing channels as possible

that have also proven through attribution analysis to have either positive ROI or are

a promising growth channel. They are also able to use all of these channels’

advanced features, specifically targeting, to optimize their impact on the bottom

line.

CHAPTER 1:MARTECHCHAPTER 2:MARKETING CHANNELS

M

Most Common Order of Channel Adoption:

— Blog (subscription)

— Organic search

— Email

— Referral

— Social media

— Paid search

— Digital display ads

— Paid social

— Events

— Direct mail

— Partner marketing

For B2B companies that subscribe to the inbound strategy, your owned content is

the centerpiece of your marketing. Whether that’s a blog, whitepapers, ebooks,

reports, etc., that’s where marketing starts.


GOOD BESTBETTERCore

ChannelsBreadth AND

DepthBreadth or

Depth









optimization (SEO).










GOOD: Core Channels







to model bias.












line.

M



— Organic search

— Email

— Referral

— Social media

— Paid search


— Paid social

— Events

— Direct mail






All of these channels offer the ability to utilize them without much effort if you use only the most basic features. However, if you do put in more effort and use some of their more advanced capabilities, the potential is enormous.









optimization (SEO).










GOOD: Core Channels







to model bias.












line.

M



— Organic search

— Email

— Referral

— Social media

— Paid search


— Paid social

— Events

— Direct mail






GOOD: Optimize for Lead Volume

At this stage (IV), from a martech perspective, you’ve already implemented

marketing automation, using multiple marketing channels, as well as website

optimization. This means your strategy is at the very least lead-based. It’s the classic

demand generation strategy of optimizing for lead creation, and then building out

nurturing paths.

BETTER: Optimize for Revenue Results

At the next stage (V), once you’ve connected your marketing data to the CRM, you’re

now able to implement a more advanced demand generation strategy. Not only are

you optimizing your marketing for lead creation, you’re now able to track those

leads to revenue and optimize for revenue results.

EVEN BETTER: Optimize for Revenue Based on the Complete Buying Path

When you adopt a multi-touch attribution solution (Stage VI), you’re now able to get

more granular about how you optimize for revenue. Because multi-touch

attribution gives you visibility into the full buyer journey, you can now link every

channel to its resulting revenue generation, based on the complete buying path.

BEST: Optimize for Revenue Based on Predictive Behavior

The limitation of Stage VI is that you can only get the best revenue-based data after

the fact. It helps marketers make adjustments and optimize for the future, but not

the present. With the introduction of custom and predictive behavior modeling,

marketing teams can optimize for revenue in the moment.

GOOD: Revenue Analytics, Metrics

As discussed in the MarTech section, connecting your marketing to sales data in the

CRM is a big first step. From an analytics, metrics, and reporting perspective, it

allows Marketing to finally track and report on down-funnel metrics, including

revenue (Stage V).

Now there are a multitude of ways marketers can report on their influence on sales

data. The most basic way is through single-touch attribution. Depending on your

attribution solution, single-touch attribution can be reported on by way of either

first touch, lead creation touch, or last touch models.

While this does allow marketers to report on revenue, it’s still quite limited due to

model bias. A first-touch attribution model, for example, will never give

bottom-of-the-funnel marketing the credit that it deserves. Likewise a last-touch

attribution model will never give top-of-the-funnel marketing the credit that it

deserves.

CHAPTER 1:MARTECHCHAPTER 3:STRATEGY

With single-touch attribution, marketers are limited to (accurately) reporting on

revenue driven by marketing as a whole, rather than anything more granular. This,

of course, leads us to the next stage.

BETTER: Full-Funnel Revenue Analytics, Metrics

At this stage (VI), marketers can begin to use revenue analytics via their multi-touch

attribution solution to measure their performance using full funnel revenue metrics.

Because multiple touchpoints throughout the funnel are given credit, marketers can

see any effort’s impact on downstream revenue, no matter which stage the effort

was targeted toward.

This allows for in-depth analysis, such as determining which channel, campaign, or

even specific ad had the most revenue impact. The analysis and reporting at this

stage of sophistication is much more granular than if you are using single-touch.

BEST: + Custom & Predictive Account Engagement Scoring

The biggest difference from an analytics, metrics, and reporting perspective is the

ability to use and report on predictive scores.

Let’s look at account-based marketing analytics, for example. For a company doing

ABM in Stage VII, they would be using a predictive account engagement score. This

score allows marketers to know the likelihood that an account will become a

customer based on the level and recency of their engagement. If an account has a

high score, the sales team knows to strike because the account is engaged, educat-

ed, and more likely to make a decision. If the score is low, the marketing team

knows that the contact needs more nurturing.

Predictive scores are highly actionable.


GOOD BESTBETTEROptimize for Lead Volume

Optimize for Revenue Based

on Predictive Behavior

Optimize for Revenue Results

EVEN BETTEROptimize for

Revenue Based on the

Complete Buying Path

GOOD: Optimize for Lead Volume

At this stage (IV), from a martech perspective, you’ve already implemented

marketing automation, using multiple marketing channels, as well as website

optimization. This means your strategy is at the very least lead-based. It’s the classic

demand generation strategy of optimizing for lead creation, and then building out

nurturing paths.

BETTER: Optimize for Revenue Results

At the next stage (V), once you’ve connected your marketing data to the CRM, you’re

now able to implement a more advanced demand generation strategy. Not only are

you optimizing your marketing for lead creation, you’re now able to track those

leads to revenue and optimize for revenue results.

EVEN BETTER: Optimize for Revenue Based on the Complete Buying Path

When you adopt a multi-touch attribution solution (Stage VI), you’re now able to get

more granular about how you optimize for revenue. Because multi-touch

attribution gives you visibility into the full buyer journey, you can now link every

channel to its resulting revenue generation, based on the complete buying path.

BEST: Optimize for Revenue Based on Predictive Behavior

The limitation of Stage VI is that you can only get the best revenue-based data after

the fact. It helps marketers make adjustments and optimize for the future, but not

the present. With the introduction of custom and predictive behavior modeling,

marketing teams can optimize for revenue in the moment.





revenue (Stage V).









deserves.

























With the introduction of custom and predictive behavior modeling, marketing teams can optimize for revenue in the moment.





revenue (Stage V).









deserves.


CHAPTER 1:MARTECH

CHAPTER 4:ANALYTICS, METRICS& REPORTING
























GOOD BESTBETTERRevenue Metrics

+ Custom and Predictive Account

Engagement Scoring

Full-Funnel Revenue Analytics, Metrics





revenue (Stage V).









deserves.





























revenue (Stage V).









deserves.
























CHAPTER 1:MARTECHCONCLUSION

Now, you should be able to identify which stage your marketing team currently

identifies with within the framework. How can you progress to the next stage? Is

there some low hanging fruit that can act as a stepping stone to the next stage?

What’s holding you back?

Factors like budget or time restraint can take months or years to change and are

frequently tied to the maturity of your business as a whole. Other factors, however,

like technology adoption, or process reworking, or metric and goal setting are more

achievable in the short and medium-term.

The 7 Stages framework can serve as a high level roadmap for your team. At Stage

VII, a B2B marketing organization is both powerful and efficient. Between

automation, optimization, and attribution, you can prove and improve the value of

your marketing efforts, and all decisions can be data-backed and optimized for the

ultimate outcome of marketing: revenue.






revenue (Stage V).









deserves.
























About Bizible

Bizible is a B2B marketing attribution solution dedicated to helping companies make profitable marketing decisions.

Bizible’s technology connects all marketing activity (both online and offline) to revenue, enabling revenue credit to be accurately distributed to the marketing channels that are making an impact. This advanced, multi-touch attribution technology allows marketers to do more effective and more efficient marketing.

Bizible.com



7 Stages of B2B Marketing Sophistication - Marketo

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