Digital marketing challenges survey results

B2B Marketing Survey 2012

Key challenges for B2B marketers

Introduction

Marketing

Blogs

PPC

SEO

Internet

Website

Social Media

Relationship

Content

The buying cycle has changed. The internet, digital

environment, multichannel and multiplatform browsing have

made sure of this.

Now customers are in control, they are more informed, they

want more value and expect it. They think you know them and

they use social media to discuss good and bad experiences.

They are multichannel, whether you are or not.

This means that marketing, and sales, need to be at the

forefront of the customers mind, wherever they may be

browsing… otherwise a competitor will be.

Marketing and sales need to be smarter in the way they

engage prospects – keeping them engaged throughout the

buying cycle and ensuring that communication and

conversations are timely, relevant and intelligent.

How can businesses ensure their time is spent effectively?

How can time be made elastic? And how can managers

ensure that each individual is contributing value?

The real underlying question is, how can the efficiency of

marketing and sales be measured?

We wanted to find out if these questions were relevant. If

they were in the minds of the professional majority and

what the real business challenges are for marketers in the

digital age.

About the survey

Who?

In total, we gathered 56 completed surveys

and the responses comprised of:

30 B2b

10 B2C

13 Agency

3 Other

Summary….

The majority of respondents strive to be more

effective with their time, although happy with the

people they have.

Efficiency. Nearly 2 in 3 respondents believe

they could be more effective in their digital

marketing strategy, acquisition and execution.

66% of respondents admit that email marketing is

not being used to it’s full potential in their

organisation.

Supporting the fact that marketing automation

is still in it’s early adoption phase – just under

half agreed that marketing automation could

boost efficiency.

Q. For your company (or your client), which do you

believe are the biggest challenges you face?

Please rank in order of biggest challenge. (With 1

being the biggest challenge to 6 being the

smallest)………….

2.61

2.77

3.32

3.32

3.91

5.07

0 2 4 6

Insufficient time to doeverything

Ensuring Sales andMarketing are…

MeasuringEngagement of…

Nurturing prospectsalong the sales…

Measuring andevaluating marketing…

Getting a CRM systemto support the sales…

This clearly illustrates the biggest

challenge facing marketers; time.

Marketing automation is the biggest

time saving enabler available in

todays software market.

What’s your biggest challenge?

1 being the biggest business challenge

Q. To what extent do you agree with this

statement:

Our customer acquisition could be improved with

more effective digital marketing.

66.1% 26.8%

7.1% Agree

Neutral

Disagree

These results speak for themselves –

the majority agree that marketing could

be more effective.

Measurement is the key to efficiency &

pin-pointing where ROI is coming from

can supercharge marketing in 2013

Could you be more effective with you digital

marketing?

Q. To what extent do you agree with this

statement:

We could use email marketing to nurture

our prospects more effectively.

Email.

The original digital marketing

communication channel is still

overwhelmingly underutilized as a

lead nurture tool, especially now

when dynamic content is so easily

included and personalised.

Marketing automation can give

businesses the traction they need to

execute nurture programs with high

precision.

66.1%

17.9%

12.5%

3.6%

Agree

Neutral

Disagree

Could email marketing be used more

effectively?

Q. To what extent do you agree with this statement:

We could be better at measuring the impact of

marketing on the sales journey

The impact of marketing and nurture

material throughout the sales

journey is a highly sought after

metric.

More could be done to effectively

measure this by employing and ROI

model.

80.4%

17.9%

1.8%

Agree

Neutral

Disagree

Could your sales journey be measured more

effectively?

Q. To what extent do you agree with this

statement: Marketing Automation could improve

the effectiveness of our marketing considerably.

Only 1 in 10 disagree with the above

statement……..this implies that

marketing automation could, across

the board, improve effectiveness.

The neutral feedback suggests a

lack of understanding in the field, as

marketing automation is at the

cutting edge of digital sales and

marketing software.

49.1% 38.2%

10.9%

1.8%

Agree

Neutral

Disagree

Not Applicable

Can marketing automation improve marketing

effectiveness?

71.4%

21.4%

5.4% 1.8%

Agree

Neutral

Disagree

NotApplicable

Q. To what extent do you agree with this

statement: We could make better use of

content marketing to nurture our prospects.

There has been an overwhelming

majority response here, only

1.8% of marketers believe that

no more could be done to better

nurture prospects with content.

Could content marketing be used more

effectively in nurture programs?

Q. To what extent do you agree with this

statement: Sales and marketing could work

together much more effectively with the right tools

and processes.

There has been an overwhelming

majority response here, only 9% of

respondents believe that no more

could be done to kill the silos within

organisational structure and work

more effectively to meet acquisition. 70.9%

18.2%

9.1%

1.8%

Agree

Neutral

Disagree

Not Applicable

Can sales and marketing work better

together?

Q. To what extent do you agree with this

statement: The role of Marketing Manager has got

more complex and challenging with the increasing

use of digital marketing.

The majority agree, however we

found the number of neutral and

disagreement responses interesting

– over 16% did not think marketing

managers roles were more

challenging. We are looking forward

to conducting more research into our

community to find out why this might

be.

58.2% 23.6%

16.4%

1.8%

Agree

Neutral

Disagree

Not Applicable

Has the role of marketing manager changed

in the new challenging digital environment?

Q. What would you be most likely to invest in if

you had a greater budget?

This was really interesting for us, we

expected more respondents to invest

in more marketing people. However,

this is encouraging because it

indicates that people are open to the

thought of being more effective with

the resource they have.

*Other = More marketing

activities/campaigns to engage,

product development, more content

and better sales engagement

practices.

19.6%

28.6%

33.9%

17.9%

0% 20% 40%

More Sales

People

More Marketing

People

More sales and

Marketing Tools

& Software

(Other)

More budget? Where would companies

invest?

target360

Through our marketing automation and CRM toolkit, we

help companies deliver on their potential. target360 is an

enabler to supercharge sales and marketing. It enhances

your business and marketing practices and informs your

business decisions.

Our marketing automation suite provides solutions to 5

common challenges outlined in this survey.

1) Time, lack of

2) Insufficient marketing to drive true engagement

3) Weak processes inhibiting the sales journey

4) “Tool challenged” minimizing ability to measure

effectiveness

5) Uncomfortable with current data management system

UK owned and based, our team’s ambition is to help

customers deploy a cost effective solution and realise the

benefits now, and support you in the future.

Be smart and start 2013 with the tools to reach your

business potential. For more information…………

Save time and resource. Automated lead

management makes your life easy.

Ensure efficiency and kill silos. Fully

integrated sales and marketing software

delivers 360° collaboration.

Engage and communicate in the right way,

to the right people at the right time. Email

Marketing anywhere, anytime.

On demand digital marketing and sales

ROI reporting. Be effective, save time &

resource, know what’s working.

We hope you found our survey

useful…………

Get in touch or get social.

www.target360.com

[email protected]

0845 519 6244

Facebook.com/target360

@target360

linkedin/company/target360