by Swapnil Mishra at talkCMO.com
B2B marketers are once again left to negotiate the erratic marketing environment in the upcoming year as they get ready for 2023.
Effective marketing always necessitates extensive planning, implementation, and testing phases. A/B testing, creating buyer personas, and market research are all standard practices in the sector. The face of B2B marketing has rapidly changed over the last few years.
B2B marketers are once again left to negotiate the unstable marketing environment in the upcoming year as they get ready for 2023. But
staying on top of these difficulties is essential to achieve higher marketing ROI. Marketers must constantly be on the lookout for emerging trends and challenges in marketing, such as rapid automation or the shifting emphasis on efficient demand generation.
Here are the top B2B marketing challenges that marketers will need to overcome in 2023:
Predictable Generation of the Pipeline
Companies need a robust demand-generation process that fuels a healthy pipeline because the marketing function is not solely focused on generating leads but rather demand. But it’s easier said than done. Pipeline generation has become very complex due to these obstacles, which range from misaligned data systems to incorrect comprehension of the buyer’s journey. Most marketers want to send predictable, highly qualified leads to the sales team. But they can only predict this opportunity accurately if they understand the buyer’s journey better, hence the need for the sales and marketing teams to work together. Planning the pipeline is essential, and the marketing team should begin by determining the audience segments they should target and the buyers’ intentions.
Marketers can prioritize accounts based on where they are in the buyer’s journey using historical data to identify which charges are more likely to convert. The lead can then be given to sales at the appropriate time, and marketers and sales can target messaging based on the buying intent signal.
Aligning the Market Execution Teams
Everyone had long thought that aligning the marketing and sales teams was the key to a smooth pipeline process. Even though everything has stayed the same, these two teams alone cannot generate quality leads. Aligning the roles of the go-to-market teams (sales, marketing, operations, product management, and customer success) is essential to gaining a competitive edge and increasing revenue.
These teams frequently operate in silos, which will be one of the biggest B2B marketing challenges in 2023. Collaboration is necessary to identify high-quality accounts, comprehend the B2B marketing pain points, and target the appropriate messaging promptly. The teams must be connected and have a common objective to work toward, so they must share equal access to the customer data and track macro metrics (such as win rate and total revenue) together.
Understanding the Individual Buying Process
One of the most significant B2B marketing pain points for the team, according to 41% of marketing executives, is a need for clearer visibility into the buyer journey. It is challenging to track the buyer journey because it is complex and non-linear.
Not to mention, the prolonged decision-making process caused by the presence of so many stakeholders means that marketers frequently take advantage of chances to convert customers.
However, having a clearer understanding of each buyer’s unique journey can aid marketers in determining each stage’s buyer intent and identifying the areas that need to be optimized. Not only that, either. The secret to a predictable pipeline is complete visibility into the customer journey, allowing marketers to prioritize opportunities more precisely and improve communication.
Analytics-Driven Marketing
The most significant and trustworthy resource a marketer has today is data. Accurate data is essential to identify target accounts, understand the audience better, and implement tailored marketing campaigns. Since marketers can predict which channels and activities will be successful, data availability helps organizations ensure the success of their marketing campaigns.
However, many people need to catch up to their goals. It’s all due to the ineffective use of this data. One of the top B2B marketing challenges, according to 17% of senior marketers, is the need for more actionable insights from the data. Why? The demise of third-party cookies has created a significant barrier, forcing businesses to find new approaches to accessing crucial customer data.
Building a predictable pipeline can also be facilitated by implementing a data-driven marketing strategy. Seeing a buyer’s journey or recognizing buying patterns can be easy with valuable insights. B2B businesses must therefore turn their attention to customer data management. To have the best insights for long-term success, marketers must focus on gathering and analysing critical account data at various stages of the buying journey.
Increasing Marketing Budget Return-On-Investment
Digitization and improved data analytics have made it much simpler to calculate ROI across all channels and activities. But this also makes it harder to deliver a higher return on investment for the available marketing budget. One of the top B2B marketing challenges, according to 20% of senior marketers, is proving the return on investment for marketing expenditures. ROI is crucial because it allows CMOs to evaluate how well their marketing initiatives work.
Marketers should use that as the foundation for future campaign planning and execution. However, a significant B2B marketing challenge is the inability to demonstrate the return on investment of specific campaigns, mainly if they don’t generate sales.
Account-based marketing development
The account-based approach has become a key B2B marketing plan component recently. However, implementation can be complex because it needs a particular outreach, and the prospects must be as narrowly focused as possible. The right target for a business is the first step that marketers take. It’s like shooting in the dark to make serious lead-generation efforts when marketers don’t know what customers a business needs. Because of this, marketers must develop a buyer persona and specify additional criteria to determine whether the persona is a good fit for the company’s goods or services.
The content marketing component of a B2B marketing strategy should be the focus once marketing teams have developed the ideal customer profile. In B2B marketing, personalization is crucial for the success of marketing strategy, in contrast to B2C, where a generic message can be sent to many customers. Marketers have better chances with prospects the more personalized and pertinent the content is.
It will be more difficult for marketers in 2023 to align the go-to-market teams, achieve predictable pipelines, and effectively generate demand. However, adopting a data-driven and customer-centric strategy can help marketers overcome these difficulties.
