Upgrade Marketing to Optimise Sales and Match Customer Expectations

To unleash the true potential of marketing and make a meaningful and measurable contribution to increasing and evaluating a business, marketing actions/initiatives must be quantified in terms of “how many leads and orders” it generates.

Purchasing behavior is increasingly shifting online so businesses can no longer avoid changing too. This provides an ideal opportunity and a sound business case to refocus internal structures to match new customer expectations and market realities. Sizable rewards can be found in upgrading the marketing function to make a meaningful and measurable contribution to increasing business. Although this may seem daunting, a successful transformation of the marketing function could increase online-induced revenues by up to 20%. B2B companies are more than five years behind the B2C sector in establishing modern marketing structures that are fit for purpose, this shows us that the necessary transformations have been and can be done, besides providing B2B companies with many useful lessons learned in the pathways to transitioning their marketing functions.

80% of B2B buyers start their research online; thus, the marketing function must be able to influence the decision for a supplier/brand early in the buying process as the traditional interaction with sales representatives either does not take place at all or is too late in the process. Managing the purchasing funnel holistically (see my blog Customer Behavior is Changing: The Rise of Digital Commerce), enables businesses to optimize all touchpoints and marketing actions along the entire customer journey. The measurement of all touchpoints is essential to achieve the right mix of marketing ROI and showcases evidence the real contribution marketing can make to an organization. This is, however, no easy task as there are numerous customer journeys, entry points into the purchasing funnel, and media breaks, resulting in hundreds of different KPIs to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing activities. Most marketing functions report KPIs such as “impressions”, “page views” or “click-through-rates (CTR)” which in themselves are very important but more effective KPIs for top management need to be defined by “leads generated”, “conversion rates” and “orders” – no one has ever created revenue with CTRs.

In an ideal world, a greenfield implementation would result in the quickest gains for B2B companies, but this risks “throwing the baby out with the bath water” as careful consideration must be given to safeguard proven approaches and activities such as segment or industry expertise, communication channels and target group specific marketing activities. Making the change requires skillful navigation through existing complex legacy set-ups, often with a separation of traditional and digital marketing functions that have evolved. As such, they are complicated structures, exhibiting redundancies in roles and responsibilities, duplications, and conflicting interests arising from territorial behaviors and fears of stakeholder disenfranchisement. Some examples include:

• communication departments, that are responsible for branding, corporate websites, and social media channels
• product marketing organizations with responsibility for defining value propositions, running market launches, and new product introductions for defined target groups via specific channels.
• segment and distribution marketing with a focus on marketing a company’s offerings to industry verticals, heterogeneous customer segments, and distributors.
  

As traditional marketing, digital marketing, and digital commerce are increasingly indivisible, the future combined CMO/digital commerce organization should manage the online purchase funnel to ensure traffic (leads) into conversion (orders) optimization, commencing with the initial online customer interaction, lead generation, qualification, and transfer to multiple recipients. ROPO channels (research online, purchase offline), which are becoming increasingly important for B2B players, must be managed and measured together with the sales and/or distributor organizations. A future go-to-market approach that is fit for purpose will not allow for functional silos. A more fluid and seamless omnichannel approach is required to maximize marketing ROI. It is important to note that marketing cannot replace the sales function, but the two must dovetail to provide an organization with measurable and seamless customer interaction. This is especially true for purchasing situations such as engineered-to-order or project businesses, which are based on consultative or value selling and personal relationship skills of sales engineers.

As marketing/digital commerce drives the optimization for online customer touchpoints such as websites, portals, or configurators, including personalization, cross- and upsell functionalities, a key success factor is having responsibility and building capabilities for MarTech (marketing technology). This includes tools for marketing automation, optimized analytics, and platforms. The focus must be given to product information, content, and digital asset management systems as they reflect value propositions, sales argumentation, and product visualization in the online space.

The marketing capability framework below highlights some of the major marketing areas to consider to unleash its potential power to generate revenue. However, there is no “one size fits all” blueprint due to the complexity and heterogeneity of the B2B environment.

Marketing is becoming ever more multi-disciplinary and increasingly digitized. As such, it can be organized as to which offerings are marketed, to which target customer segments, and through which channels. Product, segment, and channel marketing need to be seamlessly aligned and deploy digital marketing elements e.g., performance and engagement marketing.

Benefits of digital marketing include up to 50-100% more generated leads, 30-50% higher conversion rates due to better targeting/personalized approaches, up to 50% savings vs. traditional marketing through tracking of performance via analytics, and twice the productivity via standardization, automation, and centralization1). Resources and capabilities will become increasingly specialized, so it is also worth considering the establishment of a marketing center of excellence to support the entire organization with the necessary specialist resources at competitive rates, centered and equipped with the best technology and processes.

Digitization of the business environment dictates organizational change which can no longer be ignored. Although transformations are complex undertakings, the benefits, if done right, are enormous. The key to any successful transformation is transparency and stakeholder buy-in based on a clear vision. Will organizations have the courage to refocus and unleash the power of marketing? Or will it continue to be just a support function for sales? Be brave and grasp the nettle!

1) Accenture, various industry sources, own calculations