The State of B2B Marketing 2021

p. 1 | The State of B2B Marketing 2021

The State of B2B Marketing 2021Lessons and Insights From Today’s Top-Performing B2B Marketers

DECEMBER 2020


The Changing Role of B2B Marketers The marketing profession is going through a period of great transformation. As recently as a decade or two ago, marketing’s primary role at B2B companies was to increase brand awareness and support the sales team. They primarily focused on the top of the marketing funnel by attempting to grow their reach, get more people to feel an affinity for their brand, and make it easier for sales reps to close more deals. Their efforts were measured, if at all, in metrics such as media coverage, advertising reach, website traffic, and, perhaps, the number of Marketing Qualified Leads they generated.

To most CEOs and CFOs, marketing was viewed as a cost center, but today, the opposite is true. Now, marketing’s primary role within B2B companies is to drive direct revenue. According to our survey, driving revenue (in the form of pipeline, bookings, and client renewals) is the most important responsibility for two-thirds (67%) of B2B marketers, whereas about one quarter (26%) say that it is supporting sales through marketing collateral, demos, sales materials, etc. Less than 7% say that increasing brand awareness remains their top priority.

Revenue-driven marketing is not easy, and it requires a shift from the traditional way that many marketing departments are used to operating. But the top performing marketers — those who drive an ROI of at least 7x — seem to share several characteristics that set them apart from average or underperforming marketers. For one, these top performers start by simply taking more responsibility for revenue and giving it higher priority, as evidenced by the fact that they are 28% more likely to rank revenue as their primary responsibility.

In this report, we take a close look at these top-performing marketers so that we can understand what they are doing differently from the rest of the pack. We’ll look at how their pipeline responsibilities differ, which go-to-market strategies they employ, what technologies they include in their tech stack, and much more. We’ll also look deeper into the expectations the C-suite has for marketer’s today, the challenges that B2B marketers currently face, and the overall state of B2B marketing as we head into 2021.

Introduction

67%

86%

91%

of marketers say driving revenue is their primary responsibility

of top-performing marketers say revenue is their primary responsibility

are confident they can execute


What is Marketing’s primary responsibility at your company? (select the most important one)

Driving Revenue (i.e. pipeline, bookings, renewals)

Supporting Sales and Partners (e.g. through marketing collateral, demos,

sales materials, etc.)

Increasing Brand Awareness

None of the above

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

1%

7%

26%

67%


Here are our key takeaways from the survey results:

Goals: Two-thirds of B2B marketers say that driving revenue (in the form of pipeline, bookings, and client renewals) is their primary responsibility. Top performing marketers — those who drive an ROI of at least 7x — take even more responsibility for revenue, being 28% more likely to rank it as their top goal.

KPIs: B2B marketers primarily get measured by how much revenue they bring in and how much qualified pipeline they generate, over top-of- funnel KPIs such as “Awareness Metrics” and “Lead Engagement.” Top performing marketers are 17% more likely than underperformers to take responsibility for upselling and 21% more likely to take responsibility for customer retention.

Go-To-Market Strategies: Nearly all B2B marketers (97%) go to market through some kind of audience segmentation

strategy, led by Account-Based Marketing (62%), customer size (57%), geography (55%) and industry vertical (55%). Marketers in the technology field are more likely to go to market by industry vertical than marketers in other fields.

Challenges: Most marketers cite Budget and Resources (64%) as their biggest challenge, followed by tracking and measurement (46%), getting quality data (42%), finding the right talent (36%), and aligning their efforts with sales (33%). Top-performing marketers have better sales alignment, better processes, and are more focused on getting access to high quality data.

Technology: B2B marketers employ at least 5 - 6 digital marketing tools in their tech stack. Top-performing marketers are 77% more likely to use a Customer Data Platform and 33% more likely to use video. They are 24% less likely to rely on spreadsheets.

Key Findings


Survey Results

PIPELINE RESPONSIBILITIES

B2B marketers are tasked with generating a qualified pipeline and driving bookingsWith revenue as the main objective for today’s B2B marketers, they are being measured much differently than their predecessors from previous decades. According to our survey, top-of-funnel KPIs such as “Awareness Metrics” and “Lead and Account Engagement” are among the least important measurements of their success. Even mid-funnel KPIs such as “MQLs” and “Meetings Scheduled” ranked near the bottom of the list of ways they get evaluated.

Instead, the two most important factors that a marketing department gets primarily measured against are “Qualified Pipeline” and “Revenue or Bookings.”

More than half of our survey respondents (54% and 51% for Qualified Pipeline and Revenue/Bookings, respectively) described these as “extremely important.” More than three-quarters described them as at least “fairly important.” Interestingly, ROI (37%) is ranked slightly behind these two criteria, perhaps because CEOs and CFOs, especially at companies in high-growth mode, prioritize revenue over ROI.

When asked what type of pipeline marketing they are responsible for, 85% say that “New leads” are their main focus. But in a sign that marketers also are responsible for at least part of the entire customer experience, a majority (58%) say they’re also responsible for “Upsell/Cross-sell Opportunities,” and just less than half (43%) chose “Retention.”

Among the top performing executives (those driving 7x ROI or greater) responsibility for upselling/cross-selling (68%) and driving retention (52%) is even greater.

We would expect that as marketing technologies become more advanced and marketers more sophisticated, responsibility for end-to-end customer lifecycle marketing will continue to grow. What is certain is that pipeline and revenue generation will be chief among marketer’s goals in 2021.

Did you know? Top performing marketers are 17% more likely than underperformers to take responsibility for upselling and cross-selling. They are 21% more likely to take responsibility for customer retention.


Qualified Pipeline

Not Important Slightly Important Neutral Fairly Important Extremely Important

Revenue / Bookings

MQLs

Lead / Account Engagement

Meetings Scheduled

Awareness Metrics

ROI

5%

4%

4%

7%

12%

10%

2%

5%

6%

8%

10%

18%

10%

11%

15%

17%

21%

23%

19%

29%

37%

39%

27%

38%

32%

51%

37%

29%

31%

11%

38%

6% 10% 25% 54%

How does Marketing get primarily measured?


TOP B2B SEGMENTATION STRATEGIES

Most marketers go-to-market by segments such as ABM, size, geo and industryIn order to hit their revenue goals, B2B marketers know that they have to be smart about who they target and how they allocate their budget. When asked how they break out their company’s go-to-market strategy, nearly all marketers (97%) claim to target specific audience segments based on at least one or more criteria. Gone are the days of casting a wide net and hoping to attract a range of customers. Today’s B2B marketers are intent on using their marketing dollars strategically to target the audiences with the highest revenue potential.

The top way that marketers go to market is by “target, named or strategic accounts,” a strategy employed by 62% of respondents. This coincides with the growth of Account Based Marketing (ABM) and the rise of ABM software companies such as Fortella, Demandbase, 6Sense and others, which collectively make up a billion dollar industry. The other top ways that B2B marketers go to market are by customer size (57%), geog-raphy (55%) and industry vertical (55%). To a lesser extent, they also segment audiences by their company’s internal product, service or solution offering (44%) and by buyer roles and titles (42%). B2B marketers within the technology industry tend to be even more sophisticated than most. Our survey skewed heavily towards the tech industry, where 56% of respondents came from, and these marketers over-indexed on the number of segments they employ compared to the rest of our respondents for every single choice.

Instead of ABM segmentation, however, B2B tech marketers employ industry vertical (68%) as the most common go-to-market strategy, followed closely by customer size (66%), geography (63%) and then by target, named or strategic accounts (63%).

This increased focus on industry verticals is perhaps reflective of the fact that tech companies often offer cross-industry solutions and therefore must employ distinct strategies for different verticals, i.e. “solution selling.”

It is worth noting, too, that larger companies tend to rank geography as their top go-to-market strategy, which makes sense given that most large companies tend to have a global presence. 69% of companies that generate $100 million or more go to market by geography, while 66% of companies with 1,000 employees or more do so, compared to the norm of 55%.

97%

62%of B2B marketers target audience segments based on one or more criteria

target named or strategic accounts

Tech marketers are more likely to target by industry vertical

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190404005643/en/Global-1.19Bn-Account-based-Marketing-Industry-by-Account-Type-Component-Deployment-Model-Organization-Size-Industry-Vertical-and-Region---Forecast-to-2023---ResearchAndMarkets.com


How do you break out your company’s go-to-market strategy? (select all that apply)

By Industry Vertical

By Target, Named or Strategic Accounts

By Product, Service or Solution Offering

By Customer Size

By Buyer Roles and Titles

By Geography

None of the above

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

3%

42%

55%

44%

57%

55%

62%


Top-performing marketers have better sales alignment, place more emphasis on dataWhen it comes to achieving their revenue goals and marketing objectives, B2B companies face myriad challenges. We chose to set aside external factors such as competitive landscapes and finicky customers, and look at the main internal obstacles facing marketing executives today. Their top complaint? Unsurprisingly, it’s having too small of a budget or too few resources, cited by 64% of respondents. The other top five challenges they face are, in order, tracking and mea-surement (46%), getting quality data (42%), finding the right talent and building their team (36%), and aligning their efforts with sales (33%).

Top performing marketers (those delivering 7x ROI or higher) appear to be more concerned with data quality than the average marketer.

Though they are 31% more likely to cite data quality as one of their top three challenges, we believe this is due to the fact that they place more emphasis on getting high quality data than their underperforming peers, rather than them having worse quality data. Meanwhile, these top performers also seem to have better alignment with their sales teams, as they were 21% less likely to cite it as a top three challenge, and they seem to have better processes than underperformers, as they cited it 38% less often.

TOP CHALLENGES

Did you know? Top performing marketers are 31% more likely to cite “data quality” as a challenge.

What are Marketing’s top challenges? (select up to 3 answers)

Talent / Team

Budget & Resources

Sales & Marketing Alignment

Tracking / Measurement

Tools & Technology

Execution

Data Quality

Process

Executive Alignment

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

26%

20%

31%

21%

42%

33%

46%

36%

64%


Top performing marketers value the importance of data in driving business outcomes It takes a lot of technology tools to be a successful marketer in 2021, and the average marketing team uses at least 5 - 6 digital marketing tools in their tech stack. CRM platforms like those from Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics 365 were tied for the top spot with email marketing tools like MailChimp and Constant Contact, which are used by more than 8 out of 10 (80%) marketers. Close behind are social media management tools such as HootSuite and Sprinklr (79%), marketing automation tools such as Eloqua and Marketo (78%), and web analytics tools such as Google Analytics and Adobe (76%).

Top-performing marketers (again, those generating 7x ROI or more for their companies) seem to value accurate and aggregated data more than average marketers and use it to help drive better business outcomes. For example, top performing marketers are 9% more likely to use Web Analytics, and they are 27% more likely to rely on Attribution tools to track their marketing performance. Meanwhile, 39% of top performers use a Customer Data Platform such as Segment or Optimove, compared to just 22% of average or underperforming marketers. In other words, top performers are 77% more likely to use a CDP. They also use video 33% more often than other marketers— 61% to 46%.

One thing they rely on less than other marketers are spreadsheets. Recognizing that they are fast becoming an inadequate and archaic tool, top performing marketers are 24% less likely to include spreadsheets as part of their tech stack.

THE MARKETING TECH STACK

Did you know?

Top-performing marketers are 77% more likely to use a CDP and 33% more likely to use video platforms.

They are also 24% less likely to rely on spreadsheets.


Which of the following digital marketing tools are currently in your tech stack? (select all that apply, even if it comes in a multi-function platform)

80%

67%

50%

80%

53%

47%

79%

53%

44%

78%

51%

33%

76%

51%

27%

CRM

Events

Video

Email Marketing

Lead Routing

Spreadsheets

Social Media

Account-Based Marketing

Third-Party Data Providers

Marketing Automation

Business Intelligence / Analytics

Attribution

Web Analytics

Sales Engagement

Customer Data Platform


Results

Marketers report 4x to 7x ROI

Of those marketers that are able to report on the ROI of their efforts, most report an ROI between 4x and 7x. Smaller companies report a higher ROI. Nearly 25% of marketers, however, are not able to track their ROI and do not know.

Up to 80% of sales pipeline either comes directly from or is influenced by marketing

On average, about 41 - 60% of a B2B company’s sales pipeline comes directly from marketing, and 61 - 80% of it is at least influenced by marketing. The larger the company and the more revenue they make, the more of their pipeline is produced by marketing campaigns.

Methodology

To help us better understand how B2B marketers are operating and what their roles are within their organizations, Fortella conducted a study from August to November, 2020, of senior-level B2B marketers across a range of industries and company sizes. Of the 117 respondents, the vast majority (73%) were Director-level or above, including 29% of C-level executives and 17% of Vice Presidents. From an industry perspective, more than half of the respondents (56%) came from the technology industry, with the rest made up of an assortment from finance, manufacturing, media and other verticals.

70% of the respondents came from companies with at least 100 employees, while 30% came from large enterprises with 1,000 employees or more. However, startups and SMBs were represented as well, with 30% of respondents coming from companies with less than 100 employees. Similarly, 58% of respondents come from companies making $50 million in annual revenue or more.


Fortella enables B2B CMOs and marketing leaders to run marketing with revenue centricity by planning, tracking, and optimizing their marketing activities through a modern, easy-to-use application built to connect revenue goals with marketing actions.

B2B sales cycles are typically long, include multiple buyers and decision makers, and require different strategies for different business segments, and buyer personas. Fortella sifts through data to understand how these differences affect conversions, win rates, sales cycles, and deal sizes, but then makes it easy to cut through the noise by replacing spreadsheets and clunky tools with a modern application for managing pipeline plans for future bookings goals.

Fortella provides a one-stop destination to track marketing pipeline performance against revenue goals and see real-time and historic metrics by segment and sales territory. Armed with their revenue-centric metrics, such as sourced and influenced pipeline, deal sizes, win rates, and conversion times, plus actionable recommendations and accurate forecasts, CMOs and marketing leaders can quickly adjust their demand generation tactics before it’s too late.

Fortella’s AI-based recommendation models pinpoint the account and buyer persona attributes to deliver best revenue outcomes. These recommendations are easily operationalized through integration with existing CRM, marketing automation, advertising, and other marketing tools.

With Fortella, Marketing is singularly driven by revenue and continuously optimizing their actions toward achieving their pipeline goals. They are also making smart decisions and budget tradeoffs to take their marketing dollars further.

Contact us or request a demo today.

About Fortella

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The State of B2B Marketing 2021