Now, What’s It Take to Really Make That Pay Off in B2B Marketing?

CMOs are even crazier about marketing technology than we thought. Deloitte recently published its annual CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) survey, and this year’s study had a variety of blockbuster conclusions:

• Companies spend TWENTY PERCENT of their marketing budgets on marketing technology (martech)!
• Only 56% of martech tools purchased are actually being used. The opportunity for us as B2B marketers is to use these tools to better create two outcomes that companies want: more sales meetings and ROI calculations.
• AI has improved sales productivity by 5% and decreased overall marketing overhead by 7%.
• Manufacturing companies report the largest “underperformance gap” in martech compared to any other sector.
• When asked how they would spend an extra $1 million, they said hire and develop talent (16.5%), digital marketing (10.3%), brand building/awareness (8%), AI/automation (7%).
• It’s an optimistic bunch: 43% are more optimistic about US economy compared to last quarter, and 31% said no change. Ony 25% are less optimistic.

It’s a long study packed with lots of data to unpack, but the findings contained in this year’s report should perhaps speak most loudly to B2B marketers. Using martech more effectively has always been a driver for CMOs at large companies, but in the past few years, as technology and AI improvements have become much more affordable. Martech is positioned to meaningfully impact three areas critical to B2B marketing professionals:

1. Accelerating sales
2. Improving the customer experience and creating deeper customer experiences
3. Determining ROI

There’s so much to say about how martech is advancing each of these three pillars. But perhaps what’s most significant is how technology is putting real ROI calculations in reach with much greater simplicity than in the past. As B2B marketers, we’re able to answer the “prime ddirective” we hear from every CEO far more easily and readily: figure out which marketing activities created customers and how much revenue those customers generated.

They’re asking that question with a clear sense of urgency, so it’s understandable why their CMOs are spending 20% of their marketing budgets on technology. There’s no shortage of tools to uncover marketing ROI, but any initiative, including one as complex as marketing ROI, is a blend of the three imperatives:

• People – make sure you have the right people and an aligned commitment.
• Process – ensure your people have a defined and documented process to follow with consistency.
• Technology – support your initiative with the right technology tools that automate and enhance what previously were manual processes.

For marketing ROI initiatives, it’s clear that repeatable and measurable results depend as much on people and process as it does on installing strong technology solutions.

That’s what we see in the ROI programs we build for clients. When we integrate various data platforms in order to generate effective ROI reports (showing which leads turned into customers), we see a variety of common breakpoints in the sales process more than we see technology gaps in the tools themselves. A few examples (but there are far more!):Missing sales flow maps

• Ineffective lead scoring to indicate which leads are sales-ready
• Inconsistent use of a tool by different salespeople
• Whole categories of incoming leads missing from the system, such as incoming phone calls or trade show leads
• Different definitions of which leads are sales-ready among marketing and sales teams
• Data updates not made consistently as leads convert to quoted and then to closed/won or lost

Martech is certainly worth the investment, and it’s clearly at the top of the CMO priority list in this year’s study. But effective and measurable ROI depends as much on nailing down ineffective and inconsistent processes as it does on installing the latest tech tool. It’s never as simple as just a “button push,” as we often hear. In truth, there are just no shortcuts in marketing measurement to be had.

We are making ROI reporting possible for our B2B clients today. If your company would benefit from better ROI tracking and implementation of marketing technology, we would be happy to chat with you. Send us a signal at www.ggcomm.com/contact.

Here’s the link to the full Deloitte CMO study if you want to read more: https://cmosurvey.org/marketers-spend-on-new-technologies-while-battling-usage-and-impact-challenges/