A Sneak Peek at the 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report

This blog post starts a short series of posts meant to highlight and recap information learned from the B2B Marketing Summit in Boston this year.

Jen Doyle, Senior Research Manager from MarketingSherpa, gave the B2B Marketing Summit attendees a sneak peek at some of the key finding in the 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report.

Of the 1,745 marketers that were surveyed, the research showed:

EVERY B2B Marketing Tactic has become more difficult this year than last.

As you can see in the chart below, the biggest conversion losers in 2011 are telemarketing (no surprise here) and webinars. The marketing tactics that saw the smallest amount of conversion loss were Print Advertising (interesting) and Tradeshows.

Marketingsherpa

Additional Findings from the 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report:

  • B2B Marketers are resisting change.
  • 61% of organizations send any and all leads directly to sales.
  • Only 27% of marketers are qualifying leads before handing off to sales.
    Leads that are in independent research such as filling out an inquiry form may not be ready for the sales cycle.
  • 68% of organizations have not defined a marketing/sales funnel.
  • 79% of organizations are not scoring leads.
  • 65% of organizations have no nurturing campaigns in place

3 key marketing issues that the survey surfaced:

  • Marketers are handing off leads to sales too soon
  • The sales and marketing funnel is misunderstood
  • There is a lack of lead scoring and nurturing campaigns

These findings give an important message to organizations – you can’t expect to continue to market your business the same way you have in the past and see the same results. The CEO of MECLABS, Dr. Flint McLaughlin threw out an Abe Lincoln quote at the conference “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe”.

Marketers can easily get caught up in day-to-day deadlines, but it’s important to take a step back and sharpen the axe. Re-visit strategy and goals, track ROI, and make adjustments or you could be swinging away with little result, while your competitors are getting all the good trees!

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