B2B Marketing Automation Budgets Grow Alongside Integration and Strategic Challenges

B2B marketing automation continues to grow rapidly, according to Marketing Land’s “B2B Marketing Automation Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide” report.

In fact, marketing automation systems’ revenue totaled $1.8 billion in 2015, up 50 percent from 2014, according to Raab Associates’ research. Additionally, 65 percent of marketers are increasing their marketing automation budgets for 2016.

This growth can be attributed to marketers trying to “take advantage of the unprecedented volume of customer data coming from an expanding array of marketing channels,” according to authors of the Marketing Land report.

A few trends shaping the B2B marketing automation landscape include data-driven ad capabilities, predictive analytics and marketing automation integration and strategy challenges.

Among the challenges in marketing automation, 61 percent of marketing executives cite that better integration among marketing technologies would improve their success. An additional 61 percent of respondents said that improved process for sharing data between tools and more experienced practitioners to lead efforts would improve success.

Authors claim, “Cultural and strategic shifts are necessary to effectively change marketing process and workflows, as well as campaign goals and outcomes.”

Marketing Automation’s Importance Increases YoY

The 2016 “Marketing Automation Trends” survey from Ascend2 revealed that 76 percent of marketers rate marketing automation as “very important” to the overall performance of their 2016 marketing efforts. This percentage is up 11 points compared to 2015.

Marketers hope to increase lead generation, lead nurturing, sales revenue, and improve customer engagement with marketing automation strategies. However, 52 percent of respondents cited ineffective strategy is holding them back from marketing automation success. An additional 42 percent believe system complexity is the greatest marketing automation challenge.