Customer Retention and ROI Headline 2016 List of B2B Marketing Goals

Looking ahead to the remainder of 2016, new research suggests that B2B marketers have set a wide range of goals, led by customer retention and improving marketing ROI.

The Fanatics Media benchmark study titled, “Assessment of Excellence in Marketing,” has found that 65 percent of enterprise-sized B2B companies would like to focus on customer retention in 2016, making it their primary objective. For medium-sized B2B organizations, the largest number of respondents (35 percent) said that they have made improving marketing ROI their top goal.

About 40 percent of medium-sized B2B marketers and 41 percent of enterprise B2B marketers believe that they need email marketing to be successful in order to reach their goals. Additionally, 41 percent of enterprise respondents and 37 percent of medium-sized marketers claimed that they will require analytics success to achieve their objectives.

Looking at budget allocation, the majority of enterprise B2B marketers (61 percent) said that their company puts less than 10 percent of annual revenue toward marketing. Most mid-sized marketers (52 percent) stated that they spend between 11 and 20 percent of their annual profit on marketing efforts.

Looking Back on 2015 Marketing Budgets

Around the same time last year, research showed that B2B marketers were poised to dedicate more money to their marketing efforts. A report published by Forrester Research indicated that 51 percent of B2B marketers expected to increase their budget in 2015.

Just 8 percent claimed that they predicted their budgets to decrease. Those who believed they would see an increase stated that in-person trade shows, conferences and events would take up most of their B2B marketing budgets.