It seems that B2B sales and marketing today is dominated by a whole bunch of acronyms that didn’t exist twenty years ago—CRM, SEO, MA, SEM, MLM, PPC, SMM—the list goes on.
As these acronyms suggest, the world we now live in is a digital one. In order to succeed and thrive in it today, companies need to not only be sales and marketing experts, but digital experts as well.
For many companies, entering the digital game has been somewhat of a struggle:
Struggle to implement marketing automation
In a 2014 report published by Regalix on the State of Marketing Automation in 2014, it was found that two of the top obstacles to implementing marketing automation were lack of expertise to use the data and intelligence offered by the tool (55%) and complexity of marketing automation software (34%). Additionally, the report found that it took 64% at least six months to see results from their marketing automation implementations.
Struggle to engage customers via content marketing
A July 2014 report from the Online Marketing Institute found that while over half of B2B marketers claim their content marketing efforts are ‘very mature’ (51%), most are finding it difficult to develop content that engages customers (87%). The report suggests that the reason for this disconnect may be in B2B marketer’s focusing too much on closing the deal and not enough on creating compelling content for the entire lifecycle of the B2B buyer.
Struggle to prove marketing’s business value
The same report from Online Marketing Institute found that B2B companies are also having trouble tying their content marketing efforts back to real business value. 85% admitted that their content activity is only somewhat effective (or less) at delivering business value in terms of generating revenue, retaining customers, or winning customers’ long-term loyalty. Additionally, “when asked to look back at the past 12 months and rate the effectiveness of content marketing efforts, only 14% of those surveyed gave their content practices high marks for delivering value back to the business.”
Given these findings, it is no surprise that many B2B companies out there are looking for solutions to improve technology use, create more engaging content and prove the value of their efforts. One solution many B2B companies are finding success with is B2B sales and marketing outsourcing, and our next blog discusses three of outsourcing’s main advantages.
Continue Reading – 3 Ways an Outsourced B2B Sales Team Can Help Your Marketing Efforts
