With the marketing environment continually changing at an accelerated pace, B2B marketers find it difficult to operate in today’s ever-evolving competitive environment. Thus, CMOs should rethink and rewrite the rules of engagement and identify ways that will ease the burden of their B2B marketers.
The general misconception that is prevailing these days is that there has been a good time to be a B2B marketer. The pandemic accelerating innovation and digital adoption has created opportunities for marketers to seize the moment, increase traffic and conversion rate, and demonstrate the return on investment on their marketing efforts. However, the data show a much different story.
As per Sitecore’s latest survey, nearly 80% of marketers admitted that 2020 has been “the most challenging time in the history of their careers.” But that’s not all. Industry experts state that the majority of marketers working across the industry in various disciplines are planning to leave their jobs by the end of 2021.
Though the stress they are experiencing is pandemic-induced, the major catalysts are the traditional approaches towards working. Emerging platforms and practices are keeping marketers in a constant state of flux. They are finding it difficult to have a fundamental understanding of what is expected of them and how their work aligns with the overall organizational goals.
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B2B marketers today suffer from the internal issues that have plagued the marketing departments for years and are still not addressed. Issues such as siloed organizational structure, dated strategies, and tangled tech stacks are the factors that do not take into account how the customers buy today. For CMOs, it is an opportunity to understand the struggle and challenges of the B2B marketers. They should learn about their pain points and gather insights that will help them to ease the marketers’ burden while ensuring they receive a positive experience.
Here are a few strategies that CMOs can incorporate to redefine their marketing strategies for an effective, buyer-centric, omnichannel B2B marketing approach.
Rethinking the marketing department structure
Many marketing departments still have an antiquated structure where individuals are siloed in individual channels. However, today’s marketing landscape demands teams to collaborate and share the best practices to appeal to their most valued customers wherever they consume information. Thus, CMOs should see their marketing department from a different lens and strive towards embracing agility. They should develop a new structure that enables better information sharing and provides flexibility to individual roles allowing B2B marketers to build cross-channel buying experiences for their customers.
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Connecting martech stack
With so many touch points and only increasing at an accelerating pace, it is becoming increasingly complex to reach out to marketers. Organizations that do not equip their marketers with innovative tools to identify, target and monetize customers are more likely to fall behind the competition. While not having a robust marketing structure impedes the success of B2B marketers, the effect only gets exacerbated when they do not have a relevant tech stack that maintains valuable customer data to provide actionable insights. Utilizing technology that connects data across various channels and systems ensures that B2B marketers are measuring the top metrics to achieve the marketing objectives. This will also make it easier for the marketing teams to collaboratively reach out to the organization’s buyer during each step of the buyer’s journey.
Operating on dated strategies, tech stack and a static organizational structure will not help B2B marketers to achieve their marketing goals. It requires CMOs to rethink and reevaluate the rules of engagement with new B2B buyers, their partners and most importantly, their team members. They should assist their marketers in aligning work with reachable and meaningful goals and minimizing the stress of their B2B marketers who are constantly seeking other opportunities.
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