The problems? Few if any of these tools provide the kind of forward-looking insights that B2B startup leaders actually need today to drive growth quickly and thrive. 

Times are changing, and many C-level leaders are no longer looking to legacy martech solutions to carry them into the future. Even the well-known martech pundit Scott Brinker notes in a recent blog that “90% — that’s 9 out of 10 CMOs — are implicitly, if not explicitly, looking for better martech solutions” (scroll to his second graphic).

Keep reading as we explore the chasm between tomorrow’s C-level needs and today’s solutions and illustrate how this chasm should be driving the evolution of martech.

The Challenges: Too much marketing analytics, not enough “Growth Architecting” 

• An underserved market in martech
  One commonality among the vast majority of existing martech solutions is that they’re designed to serve operations specialists or mid-level marketing and sales managers. These professionals often have backward-facing goals: They aim to use marketing analytics to show how their specific activities were producing results. As such, their tech stack might help them attribute a certain source of leads retroactively or show where web traffic came from over the past X months.That’s all well and good – if you’re not tasked with creating an integrated, cross-company engine for growth. But if you’re a C-level leader, you’ll find that what these stacks don’t do is facilitate the kind of forward-looking, cross-functional “growth architecting” you’re looking for. C-level leaders don’t need software showing where the specific groups of leads came from last quarter – they need to figure out what they can promise the board in terms of pipeline and bookings for next quarter. That means precise and accurate growth forecasting, which implies an increased focus on top-down, forward-looking goal setting instead of bottom-up, backwards-looking analytics. Unfortunately, however, these issues are today hard to avoid in a martech landscape focused more on trying to measure growth than actually driving growth.
• Performance woes
  To make matters worse, to the extent that C-level leaders do rely on existing martech, the results are underwhelming. Ask any C-level leader how long it currently takes their Ops tech stacks to, for example, tell them the impact of Marketing lead sources on their bookings, and they’ll often tell you they’ve given up waiting and don’t trust the data. Never mind the costs associated with standing up a tech stack or a scalable ABM implementation.
• Current realities raise the stakes
  The C-suite has always been on the hook for growth commitments to the board, but current conditions have conspired to put even more pressure on leaders. For one thing, B2B companies today are increasingly questioning conventions pertaining to the org chart, resulting in marketing teams increasingly coming under the command of Chief Revenue Officers and other C-level acronyms that conspicuously lack a middle M. These leaders are new to the marketing game – and often lack experience in marketing operations and insight into historical lead performance. This makes it harder for them to know what to expect from the newly acquired marketing team under their command, which in turn makes it almost impossible for them to make accurate growth forecasts, amid multiplying variables, with nothing more than a spreadsheet and, in a startup’s case, limited staff. Hanging over all of this, meanwhile, is the ongoing COVID pandemic. For a year and a half, now, the virus has changed the business landscape, suddenly and repeatedly, in ways that are hard to foresee. Accurately forecasting B2B growth metrics amid all this uncertainty, as well as other volatile macro-economic conditions, requires the ability to quickly model and optimize different growth scenarios without having to wait for the analytics team to come back with their next forecast.

Looking ahead: The needed sea change in martech

The B2B martech world in 2021 is due for a pivot. C-level leaders need to be able to develop robust and dynamic forecasts that account for multiple growth scenarios; course-correct faster, when necessary; execute on target; and lead with clarity. As these leaders face ever more pressure to deliver accurate growth forecasts, and ever more challenges in doing so, it’s time for those leaders to demand a tech stack that facilitates their needs and goals, and that helps them navigate a business landscape in which variables change everywhere and visibility is low. 

Growth architecting from here on out will require an unprecedented level of sophistication, including:

• Understanding how much pipeline you need, when you’ll need it, and which sources you’ll get it from
• Optimally allocating budgets between and across those lead sources and across different growth scenarios
• Having a clear and measurable line of sight from raw leads all the way to closed deals
• Leveraging scenario modeling to plan for variations in sales velocity and other contingencies
• Creating forward-looking KPIs that can serve as an early warning system, to keep pipeline creation on track

This is what the martech of the future should look like, and what C-level leaders should be demanding of their martech partners in 2021. Anything less, simply put, will fail to meet the moment – and continue to leave the needs of C-level leaders in the lurch.

The post From Reactive Analytics to Proactive Growth: What B2B Martech Needs appeared first on Premonio.

The good news: It’s perfectly possible not just to survive, but to thrive in this new environment. But it will require teams to take a step back, re-align the resources still available to them, up-level their digital skills, and make a detailed, if not quantified, growth plan.

Why has this happened, and what, exactly, has changed?

Success in the new era of B2B marketing will require teams to reckon with four major, simultaneous, and interrelated, challenges:

1. Higher demand generation goals
   As companies retrofit their operations for the post-COVID business landscape, they’re asking a lot more of marketing. Nearly 60% of surveyed marketers report seeing their teams’ lead gen goals jump since March of last year when U.S. lockdowns began.
   
2. Lower budgets
   Not only are marketers being asked to do more – but they’re also more strapped than ever for the resources with which to do it. In addition to higher lead gen goals, most marketers are also seeing shrinking team budgets. Notably, this pressure is not being distributed equally across organizations – while marketers are tightening their belts, sales teams are reporting budget increases as often as budget cuts. 
3. Blocked lead flow
   The pandemic has closed the valve on many of the sources marketers depend upon for their hottest leads. Events, for instance, have long been among the most reliable producers of quality marketing leads. Still, between budget cuts and the obvious epidemiological concerns around crowds, no one’s giving out demos and swag in a Las Vegas conference room anytime soon.
   Instead, marketing pipelines, like the rest of the world, are going digital. But this poses even more challenges, as sales and marketing teams are falling short of the digital literacy required to thrive in this environment: Surveys show that marketers have even overestimated their digital literacy. And as sales teams realize that most of their customers’ journeys begin online, they need to partner more closely with their marketing teams, who are more schooled in intercepting and finding prospects during their online searches.
4. More accountability
   With more digital marketing and the need for tighter cooperation with sales comes more accountability for marketers. Both sales and marketing are under more pressure than ever to prove their worth. For sales reps, who are already used to being only as good as last quarter’s number, this isn’t hard to take in stride. But for marketers, this new level of accountability represents new territory they’re going to have to learn to navigate – and fast. Specifically, this means knowing how to correlate MQLs with generated $ pipeline and new bookings.

These factors have converged to create the perfect storm lurking right on the other side of the pandemic – and B2B marketing teams are sailing right into it. As teams step into the brave new post-COVID world, they’ll need a robust strategy for generating more leads, with less money, without access to their favorite tools, in an unfamiliar business environment. All the while, they’ll need tighter integration with and accountability from their sales counterparts.

How can teams position themselves to confront these challenges?

It’s clear, now, that B2B marketing teams have some major pivoting to do. But they’ve had a year to plan for all of this, so they must be ready, right?

Unfortunately, the kind of robust strategy that will be crucial in the future is one more thing that marketing teams, by and large, do not have. Only 7% of surveyed marketers have a quantified growth plan for how to do more with less, while almost 60% are without such a plan – even with the perfect storm looming larger and closer than ever as we’re well into the first quarter of 2021. That compares to 80% of sales teams that have quantified plans, goals, and or pipelines. Which of those two functions would you put in charge of your scarce 2021 growth budgets?

So, what are teams to do?

1. Get used to digital
   Marketing events and client dinners are out. To fill the gap, some teams are turning to LinkedIn as a source of new B2B leads and a forum for nurturing them. But while online networks are great for establishing connections, figuring out how to convert those connections into leads without annoying them with an obvious sales pitch is trickier. Tools like Dux-Soup, LinkMatch, or Seamless.ai can help with this, as can lots of other digital resources available right now – and teams should be keeping all of them on the table.
   What they shouldn’t do, however, is see digital as a panacea. No tech stack can substitute for the core tenets of B2B marketing: precisely defined segments of resonant buyers, compelling and differentiated value propositions that can captivate in 300 characters, and ample content to attract prospects.
2. Maintain situational awareness
   The new era of marketing has a lot of moving parts. It’s a delicate situation that will require an intricate and comprehensive game plan. Teams need to invest in resources, from MarTech to consulting to everything in between, that will empower them to stay on top of it all.
   Not only are new apps required to establish a connection and decide who’s worthwhile to go after and how digital selling and marketing offers a great opportunity to capture lead funnel analytics data like never before. But that requires more than just familiarity with the tools that help capture that data. Users of those tools will also need a baseline understanding of how to frame and complete quantitative pipeline analyses.
3. Align with Sales
   With higher goals and lower budgets, every lead is more precious than ever. Attrition is never fun, but today, it’s something teams can’t afford. If sales and marketing can keep the lines of communication open and get on the same page, they can plug leaks in the funnel and keep conversion rates high – specifically at the MQL-SQL boundary, where sales take those MQLs and try to convert them to opportunities.
   Successful teams in 2021 should be shooting for MQL-SQL conversion rates of 50% or higher. In reality, though, rates can get as low as 3 to 5%. To improve conversion rates, higher-quality MQLs are key, requiring greater accountability and a higher volume of leads sourced online. This, in turn, calls for tighter integration of sales and marketing, as already mentioned.
   Inhibiting that integration is all-too-often great cultural and DNA differences between the two groups and differences in measuring accountability and focus on demand generation metrics. In our next blog, we’ll talk about how sales seem to be winning the associated political shootouts, as CROs tend to recruit themselves from sales backgrounds, in part because of sales’ higher degree of comfort in providing measurable insight into their activities and the resulting accountability. If B2B marketing teams can present a solid plan for meeting the new era of marketing’s demands, they’ll be more likely to get more attention and favor from their CROs when it’s time for the next round of funding. And that’s when real change can happen.

This is a make-or-break moment for B2B marketing teams. What happens in the coming weeks and months will separate those who thrive in the new marketing landscape from those who fall by the wayside. If a team can’t manage the converging challenges facing B2B marketers today, the perfect storm will sink their ship. But if they can, it’ll put new wind in their sails.

Learn more about how to build a strategy to weather the storm here.

The post The Perfect Storm Facing Post-Pandemic B2B Marketing Teams appeared first on Premonio.

Fellow CMO Jill Richards (link) and I continued our April 16 explorations around what and how B2B marketers should cope with the impact and aftermath of COVID-19 (read that blog here).

Today we presented the follow-on webinar to Dennis Shiao’s “Bay Area Content Marketing” Meetup group (link is here) with additional market data (courtesy of HubSpot; link is here), and the resulting series of quantitative and qualitative survival tips.

Like how to re-forecast, how to protect your existing revenue and pipeline, how to optimize spend, how to tune your messaging, how to align with the sales team as well as drive revenue. And for the adventurous among us, how to go after your weaker competition? If you got the financial staying power, now is the time.

You can download everything here:

1. Download the presentation at this link
2. And watch the entire presentation here

Lots of practical advice that we’re learning from our clients, friends, and the marketing community out there … passing it on in real time.

Good luck and stay safe,

Jill & Johannes

The post “B2B Marketer’s Survival Guide: Adapting to a Changed Landscape” – Webinar Video & Presentation appeared first on Premonio.

There is no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted people and businesses. Many of us are now working from home and trying to stay productive amidst a barrage of unsettling and sometimes confusing news.

But what is productive at this moment? How do we, as B2B marketers, set ourselves and our companies up for success as we navigate this crisis? This blog will provide some information to answer those questions. We will also be hosting a live interactive webcast with more detail on this topic on Thursday, April 23rd, at 9 am PT / 12 noon ET /5 pm BST, and we invite you to attend. You can sign up here.

We’re Not in Kansas Anymore

Despite the confusion of the moment, one thing is clear: the landscape for marketers has changed. That 2020 plan cooked up in Q4, likely won’t work now. But how do you know what has changed and in what ways? Here are some highlights to give you some perspective.

1) The crisis has not had a uniform impact across sectors.

Many sectors have declined while some are actually growing. It’s important to know what’s happening in your target sectors. Here is an excerpt from a recent article by McKinsey & Company:

2) Website activity and exploration is up, but deal creation is down

Source: HubSpot: Benchmark Data: How COVID-19 Is Impacting Sales and Marketing Performance

3) Selling is out; marketing is in

Marketing is at the fore now in its role of understanding current market needs and translating that to product and sales teams in ways that are sensitive to the market and its needs

Source: Lisa Nirell: Stop Messaging, Start Making Meaning: The Secrets of Growth CMOs

Join us! We’ll share additional information in the upcoming webcast.

Success and Survival Will Require Being Proactive

We’ve shared this taste of available data on what’s happening now because, as a marketer, you know it is essential to be informed by data to assess any crisis. Information is power. It gives you something to work with and can be a catalyst to action.

Marketing teams that proactively evaluate their environments and options rather than freezing in fear will be in far better shape now, and as the crisis passes. So, it’s a good idea to create a path to survival and success by acting: gathering data on your resources, your customers’ needs and your options for retooling,

As a starting point, you can simply determine which of these categories you might be in:

• SINKING: Cutting expenses and staff without a clear plan for success, in a cash flow crisis
• SWIMMING: Changing tactics to more digital conversations, but sticking with the same market approach and budget
• SURFING: Actively adapting focus, spend and staffing to pivot now to drive future business strategically

The Marketing Crowd Has Your Back

To move you into the Surfing category, we’ve compiled several practical ideas from colleagues and research that you can implement now. Again, we’ll have more information as well as Q&A in our webcast, so if you need more ideas, we encourage you to join.

At a macro level, there are more significant changes you can think about driving to ensure success. These are things like:

• Shifting the business online. From your offerings to remote working, consider how/what you could move online. This can not only save costs but also open up new opportunities to serve customers.
• Shifting to digital marketing. Many already have digital as a major part of the mix but what if you have to shift everything to digital for the foreseeable future? Can you? What changes are required in your marketing stack, your budget, your staff, your content, your metrics?

At a more tactical level, almost everything is a candidate for change or adaptation. Think about:

• Getting (even) more customer-focused. Now is the time to listen to customer needs by convening (virtually) your CABs or just doing a weekly listening tour inviting customers to speak with you and share what is happening in their businesses. Ideas for products and revenues always emerge from these kinds of conversations.
• Re-forecasting. Things have already changed, and you need to get started re-forecasting leads, opportunities, and revenues to be able to make adjustments. Think about areas of decline and those that might be growing or could grow.
• Update your messaging. If you are making any changes to offerings or products, you’ll certainly want to update your messaging. But, this is also a great time to turn down the volume on sales language and adapt your messaging to be more educational and supportive and less deal-oriented.
• Change your offerings. This is an ideal moment to introduce promotions or pricing that earn long term loyalty by actually helping your customers. What do they really need? What can you do for them that no other company or your competitors cannot?
• Retool for virtual selling. Enable your sales teams and revise your outreach to replace in-person interactions in your marketing and sales successfully.
• Shift to inbound. Task inbound marketing with more of the lead load by enhancing SEO, social, and content to align with educational and updated offer messaging.

While investors may be less optimistic and are focused on reducing spend and surviving, this is an excellent moment for B2B marketers to shine by adapting well to the current realities, being the voice of the customer, and delivering value to the executive, sales, and product teams.

Thank you to my co-sponsor Jill Richards and to all of our friends and colleagues who have shared their time and ideas to support our B2B marketing community.

Jill & Johannes

The post B2B Marketer’s Survival Guide: Adapting to a Changed Landscape appeared first on Premonio.

One discussion that caught my attention more than the others, though, was when we started talking about do’s and don’ts of social media influencer work. And they homed in on podcasts and videos as a way to increase interaction with B2B prospects on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. In a sea of repetitive, self-promoting corporate blather in everyone’s feed, visual and audio media just isn’t for B2C anymore … it’s a way to connect with your B2B communities and get noticed.

Of course, we then wanted to know where between Instagram-type, short selfie videos shot on your smartphone, and expensively produced, professional videos we should be setting our expectations. The feedback was that the highest clicks and conversions these days come with posts that link to 30 to 60-second podcasts and videos that are well-produced but don’t have to be major studio quality.

My inner marketer got very excited because as the famous quote of: “I’m sorry I wrote such a long letter. I didn’t have time to write a short one.” says, nailing a complex value proposition or explaining a tricky subject on 30 to 60 seconds ain’t easy. Short is hard. Hence the challenge, and I will try to produce some of these on my own … you knew me pre-fame ?

In the meantime, if you’re similarly excited about these possibilities, here are a couple of tools and insights you might find interesting:

• Podcast recommendations: Here are some interesting stats about skyrocketing podcast listening and a couple of cool podcast authoring tools recommended by Product Hunt.
• The Descript podcast editing tool, in particular, I thought was well presented (watch their cool video) and had some very nice features, all in a browser-based package.
• This post, with impressive stats and insights from LinkedIn’s own “Sales and Marketing Solutions EMEA Blog” from April 18 to some extend popularized the notion of B2B video content on social media as a way to connect with your community.
• And if you want to check out some samples of 30 to 60-second marketing videos so you have an idea of what they could look like, this series struck me as impressive.

Buy that camera and subscribe to some of these apps and connect yourself with your community.

Don’t turn that dial; we’ll be back!

The post Want to Grow Your Community? How About Short B2B Podcasts and Videos! appeared first on Premonio.