Why Today’s B2B Marketing Landscape Is A ‘No Man’s Land’

Published: September 2, 2014

An Interview With Louis Foong, President & CEO, The ALEA Group

 

The continuous innovations in B2B marketing strategies and technologies have left marketers in a state of limbo — trying to keep up with the changes being made in their daily routines.

In a recent interview with Demand Gen Report, Louis Foong, President and CEO of The ALEA Group, discussed how marketing departments are handling the constantly changing B2B marketing environment.

Get the latest B2B Marketing News & Trends delivered directly to your inbox!

An Interview With Louis Foong, President & CEO, The ALEA Group

 

The continuous innovations in B2B marketing strategies and technologies have left marketers in a state of limbo — trying to keep up with the changes being made in their daily routines.

In a recent interview with Demand Gen Report, Louis Foong, President and CEO of The ALEA Group, discussed how marketing departments are handling the constantly changing B2B marketing environment.

Demand Gen Report: You argue that we are currently “in no man’s land” and that marketing departments in large B2B organizations are becoming non-entities. How is today’s marketing landscape ultimately causing this shift?

Louis Foong: The biggest change in today’s marketing landscape is that buyers choose between vendors based on real, valuable differences, rather than the strength of high-impact marketing communications. In the past, a unique brand campaign could become the driving force behind an organization’s position in the marketplace. What drives performance and profitability today is the actual value customers assign to a company based on their experience with the product or service.

This fact has shifted the brand marketing responsibility from the marketing department to the organization as a whole. Every function by every employee contributes to how customers perceive the company and compare it to other players in the industry. No single group of individuals has or can take on the onus of customer experience management — because that is what brand marketing is today. In that sense, yes, marketing is a “no-man’s land” but it can be conquered…collectively, strategically, with a shared vision and enterprise-wide focus on customer experience optimization.

DGR: What is the C-level’s perspective on the B2B marketing landscape? How is this affecting their productivity?

Foong:  It would be wonderful if the C-Suite in every B2B organization recognized the depth and breadth of change in the marketing landscape. This, however, is not the case yet. Globally centralized marketing departments are too narrow-focused and end up losing the opportunity to look at demand generation from a channel perspective. In addition, while IT management has made great strides in moving to the Cloud, marketing has yet to scratch the surface. A majority of B2B organizations have not even awakened to the fact that lead generation in the Cloud is a faster, better, less expensive option to traditional  or even digital methods. And it’s on demand.

With the mega power shift from the seller to the buyer, B2B marketers need to let go of their age-old desire to control everything. Control issues come in the way of speed and efficiency. Internal structures are too limiting and legacy-based processes cannot keep pace with customer expectations.

Most B2B organizations have realized they need to engage in social media marketing but strategies are still ill-defined. This leads to sluggish response rates. There is definitely a huge disconnect between the need for speed that the market is demanding and what corporations are actually able to deliver. 

On the positive side of things, savvy organizations have empowered their workforce to be accountable for user satisfaction and customer experience. These companies are the beacons we need to follow in order to become truly decentralized, customer-focused organizations.

DGR: How has the change from outbound to inbound marketing caused issues within marketing departments? How are they responding to this change?

Foong: Let me clarify that while there is greater focus now on inbound marketing, outbound marketing still exists and I don’t ever see it going away completely. Most large businesses, even today, spend upwards of 30% of their total marketing budget on outbound activities.

The promise of inbound is very exciting but we need to be realistic. Marketing departments get easily carried away thinking that “social media marketing is free”, “SEO works better than anything else”, “no training is required for digital inbound marketing”. These are mere myths and simply not true. One needs to be realistic. Yes, indeed, social media and online marketing are wonderful because of the speed with which campaigns can be rolled out and modified, as well as the ease with which they can be tracked and monitored. Conversion and measurement of ROI are still, however, a continuing challenge. Manufacturers have not made significant to train channel partners and provide them with the tools required to leverage social media for collaboration, communication and conversion. 

The biggest issue today, in my opinion, is that marketers are sticking their hands into every aspect of the inbound marketing pie. What they are not doing is defining realistic strategies to truly take advantage of all the increased traffic. From an opportunity to cost perspective, I believe this is regressive rather than progressive.

Smart B2B organizations will find a balance between outbound and inbound. Adoption of marketing and lead generation on the Cloud will bring about faster, better and more measurable results. With less resources required to manage campaigns, marketing will become more cost-effective.

These are the changes we need to see in the B2B marketing landscape. What we have seen so far is more of a random, ill-defined and unplanned jumping on the inbound bandwagon. It is time to focus objectively on the goals of enhancing customer experience through a balanced, integrated marketing strategy that uses the best of inbound and outbound tools, techniques and processes.

 

Posted in: Demanding Views

Tagged with:

ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
B2B Marketing Exchange
B2B Marketing Exchange East
Campaign Optimization Series
Buyer Insights & Intelligence Series
Strategy & Planning Series