By Arko Chandra Published on : Sep 15, 2022
According to a survey by Gartner, B2B marketing budgets make for approximately 9.5% of the total revenue of companies in 2022, and the percentage is gradually recovering from the effects of COVID-19. The marketing landscape is ever-changing, so marketers always need to be on the edge of their seats to keep up with changes and maintain their competitive advantage.
Budget allocation makes for a significant driver in the success of a marketing strategy. Let’s break down the B2B budget allocation as per the current norm of 2022.
Bagging new leads and driving new revenue seems exciting; however, marketing leaders are taking a break (not completely, though) and focusing more on retention and expansion of existing customer revenue. The justification for this idea is that once a customer has bought from you, they’re likely to buy from you again if they are satisfied with your offering. And for that, you need to persuade them much less than you’d have to do for a new customer.
So, investing in out-of-the-box marketing campaigns to woo your new customers is only one part of the story. The other significant part is finding ways to expand the deals with your current customers and increase their LTV.
So, let’s see how a marketer can invest in order to retain its existing customers.
This includes creating informational content to educate existing customers about products/services so that they understand their value and utilize them to their full potential. Once the customers are aware of the value for money a product/service provides, they are likely to invest in it again.
How can you make your customers feel that you value them?
How do they know that they are not only a revenue generator for your brand but you “genuinely” value them?
You can host events exclusively for your customers and show them that you value them. To start with, you can organize immersive customer-led training and workshops, have round table discussions and even have your founders and directors deliver speeches just for your customers.
Investing in account-based marketing is a smart tactic to expand your existing accounts. After segregating your customers into different accounts, you need to build separate campaigns with separate messaging and offers for them. That way, you’d have the product usage data for each account and see what all features are of most value.
Lots of B2B companies are focusing their attention on demand gen and researching ways to improve it, and quite naturally, marketing leaders are rearranging their budgets. Demand gen is typically marketers taking care of the pipeline generation for the sales team to feed on more qualified leads and close the deals.
The catch here is that demand gen opens up a lot of event opportunities for you to explore, but unfortunately, you can’t invest in everything. You should place your bets on what you are best at rather than being average at everything. The best way to choose the channels that’d work best for you is to study your audience to the core and create real value for them.
There are loads of content on the internet that nobody gives a damn about. Content without a purpose is no content. You need to judge your content by asking yourself whether or not your audience would miss you (or your content) if you stopped creating it.
So, contemporary marketing leaders see investment in efficient and effective content marketing as a smart (essential, too) move. Quality content is a great way to create awareness of your products/services, establish meaningful relationships with your audience through thought leadership, and be ahead of your competitors.
When investing in content creators, you should have the following qualifying metrics:
- Understanding your brand’s goals, values, and target audience
- Ability to break complex topics into easy, engaging content
- Potential to create content for all stages of the sales funnel
- Fluency in SEO
Another strategy marketers are heavily betting their budget on is the personal branding of senior leaders of their respective brands. The advantage of this is that it adds credibility to the brand’s products/services, and the audience perceives the brand as more authentic and transparent when interacting with a human rather than a business.
LinkedIn is among the most preferred platforms senior leaders use to share educational, inspirational, or just casual content with their audience, and by doing so, they position themselves as experts in their field. That’s what grabs the attention of prospects, and they start taking an interest in the brands behind the leaders.
One can argue that AI tools cannot replace the human marketing mind, but they sure can take care of the repetitive tasks a marketer has to go through daily, thus freeing up crucial time and elevating productivity.
However, here too, you cannot empty your pockets on each and every tool out there; you need to pick your cards carefully. Marketing leaders first identify the areas that really need to be automated and then accordingly go for the tools or technology that can deliver the expected results.
In 2022, B2B marketing leaders have infinite options to allocate their budget on, so it becomes pretty difficult on their part to choose one and not the other. It’s crucial that the budget is spent only where a return is guaranteed. Also, it’s recommended slice budgets from the less-important areas and use them to fuel key areas such as demand gen. And finally, experiments need to be inculcated in marketing strategies to keep up with the ongoing trends and adjust the budget allocation accordingly.
By Arko Chandra
Published on 15th, Sep, 2022
According to a survey by Gartner, B2B marketing budgets make for approximately 9.5% of the total revenue of companies in 2022, and the percentage is gradually recovering from the effects of COVID-19. The marketing landscape is ever-changing, so marketers always need to be on the edge of their seats to keep up with changes and maintain their competitive advantage.
Budget allocation makes for a significant driver in the success of a marketing strategy. Let’s break down the B2B budget allocation as per the current norm of 2022.
Bagging new leads and driving new revenue seems exciting; however, marketing leaders are taking a break (not completely, though) and focusing more on retention and expansion of existing customer revenue. The justification for this idea is that once a customer has bought from you, they’re likely to buy from you again if they are satisfied with your offering. And for that, you need to persuade them much less than you’d have to do for a new customer.
So, investing in out-of-the-box marketing campaigns to woo your new customers is only one part of the story. The other significant part is finding ways to expand the deals with your current customers and increase their LTV.
So, let’s see how a marketer can invest in order to retain its existing customers.
This includes creating informational content to educate existing customers about products/services so that they understand their value and utilize them to their full potential. Once the customers are aware of the value for money a product/service provides, they are likely to invest in it again.
How can you make your customers feel that you value them?
How do they know that they are not only a revenue generator for your brand but you “genuinely” value them?
You can host events exclusively for your customers and show them that you value them. To start with, you can organize immersive customer-led training and workshops, have round table discussions and even have your founders and directors deliver speeches just for your customers.
Investing in account-based marketing is a smart tactic to expand your existing accounts. After segregating your customers into different accounts, you need to build separate campaigns with separate messaging and offers for them. That way, you’d have the product usage data for each account and see what all features are of most value.
Lots of B2B companies are focusing their attention on demand gen and researching ways to improve it, and quite naturally, marketing leaders are rearranging their budgets. Demand gen is typically marketers taking care of the pipeline generation for the sales team to feed on more qualified leads and close the deals.
The catch here is that demand gen opens up a lot of event opportunities for you to explore, but unfortunately, you can’t invest in everything. You should place your bets on what you are best at rather than being average at everything. The best way to choose the channels that’d work best for you is to study your audience to the core and create real value for them.
There are loads of content on the internet that nobody gives a damn about. Content without a purpose is no content. You need to judge your content by asking yourself whether or not your audience would miss you (or your content) if you stopped creating it.
So, contemporary marketing leaders see investment in efficient and effective content marketing as a smart (essential, too) move. Quality content is a great way to create awareness of your products/services, establish meaningful relationships with your audience through thought leadership, and be ahead of your competitors.
When investing in content creators, you should have the following qualifying metrics:
- Understanding your brand’s goals, values, and target audience
- Ability to break complex topics into easy, engaging content
- Potential to create content for all stages of the sales funnel
- Fluency in SEO
Another strategy marketers are heavily betting their budget on is the personal branding of senior leaders of their respective brands. The advantage of this is that it adds credibility to the brand’s products/services, and the audience perceives the brand as more authentic and transparent when interacting with a human rather than a business.
LinkedIn is among the most preferred platforms senior leaders use to share educational, inspirational, or just casual content with their audience, and by doing so, they position themselves as experts in their field. That’s what grabs the attention of prospects, and they start taking an interest in the brands behind the leaders.
One can argue that AI tools cannot replace the human marketing mind, but they sure can take care of the repetitive tasks a marketer has to go through daily, thus freeing up crucial time and elevating productivity.
However, here too, you cannot empty your pockets on each and every tool out there; you need to pick your cards carefully. Marketing leaders first identify the areas that really need to be automated and then accordingly go for the tools or technology that can deliver the expected results.
In 2022, B2B marketing leaders have infinite options to allocate their budget on, so it becomes pretty difficult on their part to choose one and not the other. It’s crucial that the budget is spent only where a return is guaranteed. Also, it’s recommended slice budgets from the less-important areas and use them to fuel key areas such as demand gen. And finally, experiments need to be inculcated in marketing strategies to keep up with the ongoing trends and adjust the budget allocation accordingly.
