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B2B Marketing Research

Bernice Muncaster

I think as the Australian B2B Marketing and Communications community moves into 2021 we should take significant learnings from 2020 with us. If this study and challenging year has taught CMO’s anything, it is that our success is driven by our ability to align ourselves to the business and position the marketing function as trusted advisors and change agents. For some, this may mean making deliberate changes in the way they approach planning, prioritise efforts, work alongside the sales organisation, and embrace the business and growth objectives of the organisation. Marketing creates the differentiator for any B2B business, but we must stay committed to our objectives and continually demonstrate how we are driving genuine results.

Jodie Sangster

An experienced executive with a diverse background in law, marketing, customer experience and digital transformation. Held CEO, CCO and CMO roles across the world including Australia, Singapore, Europe and USA. An international speaker with industry expertise in data, marketing, technology and CX.

Daniel McDermott

Darren Needham-Walker

Dave Nicholls

2020 – WOW what a year. If there has ever been a catalyst to change… a global pandemic is certainly it. What we have seen in 2020 has been an extended period of trial of new ways of working, interactions with our customers and interactions internally. Marketers have stepped up and proven that a blend of surprising moments of physical interactions with the digital experience – the Phygital experience – can really make a difference to revenue generation. 2020 for me has been the mass trial of the Phygital experience and we must all learn from this and embrace the learnings and be ready to adapt again as it has yet to be seen what, if anything will fundamentally change in our lives longer term.

Brand for the second year has grown in importance and if you are not investing in the brand and the core values then you are missing out. The need for brand basics in the B2B space has never been stronger. Interestingly the divide between sales and marketing continues to be a challenge so I think that the biggest challenge for a B2B marketer will be – how do you improve the communication and brand journey internally? The two big 2021 questions for me are: 1) What is your internal nurture program? and 2) How are you building your brand internally and externally?

Mitchell Mackey

Thanks to the pandemic we are all moving rapidly to a digital world, where business, especially business-to-business activity, happens wherever people are. Businesses who did not have their digital platform acts together were especially vulnerable during 2020. They struggled to facilitate online commerce efficiently and with ease. Their vision, leadership, data, people, process and system silos and deficiencies were exposed by the transparent front door that is their web presence.

Critically, today’s B2B customers know what good looks like thanks to their own personal commerce experiences with the leading B2C brands. In 2021 all B2B players, must fast forward their digitisation ambitions with their marketers playing decisive roles.

Today, no matter what industry you are in, it’s not enough to simply promote your brand and make, market and sell a product or service. You need a digital community marketplace. An integrated, self-service, collaboration environment (web + commerce + marketing automation + CRM + analytics and ERP) where you customers interact, buy (ideally, subscribe), share, engage and learn from one another.

In this transformational climate, now, more than ever, we marketers must step up and lead. Marketers have to exercise genuine customer-focused influence and advocacy both horizontally and vertically across their organisations.

Andrew Haussegger

‘Orchestrated’ is an excellent theme for this year’s report. In the context of B2B marketing, it talks to being well planned with an integrated approach. It also talks to orchestrated activity across internal client-facing teams – namely marketing, sales and customer success teams. The report tells us there is slight improvements in sales and marketing alignment, but still a way to go.

It is interesting that growing brand awareness and measuring its health ranks as the #1 challenge for the second year in a row. Covid-19 has certainly fuelled this. In B2B, brand trust has traditionally been driven by marketers and the sales team. Sales build ‘in-person’ personal relationships with buyers and people trust people more than they trust brands.

The pandemic has radically reduced the human sales contact which has, in turn, has put more onus of B2B marketers to maintain and grow brand affinity. And this in a year when the decibel levels from digital noise doubled!

Account-Based Marketing is flavour of the month – make that the year according to the findings. Best practice marketers do not want ‘spray and pray’ with much of their investment missing the mark. They want to target with personalised messaging and content. Best-in-class respondents are driving account-centricity and are nearly twice as likely to have implemented ABM. However the report tells us that only 41% of all respondents have an agreed definition between Sales and Marketing of their ‘ideal customer profile’. Looks like we need to get more … orchestrated !

Huge thanks to our association partner AMI, our partners, our sponsors and of course you who have taken the time to participate in this research. Here’s hoping you top the charts in 2021.