b2b crosses channels integrate white paper 2012

B2B Crosses Channels:Barriers & Solutions to Effective Execution

2 Integrate, B2B Crosses Channels

Today’s business-to-business (B2B) space encompasses much more than mere lead generation.B2B marketers across verticals are implementing strategies in stark contrast from the “best

practices” of just two years ago. Within the context of an extended, multi-touch purchase

funnel, B2B marketers are rising to meet challenges posed by emerging technologies and

increasingly granulated data, as well as demands generated by the business-to-consumer

(B2C) space.

Or they’re attempting to. B2B buyers now require personalized attention at multiple

engagement points, throughout a lengthy, deliberated purchase process spanning media

channels. In fact, the term “funnel” is hardly applicable to modern B2B sales.

The word funnel is not a great representation of what marketing is or of lead flow in general. If you pour something into the top of an actual kitchen funnel, everything drains linearly downwards and there isn't much leakage. But in marketing, there is no funnel that has the laws of physics helping leads progress downwards, and there is no funnel that doesn't have leakage or irregularities regarding where prospects enter and exit, begin and end. It isn't linear.

Zorian RotenbergCMO, AppAssure Software

In an Interview with Integrate,

27 August 2012

"Appealing to every B2B buyer’s precise

needs through a seamless, cross-channel

experience may be daunting, but it isn’t

impossible—augmenting marketing

processes and investing in media-

management technology will mitigate

current B2B marketing inefficiencies

and bolster future success.

Effective cross-channel execution requires

B2B marketers to first understand the

barriers to implementation. Cross-channel

attempts are often ineffective for two

reasons: fulfillment fragmentation

and the overdue acclimation of B2B to

emerging marketing trends and technology.


Fulfillment Fragmentation

Fulfillment fragmentation disables B2B marketing’s efficacy. Numerous fulfillment sources

in a decentralized context reduce the control B2B marketers have over compliance, lead to

incoherent delivery and can result in mismanagement, limiting maximum return on ad spend

and strategy effectiveness.

Moreover, fragmentation impedes the measurement and comparison of cross-channel

campaigns. B2B marketers are thus unable to determine the ways in which singular channels

affect one another, much less how or why channel interaction occurs within an entire

multi-channel strategy.

Decentralized fulfillment sources inundate B2B marketers with incongruent data, without

providing a clear vision of respective application. Even when vendors report fulfillment in real

time, B2B marketers are unable to efficiently translate and compare disparate data across

channels, making quick, effective optimization nearly impossible. Meanwhile, delays in

analysis and optimization deplete resources with regard to labor and marketing budget.

Some B2B marketers fail to see the value of

real-time optimization, but those marketers

are probably aggregating and collating data

from dozens of publishers right now while

you’re reading this white paper. They continue

to waste budget on under-performing vendors

and ineffective marketing methods while

marketers on the real-time optimization

bandwagon are lining their pockets with

an increased return on ad spend, primarily

by using technology to centralize vendor

selection and management. These tools

automate data accumulation and analysis,

even allowing marketers to shift budget

between publishers based on performance—

tired excuses and fulfillment fragmentation

may pose real-time optimization road blocks,

but auxiliary technology proves it's neither a

gimmick nor an inflated theory.

One of the challenges of having to go to a bunch of different sources is the risk of missing something. You may miss a channel that either delivers a lower-cost lead or a higher-converting lead, or miss an opportunity you didn’t realize was there. If you can find the resources that can consolidate those opportunities for you, help do some of the research and bring you multiple options, you can make the best choices or at least test more options, which helps you find more efficiently what’s working. It helps you do your job as a marketer and it helps you achieve your goals more efficiently, with less time.

Matt HeinzPresident, Heinz Marketing

In an interview with Integrate,

6 July 2012

"


Many marketers actually exacerbate the deployment, measurement and optimization

issues consequent to fulfillment fragmentation because they spread spend evenly

across channels, without understanding the ripple effect channels have on

one another. Multi-channel marketing strategies with different launch dates, using

diverse campaign models, marketing methods and delivery sources spur chaotic

cross-channel interaction.

Each differentiating feature between campaigns, channels, methods and delivery

makes incremental analysis and understanding almost impossible. Without a

centralized tracking, reporting and media-management system, marketers spend

hours upon hours rationalizing data to quantify every activity's impact on revenue.

Consolidated fulfillment enables unified

reporting, substantially increasing metric

clarity and continuity to improve the

efficiency with which B2B marketers

analyze marketing activities. Unified

reporting enables the B2B marketer to

identify not only which touchpoints are

most influential, but the ways in which

touchpoints work together online,

offline and across screens. Afforded

a comprehensive view of channel

interaction, B2B marketers can effectively

analyze, optimize and reallocate, without

wasting time or risking human error. They

are thus able to seamlessly meet B2B

buyers’ needs, while accounting for

every twist and turn in the multi-touch,

not-so-linear purchase "funnel."

The problem with comparing disparate fulfillment sources and the incoming data from each one is really with optimization. It's very, very hard to generalize learning across different sources. To learn from 1 and apply to 3, 4 and 5 is almost impossible when they're segmented in different ways and collect different data. Being able to learn from each source simultaneously, figuring out what they have in common and why that matters and then what to do with that data is crucial to optimization.

Eric WittlakeSr. Director of Media, Babcock & Jenkins

In an Interview with Integrate,

27 August 2012

"


Overdue Acclimation

Another major barrier to effective cross-channel strategy implementation in the B2B

space relates to the overdue acclimation of the majority of B2B marketers when it comes to

adopting fresh marketing trends and applying complementary technologies.

Referring to developing marketing trends as fresh is purposeful—fresh marketing trends are

just that—marginally new, inexplicably appealing, quick to get snatched up and prone to expire.

Not all trends stick and not all of them are worth more than a singular attempt followed by a

consolatory pat on the back.

Yet, with so many new concepts and methods making the transition from trend to marketing

mainstay, B2B marketers need to take notice. They must determine which emerging concepts

and B2C methods are pertinent before attempting to understand how they can and will work in

a B2B context.

Display retargeting still isn't an assumed staple in B2B and that represents a missed opportunity. And even though behavioral targeting has been around in the B2C space for a long time, it's just starting to come around in B2B. Many of the best performing B2C line items are slow to pick up in the B2B space, particularly because the audiences are smaller. There just isn't the level of granularity and quantity of data available today for B2B as there is for B2C because the latter has huge audiences to sample and B2B audiences can be much more niche. B2B marketers don't have the option of purchasing audience segments of people looking for something like SaaS-based ERP systems. The kind of audience segmentation and audience data that B2B marketers would need isn't available today the way it is for consumer, but the space is always advancing. There are techniques and technologies available today that would've been unheard of just a couple of years ago.

Eric WittlakeSr. Director of Media, Babcock & Jenkins

In an interview with Integrate, 27 August 2012

"Progressive B2B marketers follow B2C developments closely, and the most sophisticated ones are really able to integrate the best of what's out there. As a whole, B2B marketers are getting better and smarter with regard to audience targeting from a business perspective rather than a consumer one. It's still a growing market but there's been a lot of content written recently about buyer personas and understanding who you should sell to, and that's translating into marketers wanting to be able to better target their ad efforts and lead gen efforts. Even though it has been around in B2C for a while, that's the way most concepts come about in B2B. And it's almost better that way. For every year or so that B2B is behind B2C, that's another year for the technology and concepts and entire approach to get better. By the time a new development reaches the entire B2B marketing community, it has been through multiple overhauls and all of the kinks are worked out.

Craig RosenbergSales and Marketing Consultant


"


This comprehension angle is especially important as emerging marketing trends including mobile

and social media become “must haves” rather than “nice to haves.” B2B marketers must take

their understanding of the ripple effect a step further, regarding how they can manipulate it to

work in their favor. Successful cross-channel strategies rely on that ripple effect—measuring

one channel in isolation is misleading, and cohesive strategy development requires tactically

influencing channel interaction in order to meet overall brand goals.

Determining how much spend to allocate toward each channel relies on understanding how they

do work and don’t work together—your TV ads were popular so they might have driven the best

quality and largest volume of results, but those digital campaigns looked awesome so people probably

liked them too, but then again one of the ads didn’t get much click traffic so—the mess of data can

be discouraging, even more so in a time when sales and marketing alignment is crucial to B2B

success.

It is essential for B2B marketers to centralize

their marketing efforts in order to understand

cross-channel strategy interplay, qualifying

which combination of campaigns, methods and

channels actually works best for them and why.

Devising and revising strategies that

efficiently incorporate the best that offline,

mobile, digital and social have to offer is

especially challenging for marketers without

marketing automation technology or effective

cross-channel deployment and measurement

processes in place.

Not only are there are a lot of complexities in marketing at the hands-on, operational level, it is furthermore complicated because marketers are expected to go a level higher and quantify how each of their activities is impacting revenue. And it's even more complex for marketers lacking the ability to catalog everything centrally and look at all of the data in a uniform manner. B2B executives have to be able to analyze marketing outcomes in a way that not only helps them figure out how to build high-impact and high-ROI campaigns, but enables them to ultimately report that to the CEO and to the VP of Sales and to board members who might not care about some really cool social media contest the marketing exec just ran. Marketers have to be able to demonstrate their impact on revenue, which gives them credibility in the eyes of the board and the CEO, because otherwise it's all arts and crafts. And we're not into arts and crafts marketing nowadays.



27 August 2012

"


Complementary technology simplifies B2B marketers’ ability to incorporate new trends

into their strategies, improving the ease with which they may then track, analyze and optimize

resulting marketing efforts.

Centralized marketing automation and media-management technology has proven, well-known

benefits. Yet, most B2B marketers are slow to conform and many early-adopters have done so

ineffectively, mistakenly investing in multiple technology systems without understanding how

they should or would work in tandem.

While simply purchasing technology is not a cure-all, avoiding purchases altogether represents

a wasted opportunity. Emerging technologies improve marketing efficiency, consolidate

marketing efforts to enable centralized media-management, cut costs and increase returns

on ad spend.

Considering the significance and impact of emerging concepts and technology, why not invest?

While there is apparent value in both, B2B marketers often instead highlight marketing and

sales alignment as a top priority, putting technology and centralized media-management on the

backburner.

This hierarchy of priorities isn’t surprising; an increased focus on marketing and sales alignment is

permanently altering the B2B space and effectually rewriting the B2B marketer’s job description.

The marketing automation space, though it’s booming, is in its infancy. There are significant dollars going into these systems, but it’s a fraction of what companies have historically spent to acquire new leads month after month. And yet, with the right technology you can naturally attract, engage, nurture and convert a higher percent of leads over time into closed business.



6 July 2012

"Marketing is a lot of complex things intertwined and it isn't as simple to report your production factor as it is for sales. Marketers have to deal with incongruent output and outcomes, as well as activities that lack measurability in many ways. Properly tracking and managing all of that data and being able to convert and align all of it so you can compare apples to apples, is the only way marketers can quantify their impact on revenue.



27 August 2012

"


Demonstrating the business value of marketing is becoming a necessity and will dominate

the B2B space as time goes on. Systematizing aspects of marketing and sales processes in a

centralized format may be key to sales and marketing alignment in the future. Technology

promises to simplify the B2B marketer’s job, while catering to marketing and sales managers

alike, especially with regard to data management.

B2B marketers have a bigger job than they’ve ever had before. Previously, you could do your events, generate your leads, pass them off to the sales team and kind of be done with it. Well now, not every sales lead is equal. Some we pass along, some we score and nurture—we have different strategies for different leads, more offers and marketers are getting far more involved at stages of the buying process and sales process that they haven’t before. Consolidating the options and the sources by which marketers find and engage prospects is important if for no other reason than it makes the marketer’s job easier—there’s incredible value in that level of efficiency for marketers today and moving forward.



6 July 2012

"Companies now expect B2B marketers to

quantifiably demonstrate marketing’s business

value, forcing marketing professionals to somehow

merge sales and marketing goals without favoring

or diminishing the efficacy of either. In this

scenario, lead quality isn’t determined by how well

a prospect’s credentials match a targeting profile,

but by that prospect’s level of sales-readiness at

multiple engagement points.

Lead quality now outweighs lead volume,

requiring B2B marketers to augment the way

they plan, launch, track and analyze advertising

initiatives in order to meet lead quality and

close rate requirements. Attempts to align sales

and marketing goals without compromise have

changed the B2B marketer’s job, encompassing

increased responsibility and data to handle within

and around the purchase funnel.

The marketing automation movement pushes marketing organizations to be more rigorous not only about what they’re doing on a daily basis but with regard to their effect on revenue. In the past, marketers would buy leads in bulk and let sales sift through them. And now the B2B marketer has come to the realization that just because someone raises their hand initially doesn’t mean they're immediately ready to buy. The B2B buyer takes their time and it’s on their terms and their clock, not our clock. The marketing automation space has been a real breakthrough for B2B marketers because it allows them to embrace this fundamental shift in buying behavior and engage with prospects at every step of the sales process, providing them with the content they actually need and want to see over time.



"


Marketing in itself is incredibly complicated

and requires B2B marketers to take into

account strategic criteria relevant to their

own products, verticals and respective trends,

in conjunction with hundreds of data points

regarding their buyers, as well as every piece

of information that goes into marketing

and comes out the other side in the form of

not only dollars and cents, but impressions,

acquisitions, KPIs and more.

It’s no different in sales. Every decimal and

dollar sign contributes to a bigger picture, yet

the sheer quantity of data lends itself to error.

Marketers are increasingly thinking of technology as a core part of their strategy and implementation. We’re seeing more marketing organizations in B2B be strategic and make investments in technology where those dollars previously had gone towards traditional media and direct marketing channel expenditures. I think we're going to see more and more companies and more and more marketers become far more savvy about the technology they're using to accomplish the same goals they've always had.



6 July 2012

"

Marketing automation has fostered communication between sales and marketing departments and most of the marketing automation vendors are actually recommending increased sales-marketing communication. They spend a lot of time talking about sales and marketing alignment because marketing automation is an opportunity for both departments. The technology already promises to make marketing more efficient and incorporating sales in the lead definitions process helps marketers generate the type of leads with the level of quality that their sales reps are looking to engage with. Marketing automation has brought those two sides to the table and they’re communicating a lot more than they have in the past, which streamlines both departments and helps them to generate more revenue overall.



"

Centrally tracking and managing marketing and sales data enables organizations to better

manage and support efficiency in both departments. Technology not only facilitates cross-

channel marketing efficacy, it allows companies to automate both marketing and sales

processes in one, central, aligned location.


Conclusions

B2B marketers need to adapt. As the B2B space evolves, resolving the aforementioned

cross-channel barriers relies on tactical, multi-faceted process adaptation with regard to

current marketing strategies, as well as the systems used to deploy and monitor them.

Just as a faulty strategy will not work within a stellar automation system, a faulty

system cannot support a superb multi-channel marketing strategy. To properly

adapt, B2B marketers must:

• Understand the value of new marketing trends and venture into new channels

• Highlight the value of not only creative but reporting, tracking and analytics

• Make sense of and harness the cross-channel ripple effect

• Formulate multi-touch, audience-centric strategies

• Jump on the real-time optimization bandwagon

• Reduce the amount of human error leading to haphazardly run campaigns

• Diminish fulfillment fragmentation to simplify management requirements

Most importantly, effectively implementing cross-channel marketing strategies

requires B2B marketers to centralize their marketing efforts in order to improve

efficiency, scalability and consistency.

Decentralized processes result in a host of issues, which will continue to bar

marketers from cross-channel success if ignored.


Interview Contributors

We would like to thank our interviewees for

generously donating their time and expertise

to this project.

Matt Heinz President, Heinz Marketing

Craig Rosenberg Sales and Marketing Consultant

Zorian Rotenberg CMO, AppAssure Software

Eric Wittlake Sr. Director of Media, Babcock & Jenkins

Related Links• B2B Digital Marketing Blog

• Babcock & Jenkins

• Funnelholic Blog

• Heinz Marketing

• Matt Heinz Blog

Editoral & Production

Project Lead & Writer:

Hannah O'Regan — Senior Writer / Editor

Contributors:

David Crane — Managing Editor

Roland Nadeau — Writer / Editor

About Integrate

Integrate is an advertising technology and

services provider that offers a Centralized

Media-Management Platform (CMMP). We

empower media buyers to plan, launch,

analyze and optimize their marketing

strategies across a regulated ecosystem,

unifying performance, digital and traditional

media. Our solutions increase operational

efficiency, ad performance and brand security.

Integrate.com4900 N. Scottsdale Rd., Suite 4000Scottsdale, AZ 85251

Contact [email protected]

http://b2bdigital.net/

http://www.bnj.com

http://funnelholic.com/

http://www.heinzmarketing.com

http://www.heinzmarketing.com/matt-on-marketing/blog/

http://integrate.com

mailto:[email protected]

b2b crosses channels integrate white paper 2012

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