The future of B2B marketing

A few weeks ago, we had the good fortune to hear Jay Gaines’s thoughts on the near future of marketing. Gaines is the newly minted CMO of Forrester, taking on that role after a similar position at SiriusDecisions, which Forrester acquired this spring. Gaines has his finger on the pulse of SiriusDecisions’ 2,000+ B2B marketing customers. So when he speaks, we tend to listen.

High-performance marketing in 2019

Before powering ahead to the future (pegged to the year 2025 in Gaines’s talk), it’s good to know what high-performance B2B marketers are doing right in 2019. Gaines and his Sirius colleagues identified these key characteristics:

• Strategic with a clear go-to-market focus, deep customer knowledge and business relevance
• Focused on measurable activity that drives business contribution
• Insightful about buyers, customers, sales and analytics
• Capable with skills, core competencies and technologies that align with their go-to-market approach
• Aligned through shared vision, process and accountability
• Process-driven with a focus on planned activity, operationalized approaches and integration
• Agile with a rapid response capability and a culture of experimentation

It’s safe to say that these attributes will be just as important in 2025. And that many B2B marketers have some catching up to do to reach 2019 levels of high performance, before tackling the challenges of 2025.

2019 performance gap: buyer insights

One area where marketers need to do better is insight into buyers and the buying process. Today, many B2B marketers use personas to fill in the blanks. But too often, persona statements are longer on data than true insights about a target’s primary challenges, needs and buying behaviors. For example, it’s important to delve into areas such as the content that buyers prefer and the common “watering holes” where they can be found at scale.

2019 performance gap: complex buying processes

Any marketer who’s mapped out an enterprise buying decision knows that things can get complex pretty fast. You might have to take into account a half dozen or more decision-making roles across physical and digital environments, 20-plus marketing tactics, and internal stakeholders from product marketing to marketing operations to sales. Not surprisingly, simplifying the complex has become critically important to marketers these days. (Not coincidentally, it’s the hallmark of our agency).

2019 performance gap: over-reliance on leads

Another B2B area that Sirius believes is ripe for change is over-reliance on leads. Today, a common source of leads is gated content and lead gen forms on B2B websites. But Sirius estimates that only 2% to 5% of B2B web visitors will fill out a lead-gen form. In contrast, around 75% of the visitors on these sites are actively engaged in a search for sourcing. That means most marketers are not engaging 7 in 10 prospects who are actively visiting their sites.

This is compounded by technology platforms oriented toward individual decision makers vs. the entire buying group, which could be a dozen people or more. And GDPR privacy requirements in Europe limit the degree to which marketers can collect and use data around individual buyers.

To address these gaps, Sirius points to the importance of account-oriented intent signals. Today, using available intent tools, marketers can identify accounts that appear to be engaging in early stages of a buying decision, based on their search activity on the marketer’s site as well as 3rd party sites across the web. According to Gaines, four anonymous site visitors signaling intent are much more likely to be a hot opportunity than one known marketing-ready lead.

And artificial intelligence will put these intent signals on steroids. It’s one of the reasons that Gaines believes AI will be a cornerstone of high-performance marketing in 2025.

2025 imperatives: artificial intelligence

Most marketers today have only begun to experiment with AI – if that. Gaines believes that will change very quickly.

He points to four capabilities that AI can bring to marketers:

• Additional perceptive capacity. AI helps marketers take in more information and see more connections. Intent monitoring is a good case-in-point.
• Additional cognitive capacity. AI processes more complex information, leading to data visualizations and intelligent customer data platforms. For these platforms, the AI system first “reads” all the web assets and creates a taxonomy aligned to the solution. Then it assesses repeat visitors’ interests and presents relevant content. Next, the system generates high-definition visitor profiles. With these visitor insights, the AI system presents next best content. Finally, AI groups visitors by account and interest buying teams.
• Reduced cognitive load. Very importantly, AI can help simplify decisions – for example, by scoring specific opportunities at a specific account.
• Automated processes. Finally, AI can help automate actions and decisions, ultimately leading to revenue intelligence platforms that can start engaging prospects immediately.

2025 imperatives: atomization

While AI provides insights for personalization, marketers need content actually tailored to prospects to engage them on a personalized basis. This requires marketers to have content that is atomized, or broken into many discrete parts, like atoms. (Here’s an example of how our agency atomized a piece of thought leadership research into dozens of discrete content modules.)

2025 imperatives: accountability

AI will also help marketers be more accountable. By giving marketers greater insight into customer needs and pain points, AI enables organizations to better understand and deliver on the drivers of customer experience and behavior. AI will also give marketers greater insight into which marketing activities are driving value and growth.

2025 imperatives: authenticity

In a digital world, you can’t make it by faking it. Back in the 20th century, information was relatively scarce and marketers had an ability to control who knew what. Not so in today’s social and digital world. Brands attract customers by being transparent with the consumer and true to their purpose and values. Demonstrating respect for the customer’s privacy is an opportunity for brands going forward.

2025 imperatives: adaptability

Of course, in B2B marketing, the more things change, the more they’re likely to change some more. Marketers with an ear to the ground, an openness to new ideas and the agility to act on what they see and hear, will no doubt be the ones who thrive in 2025 and the decades to come.

Gaines left us with one parting thought. As important as the science of marketing will become – through tools like AI – it will never replace the need for creativity. At the end of the day, we’re engaging with humans, and humans long for stories and connections. Creativity will be just as vital to marketing in 2025 and beyond as it is today… and it won’t be coming from machines.

And that’s a future we can all welcome!