Statistics show most B2B marketing shops are spending paltry budgets on performance marketing and customer marketing as the economy works through its sluggishness
This year has been rough for many B2B technology companies.
After years of relatively easy selling, finance and procurement departments have pulled back on purchases. In turn, solution providers have tightened up their belts.
Marketing budgets are down considerably. Marketing teams are spread thin. Performance marketing and customer marketing are the only two areas getting attention.
That’s my observation in looking back over the several dozen studies I’ve covered on the weekly blog and monthly newsletter (samples). Below are 25 B2B marketing statistics that sum up 2024 so far.
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Market
1. Buyer’s choice. When buyers first contact a seller, they are “69% of the way through a buying cycle.” (source)
2. Competition. “Some 73% of marketers surveyed say they expect their company to face more competition in 2024, a 19-point increase over the percentage who said the same in a similar survey last year.” (source)
3. Paltry budgets. “Overall marketing budgets tallied at 7.7% of revenue – down from 9.1% in 2023, even further below the 10% industry benchmark, and off more than 3% from its all-time high in 2020.” (source)
4. Build resilience. Most CEOs expect 2024 to be bumpy; “nearly all CEOs (91%) anticipate needing to overhaul their business models in the next year due to disruptive forces.” (source)
5. Marketing’s purpose. 52% of CEOs surveyed want marketing to create new customers and retain existing ones. (source)
Strategy
6. Retention is the priority. Nearly half of marketers surveyed are prioritizing customer retention (47%), closely followed by improving the customer experience at 43%.” (source)
7. Creative thinking. 52% of CMOs think the top skill marketing leaders must possess is “creative thinking.” (source)
8. Thought leadership. More than half (54%) of buyers surveyed said a solution provider “that consistently produces high-quality thought-leadership content has prompted them to research the organization’s offers or capabilities.” (source)
9. Too little. About half (45%) of all B2B technology startups make no effort to market their products. (source)
10. Customer marketing matters. “Seventy-three percent (73%) of B2B revenue comes from existing customers in the form of renewals, cross-sell, and upsell, and the remaining 27% comes from new business.” (source)
Tactics
11. Top channels. B2B marketers say paid social media (65%) and email (64%) are the most effective channels (source)
12. Webinars are working. Marketers saw “a 56% increase in requests for a demo” stemming from webinars based on an analysis of 2023 data. (source)
13. B2B marketing video. 75% of US adults spend “up to 2 hours per day watching short videos” and “video uploads on LinkedIn” are “up 45% year over year.” (source)
14. Unsubscribe. 1 in 5 email subscribers unsubscribe because they receive too many messages. (source)
15. Slow and steady. Podcast ads plod along – to top $2 billion in sales in 2024. (source)
16. Experimentation. Successful B2B marketing organizations “devote about 50% more budget and 80% more staff hours to digital marketing experimentation compared with laggards. (source)
17. Feeding the content beast. More than half (51%) of marketers polled say “keeping up with content demands for various channels is one of their top challenges.” (source)
18. Fake traffic. On average 8.5% of all the paid traffic is invalid. (source)
Staffing
19. Hanging around longer. The average CMO tenure was 3.1 years in 2023. (source)
20. CMOs are cool again. 73% of CEOs give their top marketer good grades. (source)
21. Fractional CMO. “Almost half (48.6%) of respondents said they are currently working as fractional CMOs. Survey results show that most fractional CMOs are in demand for their strategic guidance and cost-effectiveness.” (source)
22. Outsourced help. Nearly half (49%) of B2B marketers surveyed say “market and competitive analysis.” (source)
23. BDR touches. “Business development representatives (BDRs) are making an average of almost 17 (16.7) attempts per contact.” (source)
24. Top generative AI use case: 51% of B2B marketers use generative AI to brainstorm. (source)
25. Extra budget. What would you do with an unexpected extra $1 million in the marketing budget? The number one answer CMOs gave in a survey of 292 was that they’d invest it in talent (17%) – both hiring and professional development. (source)
* * *
Who are you? What do you do? Can you deliver what you say you can deliver?
Those are questions answered by a brand.
So, when B2B marketing spends most of its budget on performance marketing, that puts a greater burden on the sales team to educate customers.
And maybe, slow deals down even more.
Need an extra pair of hands? Sword and the Script Media can help with B2B marketing, PR and social media.
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Image credit: Pixabay and respective studies
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