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Focus Research 2011 All Rights Reserved

2011 Trends Report:B2B Marketing

February 4, 2011

topics: 2011 trends expert content marketing b2b marketing marketing trends


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2011 Trends Report: B2B Marketing 2Focus Research 2011

2011 Trends Report: B2B Marketing


February 4, 2011

by Joe Chernov, Mark Feldman, Doug Kessler, Thomas Pisello, Tom Scearce, Holger Schulze

topics: 2011 trends expert content marketing b2b marketing marketing trends

Executive Summary

Marketing products or services to other companies and organizations is tough in any economy. In the current

economic climate, staying on top of B2B marketing trends is more important than ever. What changes will

we see in 2011 regarding B2B marketing? In this guide, Focus Experts Joe Chernov, Mark Feldman, Doug

Kessler, Thomas Pisello, Tom Scearce and Holger Schulze share their 2011 predictions for B2B marketing.

After reading this report, be sure to check out the entire discussion and join the conversation:

http://www.focus.com/questions/marketing/b2b-marketing-trends-what-are-biggest-trends-b2b-marketing/.

B2B Marketing Trends for 2011

1. Accountability and ROI

2. Marketing automation goes mainstream

3. Content marketing takes center stage

4. Increased use o B2C tactics

5. B2B continues to adapt to a social media world

6. Marketing looks beyond its silo

7. The return o the unnel

8. New tools fght increased buyer rugality
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What are the biggest trends in B2B marketing to follow in 2011?

1. Accountability and ROI

Marketing will be held more accountable for revenue goals. Quotas in the areas of leads, logos and revenue will be hung

on the marketing department. The sun will continue in to set on brand marketing. (Chernov)

The top of the list is ROI. Its more measurable than ever. CFOs and the board have taken note, so marketing dollars will

be more scrutinized than ever. The plus side is that marketing has stepped up its game in the past few years, and theres a

new wave of solutions out there that were designed with your corporate bean-counters in mind. (Feldman)

B2B marketers increasingly will be judged by the money they generate. All other metrics will be eclipsed, as the best

marketers feature dollar signs in their boardroom PowerPoints. (Kessler)

2. Marketing automation goes mainstream

Automation becomes easier and less expensive. Once the purview of only a select few B2C rms doing internal builds,

B2B marketing automation is becoming easier and simpler. Marketers will no longer need a team of PhDs in Data-ology

to send out drip campaigns. (Feldman)

Automation beds down. The pioneers have had some time to discover what works. The generous ones are sharing their

experiences, so its time to jump Moores Chasm and go mainstream. (Kessler)

Marketing automation is going mainstream in 2011 as companies are taking their online campaigns, lead scoring andemail automation to the next level and integrating social media with traditional tactics. It will be interesting to watch how

the decline of email usage and conversion rates will impact marketing automation effectiveness going forward. (Schulze)

3. Content marketing takes center stage

Content marketing is going mainstream in 2011. If you are not thinking about (and implementing) a strategy that puts

your buyers (with their persona and industry-driven pain points, preferences and buying stages) in the center of your

marketing efforts (and creates compelling content as the currency of your engagement with buyers), chances are you will

get left behind by more content-savvy competitors. With content moving into the center of attention, marketers struggle

to create magnetic content in the right formats and quantities. Sophisticated marketers will apply systematic ways to re-

purpose existing content, create bite-size content for the short-attention-span executive, and design an efcient contentwaterfall that accelerates production times, quality and content consistency. (Schulze)

The lines separating content/inbound marketing and demand gen will blur. Companies that have already begun to invest

in content marketing efforts will look to attach conversion-related analytics to their efforts. Companies that have hereto-

fore ignored these tactics will nd that they are more measurable than initially thought, and that factor will draw them into

the practice. In both cases, content marketing will fuse with demand gen. (Chernov)



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According to SiriusDecisions, just looking at e-blasts alone, the typical buyer receives over 20 e-mail marketing mes-

sages a week, up 32 percent over the past four years. Better content targeting and personalization is required for 2011

to end carpet bombing B2B marketing techniques, evolving to create a dialogue with buyers to guide them through the

decision-making process and buying lifecycle with personalized one-to-one advice. (Pisello)

4. Increased use of B2C tactics

B2B marketers will look a lot more like consumer marketers. Many companies in many different B2B sectors are already

starting to experiment with B2C-like campaigns, with viral videos, playful Facebook campaigns, innovative contests and

these companies are getting noticed. Expect others to follow. (Chernov)

In the B2C space, the consumer is now in charge: using the Internet to research specications, conguring and custom-

izing solutions, getting peer reviews and advice, comparing prices, and buying now. Now, in B2B, we have seen a similar

dramatic shift toward prospects taking charge of the buying cycle. Savvy B2B marketers will recognize the consumeriza-

tion of B2B, and in 2011 proactively increase content marketing investments to deliver the right content and interactive

decision support tools at the appropriate right step in the buying cycle. (Pisello)

5. B2B continues to adapt to a social media world

2011 will be the year social media evolves from the experimental stage to become an established marketing tactic. This

also means that more stringent demands for proof of ROI and revenue impact will be placed on social media investment.

But that is not a bad thing; it keeps us on our toes. (Schulze)

There will be a high-prole social media crisis in the B2B sector. Consumer marketers have taken their lumps, with

negative articles about unethical or just naive practices in the court of public opinion (and sometimes even with the FTC).

As their B2B counterparts try their hand at B2C-like tactics, expect some missteps, and expect some of them to be high

prole. (Chernov)

B2B marketers will realize that the real reason nobody can gure out how to measure ROI from social media is because

it doesnt actually have an ROI. The dust will begin to settle in 2011, and marketers will see social media for what it really

is (and is not); B2B marketers will spend less time proliferating truncated URLs into the Twitter echo-chamber and more

time generating better leads for the sales team. (Feldman)

6. Marketing looks beyond its silo

Now more than ever, we need to be comfortable challenging the way our companies and/or clients do business. Who

cares if we decreased our average cost per lead 35 percent when our sales process lets 70 percent of those leads fall

on the oor? And so what if booked revenue jumps 20 percent year-on-year when were too short-staffed to deploy

customers and recognize that revenue? We as marketers have to take an interest in these not my department processes

even if it grates on our colleagues from time to time (and, yes, I speak from personal experience as both a grate-ee and

a grate-or). Why? Because were spending the companys money and resources to attract new customers. And in the age

of pervasive social media, peer reviews and quality scores, the smart self-educating buyers we seek wont be fooled by


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clever marketing if they dont trust our business to take care of theirs. (Scearce)

7. The return of the funnel

The funnel got a bad name this year as B2B thinkers started to question its linearity in a multi-vector social world. But as

revenue marketing takes hold, well return to this useful metaphor: lots of contacts at the top, some rich engagement onthe way and a sale at the end. (Kessler)

8. New tools ght increased buyer frugality

B2B buyers are doing-more-with-less and are economic-focused, with over 90 percent of B2B buyers requiring quan-

tiable proof of bottom-line impact from signicant investments. Even with a continued recovery and more nancial opti-

mism through 2011, the shift to frugality is fundamental and permanent. To ght Frugalnomics, savvy marketers will need

to make even more investments in 2011 toward content and tools that help buyers assess and quantify the economic

impact of implementing the proposed solutions, quantify the cost of doing nothing, and prove competitive cost advan-

tages and value. (Pisello)

Read the entire discussion, and join the conversation:

http://www.focus.com/questions/marketing/b2b-marketing-trends-what-are-biggest-trends-b2b-marketing/
http://www.focus.com/questions/marketing/b2b-marketing-trends-what-are-biggest-trends-b2b-marketing/http://www.focus.com/questions/marketing/b2b-marketing-trends-what-are-biggest-trends-b2b-marketing/


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Contributing Experts

Joe ChernovDirector o Content Marketing, Eloquawww.ocus.com/profles/joe-chernov/public/

Mark FeldmanVP Marketing, NetProspexwww.ocus.com/profles/mark-eldman/public/

Doug KesslerSales/Marketing, Velocitywww.ocus.com/profles/doug-kessler/public/

Thomas PiselloChairman and Founder, Alinean, Inc.www.ocus.com/profles/thomas-pisello/public/

Tom ScearcePrincipal, Scearce Market Developmentwww.ocus.com/profles/tom-scearce/public/

Holger SchulzeDirector Marketing, SaeNetwww.ocus.com/profles/holger-schulze-2/public/

About this Report

The 2011 Focus Trends Reports are designed to inform and help business professionals understand the current trends andprogressions in a specic business area. The trends for these reports are sourced from Focus Experts who have superior

insight and expertise in the designated topic. Trends Reports are designed to be practical, actionable and easy to consume.
http://www.focus.com/questions/marketing/b2b-marketing-trends-what-are-biggest-trends-b2b-marketing/http://www.focus.com/questions/marketing/b2b-marketing-trends-what-are-biggest-trends-b2b-marketing/http://www.focus.com/questions/marketing/b2b-marketing-trends-what-are-biggest-trends-b2b-marketing/http://www.focus.com/questions/marketing/b2b-marketing-trends-what-are-biggest-trends-b2b-marketing/http://www.focus.com/questions/marketing/b2b-marketing-trends-what-are-biggest-trends-b2b-marketing/http://www.focus.com/questions/marketing/b2b-marketing-trends-what-are-biggest-trends-b2b-marketing/http://www.focus.com/profiles/joe-chernov/public/http://www.focus.com/profiles/mark-feldman/public/http://www.focus.com/profiles/doug-kessler/public/http://www.focus.com/profiles/thomas-pisello/public/http://www.focus.com/profiles/tom-scearce/public/http://www.focus.com/profiles/holger-schulze-2/public/http://www.focus.com/profiles/holger-schulze-2/public/http://www.focus.com/profiles/tom-scearce/public/http://www.focus.com/profiles/thomas-pisello/public/http://www.focus.com/profiles/doug-kessler/public/http://www.focus.com/profiles/mark-feldman/public/http://www.focus.com/profiles/joe-chernov/public/

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