A table from a new survey of 500 B2B marketers conducted by Wakefield research paints a portrait of marked indecision. Asked what channels are predominant in their efforts, B2B marketers indicate that about one fifth is spread fairly evenly across mobile, display ads, video, and email, with search the dominant player in the group by a hair.
“B2B marketers are spreading their bets across the table,” says Peter Isaacson, CMO of DemandBase, the account-based marketing company that funded the survey. “There is frustration, but there’s also an air of resignation that, ‘Yes, I know some of my ad dollars are wasted, I know I’m not reaching the audience I want, so how else am I to cover a broad segment?’”
Seventy percent of the marketers surveyed said their advertising fails to meet their expectations either all of some of the time, and 96% admit it’s inevitable that their communications will reach a significant number of people outside of their targeted segments.
Despite all the data-driven digital platforms at their disposal, four in 10 B2B marketers say they find it difficult to measure ROI, that their sales cycles are too long, that they lack sufficient quality leads, and that salespeople won’t follow up on them when they get them.
“If this were 2001, I wouldn’t be surprised at that,” comments Isaacson, “but they have so much invested in digital technology that they’ve got to get better.”
Source: Wakefield Research
