5 B2B Marketing Trends for 2012

5 B2B Marketing Trends for 2012:

Each year, MLC surveys our members about their top challenges looking ahead. As we read the tea leaves in the survey results, here are our thoughts on what’s creeping into (or storming) the B2B marketing consciousness for 2012.

Voice-of-Customer 2.0. Marketers are grappling with what kinds of customer data are most important to collect and how to make hay out of the data. This topic received the most “top priority” votes by a big margin, so we’re making it the subject of MLC’s primary research initiative in 2012.

Early hypothesis from the MLC study team: marketers are over-investing in collecting and analyzing data about the customer, and not enough in gathering information and insight about customer context, which is critical for generating commercial insight (see #5 below)

Skillset Reset. There’s a creeping sense among B2B CMO’s that their marketing teams are in need of a capability overhaul. With the rise of “no man’s land” in the mid-funnel (you can read more about it in MLC’s 2011 research) and rapid changes how buying centers are making purchase decisions, out-of-date marketing skillsets are being laid bare.

As one example of B2B marketing teams aggressively managing the skillset transition, consider the example of Cisco starting to “badge” and reward its marketers on their social media impact. I wrote about this in a blog post on the Present and Future of B2B Social Media.

Ask yourself: how sweet/spooky would it be for 20% of your pay to rest on your social graph?

Disruption. Uncertainty is the lurking leviathan swimming beneath the surface of commerce these days (cheery, no?) This came through in our survey loud and clear, as the third most popular topic was how to manage risk in changing customer buying behavior, emerging markets, technology and the like. All we can suggest here is to build your house out of bricks, not sticks. In commercial terms, that means delivering insight to customers (see #1 and #5).

Going Global. I wouldn’t call it new, but the Global Marketing topic continues to be a top priority for the half of the MLC membership that doesn’t see a continued growth run in Western economies. See MLC’s resources on global marketing organization structure, and then get ready for new best practice case studies, showcase profiles and tools to help marketing leaders manage the global transition, due in Q1 2012.

Content Marketing Hits the Breaking Point. As marketing automation, segmentation and targeting continue to evolve and penetrate marketing activities, there comes a tipping point at which creating version X+5 of an email for sub-segment Y to be delivered at trigger Z in the lead nurture program simply becomes unsustainable. We believe many marketers on the content marketing train will hit this point, to be followed by a period of navel gazing, to be followed by a period of content rationalization, to be followed (depressingly) by content proliferation again.

Smarter angle: the answer isn’t more content, it’s commercial insight. Cut off the long tail of content creation (those white papers are languishing out there, anyway) and re-invest the time and energy into insights that can fuel “commercial teaching”. MLC and its sister program, the Sales Executive Council, have written extensively on this go-to-market approach. Commercial insights trump relevant messaging all day long as drivers of loyalty and purchase in the B2B space. This is the rocket fuel of successful go-to-market strategies these days, and it’s the heart of what makes the Challenger Sale work.

Mobile! Just kidding. Not ready for primetime for most B2Bs…yet. We’re seeing more near-term value creation from mobile as a sales tool than for marketing purposes. Maybe 2013…

MLC will be doing research in most all of these areas in 2012. If you’ve got expertise in any of these areas, we’d love to chat. Please email me: pspenner@executiveboard.com. Or, if you want to share your point-of-view on 2012, drop in a comment below.