The B2B Marketer of the Future

The B2B Marketer of the Future:

Happy New Year! December and January are common times for people to reflect on the year that was and make predictions about the year that will be. The B2B prognosticators have been out in full force. Some of them take the easy route, proclaiming 2012 as the year of mobile marketing or the year of content marketing (uh, 2009 called, it wants its title back). Among the more creative titles I came across: 2012 as the year of “preference-driven multichannel marketing breakthroughs” (that one really rolls off the tongue). But what do those in the trenches see on the horizon for the coming few years? To find out, we went ahead and asked them directly.

At the end of last year we conducted a survey of 92 B2B marketers asking them to evaluate some of the big changes looming on the horizon. From the list of 14 potential shifts threatening to rock marketers’ reality, five emerged as holding the greatest potential for impact on business results (from the survey takers’ perspective). They were:

• Marketing’s primary focus will shift from traditional marketing activities (e.g. demand/lead generation, value proposition development, etc.) to enabling cross functional, end-to-end customer experience management among customer-facing departments.
• Marketing’s primary role will be product, service, and business model innovation, rather than traditional marketing activities (e.g. marcom, branding, segmentation, etc).
• Marketing’s role will be about producing customer information, as much as using information (e.g. campaigns will be designed to collect customer information, not just build awareness or generate leads).
• Customers will be significantly involved in customer-facing ideation activities (e.g., new product development, messaging) beyond episodic feedback solicitation.
• Marketing will be able to accurately predict customers’ purchasing needs and stage of the buying process early on, before Sales reps’ conversations with customers.

Marketers also evaluated how soon they expected the shifts and the top five had varying timelines associated with them – some marketers predicted would materialize within a year, whereas others were 3-5 years out. Among these five, the shift from just using to producing content was seen as the most near term while the ability of marketers to predict purchasing needs was thought to be the furthest out. But regardless of timeline, as these changes occur, what will they mean for B2B marketers? Some thoughts:

• Marketing departments will not be organized by touch-point (i.e. tradeshow, web, direct), but rather by customer needs at least partly aligned to where customers are in the buying process.
• Marketing will work closely with IT to strategize, implement, and optimize the increasingly important and vital role of technology in day-to-day operations.
• Collaboration across the organization in service of true customer-centricity will be the norm and the best marketers will excel at internal politicking and influencing other stakeholders.
• Collection of customer voice will focus on understanding the context customers are operating within rather than their opinions with products/services/customer touch points.
• The ability to quickly understand and synthesize data (quantitative, qualitative, and in between) into a compelling story will be a requisite skill.
• Editorial calendars will be as important to marketing departments as strategic plans with content purposefully and precisely plotted out according to company strategic priorities.
• The number of “touches” between supplier and customer will decrease as the impact of each interaction increases. The monthly e-newsletter will be a thing of the past, replaced by more targeted, relevant, and timely communications.
• Because Marketing will be able to prove the superiority of its lead gen and qualification efforts, Sales will accept and follow-up on qualified leads without incessant questions and complaints (okay, so maybe this is just something I think marketers hope is true…).

What else do you think the future holds for B2B marketers? What are some of the big shifts you anticipate in 2012 and beyond? Discuss in the comments below and/or email me to set up a conversation with the MLC B2B research team – we’d love to know what you are thinking about/working on/losing sleep over.