Posted by Brian Berg Google+
We are huge fans of Patrick Spenner, a regular contributor to Forbes magazine that writes all things marketing including business mailing lists, B2B trends and digital/content marketing. A recent good read was a post entitled “2015: The Year When B2B Marketers Stop Accepting Single Digit Conversion Rates”co-written by Mr. Spenner and Carl Schmidt.
The article played highly on the fact that B2B based firms have relied heavily on content marketing and marketing automation for their key marketing tactics. In 2015 Mr. Spenner predicts “marketers will begin to exploit the combined power of content marketing and marketing automation and finally get paid for their investments.” The article then goes on to note that three trends will drive the B2B marketing realm in 2015 which include:
1) The Press for Proven ROI Increases with Investment in Content Marketing
The average group of decision makers within a B2B organization is 5.4. Yes, 5.4. With so few points of contact, B2B marketers struggle to prove ROI to the executive suite. When firms use a content marketing based approach to reach out to targets, they may get targets to engage, but proving the “commercial impact” remains a problem for marketers.
Mr. Spenner predicts, “In 2015, marketers will increasingly find success using their content to equip mobilizers within the customer buying group to advocate for purchase and drive consensus. The shift from content for engagement to content for mobilizing action will be an increasing trend for 2015 and beyond.”
2) Marketing Automation Grows and Creates Results over Efficiency
Content marketing came and took the B2B marketing world by storm! It was the perfect marketing tool for many and then came the scary realization; who is going to produce, organize and manage all this content?!? Marketing automation came to the forefront as the ideal way for marketing firms to effectively and efficiently manage their content machine.
Mr. Spenner’s prediction for marketing automation in 2015? “This year, marketers will look to answer the question, ‘How do I prove commercial returns from my marketing automation investment?’”
3) Repair Demand Generation Becomes Marketers Main Concern
As B2B decision makers use and view content they leave behind a HUGE amount of data about themselves and their firm. 2015 will be the year that markters finally harness this data. With the average B2B marketer converting 3-4% of leads from content marketing to a sale, the time to make good use of key demand generation data is key to any firms long term success. With the type of data available B2B firms should be seeing much higher results!
“In 2015, Marketing will begin making the revolutionary changes to reap the rewards from the big investments in content and automation,” is Mr. Spenner’s take on B2B demand generation.
Regardless of if content is delivered on a website landing page, a white paper, an email download or a mail piece sent to a business mailing list, from the sounds of Mr. Spenner’s article content marketing has big changes coming in 2015.