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B2B marketing budgets stalled out in 2022
Very little growth in B2B marketing budgets this year, with 57% of marketers saying their budget was the same as or less than 2021, according to a new report. One in five reported being hit with mid-year marketing budget cuts. Via 2022 State of B2B Marketing Budgets report from Demand Metric and Integrate. Only 12% reported a significantly bigger budget, according to the 2022 State of B2B Marketing Budgets report. Marketers are optimists, which explains why 75% say their budget will stay the same or grow in 2023. Dig deeper: B2B marketing confidence survives budget pressures To no one’s surprise, 79% of marketers report they are expected to achieve the same or better results this year regardless of budget and staffing. One-fourth of those expected to achieve more next year say they will have to do it with fewer people. Martech stacks have room for improvement B2B firms may see their martech stack as something they can improve to get those results. Some 52% of marketers said their current stack isn’t serving them well. Those who do say their stack is serving them well are almost twice as likely (31%) to be constantly evaluating solutions to improve their stack. By comparison, only 17% of those who feel their stack provides poor or very poor support do this. Only 5% said their stack didn’t contain redundant or never-used solutions, tools or technologies. Via 2022 State of B2B Marketing Budgets report from Demand Metric and Integrate. Content remains king when it comes to marketing budgets, with 42% saying that’s where they spend their existing budget. Customer marketing and digital were second at 37% and marketing ops third at 29%. The survey, from Demand Metric, a global research and advisory firm, and marketing metrics solution provider Integrate, is based on 539 responses collected in September of this year. Why we care. Early this year the reports were all rosy for both B2B and B2C marketing budgets, so it’s interesting to see what actually happened. This isn’t a knock on those predictions. 2022 is at least the third year in a row where no one could’ve predicted what was coming. As far as the 75% of B2B marketers who expect their budgets will at worst stay the same, who knows? Probably the only safe prediction for next year is that whatever happens is likely to be unpredictable. Related Stories New on MarTech
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4 reasons why it’s hard to prove impact in marketing ops
Earlier this year, a study on advanced Marketo users revealed a common theme: Measuring impact is a challenge among marketing operations teams. More than half of respondents reported that measuring impact is a top operational weakness, followed by resourcing talent and alignment to goals and strategies. That’s why Perkuto + MERGE called some of the brightest minds in marketing operations to get their perspective on this issue. Perkuto + MERGE hosted a webinar with panelists Amy Goldfine, Darrell Alfonso, Brooke Bartos, Jessica Meyers and Paul Ferrer to dissect why measuring impact is a common challenge in marketing operations and how organizations can overcome this hurdle. 1. Dirty data is a culprit Brooke Bartos, director of marketing operations and analytics at Invoice Cloud Inc., kicked off the conversation by explaining a common offender: dirty data. Without data, you’ll have a hard time proving impact in marketing operations. But when your data is incomplete or outdated, it often does more harm than good. This is why data cleaning is a crucial task for all marketing operations teams. Not to mention, poor data quality costs organizations an average of $12.9 million every year, so you’ll want to make this a top priority. Once you’ve cleaned up your data, another area of consideration is data literacy. Jessica Meyers, director of marketing operations and technology at Tebra, weighed in by introducing another commonly overlooked area: data literacy. Once you’ve got the numbers to prove impact, you have to consider data literacy. Not everyone will know what your metrics mean, so being able to tell the story of data is what will really prove impact. Dig deeper: Data-first marketing: A strategy to stop wasting 30% of your budget 2. Lack of alignment between sales and marketing What is your marketing operations team trying to achieve? What about impact — what do you define as impact? Take it one step further and make sure your definitions also align. For example, what defines an MQL? What about an SQL? To address this issue, Bartos recommends aligning your sales and marketing teams. A biweekly, top-of-funnel meeting that discusses what’s moving the pipeline and what’s sitting on the shelf will help grow alignment between the two teams. When everyone is on the same page, it’s easier to define business impact and align with it. Darrell Alfonso, director of marketing strategy and operations at Indeed, echoed the importance of gaining alignment on terminology. There can be a lot of ambiguity on what these terms mean: What does a marketing-generated pipeline mean? What about marketing influenced pipeline? Is an MQL really qualified? Make sure your team has this conversation and comes to a conclusion on what these terms mean. “Marketing operations is like a pit crew in a race track — it’s a team effort and you can’t win without alignment of sales and marketing.” Darrell Alfonso
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Webinar: 5 ways to improve content strategy in 2023
Digital content creation and management have never been more complicated. These workflows now need to accommodate remote workers and resources, worldwide offices, and security and privacy concerns, not to mention the growing need for content and creative teams to produce more content in less time. So how are the most successful content and creative teams currently executing production and managing workflows? To answer these questions and more, Canto surveyed over 600 professionals involved in their organization’s production, management and/or strategy for content and creative assets. Register today for “5 Ways to Improve your Content Workflows and Strategy in 2023,” presented by Canto, and get the survey results to learn content strategies, workflows and technology that have made these organizations successful. Click here to view more MarTech webinars. Related Stories New on MarTech
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MOps leaders as psychologists: The modern mind-readers
This four-part series presents a framework that describes the roles and responsibilities of marketing operations leaders. This part discusses MOps leaders as psychologists, in addition to their roles as modernizers (see part 1) and orchestrators (see part 2). Exposure to marketing during my early educational journey was limited. With a heavy math/science background, I chose the “easy” path and majored in engineering. I struggled in advanced engineering classes but thrived in electives — communications, business, organizational behavior — which was a sign for my future in marketing. Because of my engineering background, I was fortunate to get an opportunity to join GE Healthcare through its entry-level leadership development program. There I was exposed to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). MRIs had become go-to diagnostic devices and subsequently were used in neuroscience. I was fascinated by their eventual application in fMRI: Functional MRI. These extensions helped us understand the most consequential medical mystery: how (and why) people do what they do. fMRI uses the same underlying technology as conventional MRI, but the scanner and a medical contrast agent are used to detect increased blood flow in response to a stimulus in what is commonly referenced as “hot spots.” fMRI reveals which of the brain’s processes “light up” when a person experiences different sensations, e.g., exposure to different images in common studies. As a result, we now know what parts of the brain are involved in making decisions. Successful marketing ‘lights up’ customers’ brains Traditional marketing campaigns and measurement left gaps in understanding how and why people choose to buy. We were dependent on aggregated data. With digital channels, we gain first-hand insights into an individual’s response to a stimulus, i.e., content. Here’s where the comparison picks up: We can observe nearly anything and everything that customers or prospects do digitally.Most customers know that we can track (almost) everything that they do.Because of that knowledge, customers expect contextual, value-based content, forcing marketing to provide more value in exchange for the permission to track. Our goal as marketers is to make our customers and prospects “light up” with pleasure or satisfaction at each interaction. And, we now have the technology to track it. We are effectively reading minds — just as if it were an fMRI scan. Here’s an overview of three of the primary psychology “tactics” that every marketer should know: Priming is the attempt to trigger a subconscious reaction to stimuli that influences our conscious decisions. The most common application is in branding and first click-through impressions. If a customer continues their journey, then the use of aspirational product or service images in content are common priming approaches.Social proof is perhaps the most common example, given the impact of word-of-mouth influence. It is commonly seen in product reviews and ratings. Content marketing often relies on case studies and customer testimonials to hear from “people like us.”Anchoring refers to marketing’s role in pricing and discounting. Most decisions people make are relative to the initial set of information they have received.
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Webinar: How to avoid these 8 big email mistakes
Unfortunately, we’ve all been there. Every now and then, we make cringe-worthy mistakes. But the mistakes that haunt us in our personal lives often aren’t as public as email marketing mistakes, which go out to hundreds and thousands of subscribers. This webinar covers the eight most common email marketing pitfalls, including deliverability, subject lines, design and more, to help you understand how to avoid or fix them. Register today for “The 8 Biggest Email Mistakes and How to Avoid Them,” presented by Adobe. New on MarTech