What’s the biggest challenge facing B2B Marketing?

Holger Schulze recently set a challenge on LinkedIn. He asked Marketing Managers to describe in one word the biggest challenge facing B2B Marketing.

Over 260 senior managers and directors took part and we have analysed all the responses and formed a word cloud of the top 50.

Data and Content came top as the biggest challenge for B2B Marketing, with Relevance running a close second. The top 10 are as follows:

• Data
• Content
• Relevance
• Differentiation
• ROI
• Creativity
• Insight
• Trust
• Value
• Budget

The value of good Data in B2B telemarketing is immediately apparent the moment you make a call. That’s why SCi Sales Group have invested in the collation and constant cleaning of a database that holds 2.9m data points in the UK and 1.8m in Europe. It’s our most precious resource.

We also agree with our marketing colleagues that Content and Relevance are a big challenge. A B2B call lives or dies by whether the message is relevant to the target audience and has substantial content. These are key questions we debate in the Workshops we organise with clients for all our campaigns.

Do you agree with the results of the LinkedIn question? What’s your view on the biggest challenge facing B2B marketing… and can you describe it in one word?

How does telemarketing compare to other marketing channels?

B2B Marketing magazine recently published an insight into the effectiveness of various business-to-business marketing channels. It looked at current trends and attitudes in the UK market.

One question revealed some interesting results. UK B2B Marketing Managers and Directors were asked “Which type of marketing channel has proven to be the most/least effective for your business?”

The results were displayed as a percentage of respondents, but we have analysed the figures and expressed them as an Index Score. This shows the difference between those that feel the channel is effective and those that don’t. The higher the score, the more effective the channel.

We have listed the top 5 most effective channels and the bottom 5 least effective.

No surprises that email marketing tops the chart, although the reliance of Marketing Managers on digital marketing does raise the question “Whatever happened to multi-channel marketing?” – a subject we will discuss in future issues.

Some people may be surprised that in the age of digital marketing and social media that Telemarketing makes it into the top 5. We are not surprised at all. The question was about the effectiveness of marketing channels and telemarketing can still deliver results that other channels can only dream about.

If you want to view the ROI figures for some of our recent telemarketing campaigns and judge for yourself whether Telemarketing is effective please click here.

Now for the least effective channels.

Press advertising is at the bottom of the list and, surprisingly, online banner/button adverts. Sponsorship, Exhibitions and Direct Mail to potential customers also make an appearance (but Direct Mail to existing customers is considered to be effective, ranking 3rd).

How do these charts marry with your experience? Which are the most and least effective channels for you?