B2B Marketing Blog

In the our annual State of Pipeline Marketing survey we asked over 350 marketers which marketing channels they invest their time and budget in.

We tallied their answers and aggregated them down by industry to provide you a snapshot of how different industries find, engage and generate new customers.

If you're interested in knowing the marketing channels most used by your industry peers, or how marketing budgets may typically get allocated, then keep reading. 

Marketing technology and IT services is difficult work. You need as much intel as you can for choosing the most enticing value proposition, and deciding the right time to engage prospects depending on their readiness to buy.

So let's look at how technology and IT marketers should approach the challenge of expanding every stage of the funnel. 

"There is a science to advertising. Experienced advertisers have watched and recorded, tested and logged, and left records of countless campaigns. In these conditions the advertising and merchandising becomes a science. Principles are learned and proven by repeated tests” (Scientific Advertising).

This was written in 1923. And this was the beginning of the accountable marketing mindset.

In the 1920’s the careful attention to costs measurement of marketing effectiveness began. This mindset is alive and well today and we call it pipeline marketing.

What do ambitious and successful people always talk about? Their goals.

In creating the State of Pipeline Marketing report we wanted to understand the goals and priorities of B2B marketers who enjoy the highest return on ad spend.

We asked marketers to indicate their marketing ROI, and then pivoted our data around goals, attribution models, sales marketing alignment, and pipeline marketing expertise.

Our findings are pretty simple: marketers who are most effective with their ad budgets do things a little differently. Let's explore what those best practices are.

Display advertising is a bit of a mystery. You’re paying for impressions and clicks on sites you don’t own. You have countless referral sites and it is entirely onerous to track the opportunities and revenue generated from each display ad.

It’s an investment with little transparency into its effects on the bottom line.

But this doesn’t have to be the case with display ads in B2B marketing. In this post we’ll describe some best practices with help from online marketing experts. We’ll also talk about getting transparency into your display advertising so you can see its true impact on revenue.

We’re continuing our series of deep dives based on data from the 2015 State of PIpeline Marketing report. In this post we explore the findings that are most relevant to B2B CMOs.

The three areas we focus on are sales and marketing alignment, success metrics, and marketing attribution. By exploring these areas, CMOs and marketing leaders can understand how their peers are doing pipeline marketing and driving  business value for their organization.

(Finally, a past-due update for our AdWords For Lead Gen guide -- everything you need to know about AdWords to successfully generate leads AND drive more revenue.)

When it comes to marketing for B2B companies with a sales team, search engine marketing (SEM) is particularly important. In the State of Pipeline Marketing Report, paid search was the leading paid channel, when respondents were asked what channel had the greatest impact on revenue. And in another study where we tracked all the marketing touches for nearly 500,000 leads across many B2B industries, we found that over 50% of leads were attributable to search.

In the first annual State of Pipeline Marketing report we asked over 350 marketers how they measure success, which activities have the greatest impact on revenue, and what their number one marketing priority is.

It’s the only report that tells you the channels, attribution models, and priorities of marketers who champion revenue-focused marketing.

In the January 2015 iteration of ChiefMarTec’s marketing technology landscape, Scott Brinker identified 1,876 companies -- up from 947 companies the year before (and I’m sure there’s hundreds, if not thousands, more today). How on earth do marketers keep all of the various marketing technologies straight in their mind? And how are CMOs supposed to figure out the best technology stack for their company?

Demand generation is more than generating a high volume of leads and delivering them to sales. Demand generation is about expanding the pipeline with qualified prospects, closing revenue and getting more customers to use your product.

What are the best ways to do this? In this post we count the 9 best practices B2B marketers need to adopt in order to build profitable paid search, lead nurturing and content marketing campaigns.