Each year, we identify best-in-class B2B marketers and compare their results to the rest of the research respondents. We define best-in-class marketing as having:

Traits of Best-In-Class Marketeers

For the third year in a row, ‘Growing and measuring brand awareness and health’ is cited as the top challenge in B2B marketing but it is in the middle of the pack when ranked as a significant objective for 2022. ‘Generating and nurturing leads’ again ranks as the top objective – not surprising given the drive internally for sales leads that exists in ‘sales-driven’ B2B organisations. Once again this highlights the challenge for B2B marketers of balancing long-term awareness against short-term sales objectives.

Lack of technical marketing skills are cited as the key pain points moving into 2022. As with last year, marketers expect to be most challenged in finding talent to manage martech, automation and CRM platforms and secondly, performance management and analytics. The skills shortage was initially driven by data-driven marketing. In 2021 it was exasperated by COVID restrictions on skilled migrants. In 2022, will the 'Great Resignation' bring further challenges?

Only 15% say they have integrated their systems to drive automated reporting, and measurement generally continues to be problematic. Of note, as more organisations move to ABM, they also cite upcoming challenges in finding the right skills for this discipline.

How have marketers’ challenges changed over recent years?

Over the last four years, the two main challenges B2B marketers have faced are diametrically-opposed budget considerations being (1) brand building and (2) lead generation. Earlier this decade, lead generation was the recurring problem as marketers were taking short-term ‘campaign’ approaches to support customer acquisition. Over the last three years, brand awareness has come to the fore as the primary challenge which requires a longer-term view and investment.

The pandemic has caused many marketers to reassess their strategic direction and rejuvenate. They have brought forward their digital initiatives (given they had to) and, at the same time lost a key B2B channel to market in the form of in-person events. Moving into 2022, only 25% feel that the pandemic will continue to have a negative impact on their business (45% last year).

Persona and customer journey mapping is an indication of intent to better understand the profile and needs of the target market. This activity has risen slightly year on year. Interestingly, enterprise-size organisations ($500M+) are much more likely to report little/minimal return on this investment than smaller organisations.

Which statement best describes persona and
customer journey development for your audience?

Did you know that only 5% of your target audience is ‘in the market’ at any given time?

This is according to the ‘95:5 rule’ published by Erhenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science. It is not a precise science but one based on the cadence on which your B2B customer would be seeking your product or service. More marketers are realising the importance of building brand awareness and salience with their B2B audience and so we are not surprised to see that, for the third year running, they report growing brand awareness as their top challenge.

Other brand factors are now coming into play; 76% of respondents cite that ‘employer branding’, being their proposition to their current and future employees, is significant to some degree in their brand strategy. Further, 61% cite that CSR and ESG reporting is significant in supporting brand affinity.

Which statement describes your investment split between
long-term brand awareness and short-term demand generation?

It is heartening to see that 87% of respondents are investing in thought-leadership content. This is the type of content that is used to create brand awareness, educate audiences and build credibility and trust – being the content designed to drive customers into the top of the funnel. However only 37% say they are confident that two-thirds or more of this reaches its target audience, in part a reflection of marketers' inability to effectively measure.

Which response below best indicates the amount
of ‘thought-leadership’ content you develop?

How much of your thought-leadership content
reaches its intended target audience?

Whilst LinkedIn still dominates the B2B social media landscape with 91% penetration, it has dropped a little from 2020 (94%). Social media platforms are increasingly becoming pay-to-play and marketers pay more for their click in LinkedIn. TikTok rises in B2B with 6% adoption, up from 2% in 2020. This is not surprising given the rapid growth in TikTok audiences during the pandemic – it is now the seventh biggest social media network (B2C/B2B) ahead of LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest and Snapchat.

B2B Social Media Platform Usage

Which statement best describes your ROI
from your social media activities?

One of the key indicators of alignment is agreement on the Ideal Customer Profile definition. The good news is we see an uplift from 41% to 53% year-on-year for this measure, but still there is much room for improvement. There is also slight uplift in other key measures such as agreed MQL definition (38% to 44%) and agreed lead management process (34% to 41%).

Enterprise-size organisations are 2.6X more likely to report that Sales and Marketing do not work closely together, and much more likely to see Marketing as a cost centre providing ‘tactical support’. Enterprise alignment has been a perennial problem in B2B (as evidenced in our research since inception in 2011) with operational silos and misaligned KPIs impacting growth opportunities from within.

The emerging player in B2B client-facing functions is the SDR or Inside Sales team – a critical intermediary between Marketing and Sales. Just over half of the respondents now have this team in place with nearly two-thirds reporting into the Sales organisation. Currently 30% of respondents have a sales outreach tech platform, which we expect will rise.

Which statement best describes the relationship
between your Sales and Marketing teams?

What is ABM?
For the purpose of the study, we defined ABM as a systematic approach to revenue growth that aligns Sales and Marketing activity for targeting specific accounts or clusters of accounts using data-driven personalisation.

ABM is a misnomer as a term. It is as much about the Sales team involvement as it is about Marketing. A more apt term is ‘Account-Based Everything’ (ABE), referring to the need for all account-facing teams to adopt and support the personalized account-centric approach to engagement. The aforementioned SDR team is the critical go-between group in this process.

ABM programs have been implemented by 60% of best-in-class respondents compared to just 32% of the rest of respondents.

Which best describes your ROI from ABM?

ABM Segmentation Models

There has been a shift over the last year away from One2One ABM to a One2Many model. The proportion of those implementing One2Many nearly doubled as marketers seek to take advantage of martech and data services that allow them to target broader groups of accounts. However, only 37% report they are getting moderate to strong ROI. Given the lengthy B2B buying cycle, another 36% say it is too early to tell.

Our view is that account centricity is the future for most B2B marketers with the ‘secret sauce’ being ongoing collaboration, optimisation and commitment between the Sales and Marketing teams.

What is the primary ABM segmentation model that you use?

The B2B marketer’s ability to execute and measure performance is heavily dependent upon the state (integration and functionality) of their marketing technology platforms. Exactly half of respondents report that they have a defined martech stack. Whilst 76% have a marketing automation platform, only about one third (35%) have invested in a data analytics reporting platform which is required to effectively consolidate results from communications channels, CRM and other touchpoints.

Have a defined
martech stack

Use a marketing automation platform and 74% of those have it connected to their CRM

Use an ABM
tech platform

What other technology platforms and data services
do you subscribe to?

About one quarter of respondents (24%) state they accurately measured and communicated ROI over the last 12 months – compared to 40% who said they achieved their objectives! Not something to put on the honour board, but at least accurate measurement has improved compared to 2020 (18%). Despite this, they carried KPIs for ‘sourced’ and ‘influenced’ pipeline/revenue, brand reach, account engagement and customer NPS as their primary goals. Only 15% of respondents have automated and integrated martech in place to manage their analytics, which will need to improve to enable marketers to demonstrate their top-line revenue value more effectively into the business.

For which of the following does Marketing carry
a target (multiples allowed)?

How do you expect your 2022 marketing budget to compare to your 2021 budget (calendar years)?

As we emerge from the pandemic (slowly), there is optimism around marketing budgets, with 53% expecting an increase of 10% or more compared with only 8% expecting a decrease.

The top three planned investment areas remain the same as the previous year – content development, website/SEO and digital media. The big mover is ‘in-person events’ for which respondents are 2.6X more likely to rank in their planned top three areas compared to this year. Not surprisingly, given events fell off the agenda during 2021.

What are the TOP 3 areas you plan to invest in over the next year?

The field work for this study was conducted in October and November 2021, with 550 B2B organisations participating in an online survey. The survey was promoted via digital communications including email and social media by Green Hat and its research partners.

The main respondents were Marketing Manager (39%), CMO/Head of Marketing (28%), CEO/Managing Director (14%) with the remainder coming from agency principals/consultants and Sales functions (19%).

Respondent Organisation Annual Revenue

Respondent Industry

Much appreciation to the esteemed CMOs who assisted with this study. This group donates its time to review our questionnaire year on year and make recommendations for changes based on the trends and dynamics of the marketplace. They then assist in the analysis of the research results.