B2B enterprise marketers are upping their demand-generation game by focusing more on their customers, according to a new report from ANNUITAS.
“This year’s study showed that enterprise marketers are making small gains in terms of effectiveness in their approach to demand generation,” said ANNUITAS CEO Carlos Hidalgo. “Over the last three years, we have seen a 16% increase in this area, which is great news. However, we are still seeing organizations grappling with having the right skill set and aligning their metrics and analytics to their overall goals.”
The annual study, “2016 B2B Enterprise Demand Generation Survey,” which polled 120 B2B marketers over a four-month period, revealed an 11% increase in companies that include buyer personas as a standard part of their demand generation programs, a 22% increase since 2014. “This continuing upward trend shows that organizations are becoming more buyer-centric in their approach to demand generation,” the report said.
Further, there was an almost 10% jump in the number of organizations that are creating content directly related to their customer’s challenges.
“The rise in organizations that are creating content directly related to their customer’s pain points and challenges increased by 9.7% year-over-year, and those who only do it on occasion dropped by 15%,” the report said. “This indicates that more B2B demand generation marketers are looking to connect with their buyers and attempting to create more relevant content.”
In addition, the overwhelming majority (89%) of respondents are using lead nurturing as a part of their demand generation strategy, which is a 12.3% increase over last year. Moreover, more than half of the respondents have begun to score content based on buyer journey consumption rather than grading all of it the same.
“This is an indication that marketers are focusing on ongoing engagement with their buyers and understanding the importance of communication throughout the purchase process,” the report said.
However, while B2B marketers have recognized that putting buyers front-and-center in their demand-gen programs is of paramount importance, many still struggle with the effectiveness of their demand-gen efforts, with just 17% reporting they are very effective.
“Although 70% report moderate effectiveness, that still means more than 10% are ineffective or don’t track results,” the report said.
