27/05/2019
Marketing vs Sales? The new winning partnership within the data-driven B2B multichannel Marketing
On May 23rd took place the annual meeting for B2B marketers organized by Business International and Cribis in collaboration with Personalive.
Held in Milan, this year the event topic was “Marketing vs Sales? The new winning partnership within the data-driven B2B multichannel Marketing”.
The event was attended by more than 400 people belonging to different sectors, but united by the core topic of the forum, the relationship between Marketing & Sales.
Moderated by and with the scientific direction of our CEO Andrea Boaretto, the event dealt with the different hot topics on the matter as for instance Branding and Organization, Use of corporate touchpoints, Chatbot, Artificial Intelligence and new Martech technologies.
The topics were analyzed using a Survey, carried out and analyzed by Personalive following the CAWI method, distributed to a sample of 100 Italian B2B companies selected across Italy and with a heterogeneous distribution in terms of dimensions (equally distributed among small, medium and big companies) and business sectors.
Its results were presented during the event as the 8th edition of B2B Marketing Observatory in Italy, in synergy with best practices and success business cases based on a data driven approach to show the evolution of a sector which is increasingly becoming similar to the Consumer world.
Some highlights from our research:
- Marketing function covers an increasingly relevant and autonomous role inside companies
- B2B marketing budget is expected to grow, according to 47% of Italian firms
- The relationship with Sales function appears to be more aligned, as evidenced by an increased alignment of KPIs, this implies an enhanced similarity among the business objectives of those two business units.
- Almost a firm out of two complains that the main issues between Marketing & Sales functions come from an unclear allocation of activities and the absence of communication and involvement
- The importance of data: despite the fact that salesforce still remains the primary opportunity source for companies, there are other tools that can support it for what concerns Lead Generation, such as social media (Linkedin above all) and third parties databases
- Digital-physical integration: lead nurturing is carried out mainly through Face to Face meetings and events, of course complemented by actions on digital channels (Direct Email marketing above al).
Consequently, the future of B2B marketing lies in a tighter and structured relationship between Marketing & Sales, where the salesman should not be replaced by digital channels, but has inevitably to evolve and adapt to the context, always more dynamic and multichannel, becoming a “4.0 salesman” totally integrated within marketing dynamic and flows. Thanks to that, he can extract value in order to be transmitted to customers and prospects. Only in this way it is possible to implement the well-known unique view on the customer, with a perfect integration between Marketing & Sales as well as among online and offline activities.
Therefore it is clear the importance of tools available to Marketing & Sales to not lose sight of the core of their activities, the customers, which are not alike but act following their own ideas and peculiarities. Thanks to these tools (AI e Marketing Automation), each customer can be reached out with a conversation way more and more customized and one-to-one (Content Marketing).
Do you want to learn how this is possible or do you want to dig deeper into these topics? Contact us!