Plus, take our Martech Replacement Survey
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Good morning, Marketers, and have you changed your stack recently?
A lot of things have changed for marketers over the last year, in bad ways as well as good. That much is evident from our second story below, reporting on a survey of U.S. marketers conducted for Sitecore. One positive: 77% of those surveyed said they had seen innovation over the past year and were able to build a more advanced tech stack.
We’d like to dig deeper into that, but we need your help. Have you replaced any applications in your tech stack in the past year? Have you moved from homegrown legacy applications to commercial solutions (or vice versa)? And what impact have those changes had on your team?
Yes, it’s time for the Martech Replacement Survey. May I ask for three minutes of your time to complete it here? We will share the results, of course. Here’s a look at last year’s data.
Kim Davis
Editorial Director
Accelerating the ABM customer journey
For Tom O’Regan, CEO at Madison Logic, Journey Acceleration Measurement, just launched, reflects on changes in the nature of B2B marketing. “Even before the pandemic,” he told us, “B2B marketers were becoming more responsible for not just marketing and branding, but being a growth engine. They were aligning more closely with sales and focused on shared revenue targets. The new marketer is a growth marketer, and those are the individuals we work with.”
Pepperjam is a leading affiliate marketing lifecycle management platform that has been testing Journey Acceleration Measurement in beta. Maura Smith, Pepperjam’s Senior VP Marketing, listed some benefits they’ve seen with the solution: “Measuring the effectiveness of paid media channels in reaching target accounts, accelerating pipeline activity and influencing revenue are critical,” she said. “Additionally, clear views into leads generated and their downstream impact to revenue are necessary in demonstrating marketing’s direct contribution to new business growth.”
There’s also considerable savings in time and effort. “We’ve been able to save countless hours per month that would otherwise be spent on data aggregation and analysis,” Smith told us. O’Regan explained: “Existing clients, that aren’t in beta, what they need to do is work with the marketing ops team. They need to do data aggregation; they need to look at engagement with the marketing efforts; they need to pull together spreadsheets; they need to manually pull together engagement, then look at the CRM and when those accounts were engaged, and piece it together. With the time it takes to do that, you’re no longer able to optimize.”
Most U.S. marketers ready to quit in last year
An astonishing 59% of U.S. marketers considered resigning at least once in the past year, while 79% described the pandemic as the most challenging period of their career. Those are the most sobering statistics in a new survey of 400 marketing professionals conducted by Advanis for digital experience platform Sitecore.
The reasons behind the statistics are not hard to find: 80% said their responsibilities had significantly increased in the past year, against a backdrop of pressure from management, unrealistic deadlines, and sharp changes in strategy. Interestingly, marketers also feel pressured by changes in consumer behavior. Based on a sample of 1,000 consumers, the survey found that no less than 70% of consumers will leave a website if they can’t find what they want in a few clicks.
Why we care. We’re perhaps still too close to the events of 2020 to have fully assessed their impact on work environments and career paths — we’re still struggling to comprehend the enormity of the health impact. There have been a lot of stories about digital transformation, and the embrace of digital collaboration and engagement by marketing and other business teams will surely have long-term benefits. But there’s been human cost along the way.
A different kind of conference handout
Speaking at an upcoming event? Have you considered creating a handout or takeaway for the audience beyond a copy of your slide deck? Your slide deck is great for attendees to go back and remember or revisit what you presented. However, a handout that is used by attendees over and over again to help them do their job and has your branding on it could be a bigger benefit to you and your audience in the long run.
You may want to consider putting together a job aid. A job aid, which is often used in instructional design and training, is something that people refer to over and over again to remember a process, procedure, framework or other tips you taught in order to do their job better.
Here are a few tips for making a job aid to go with your educational session or presentation.
- It needs to be specific, useful and help the audience do something better in their job. This is not just about some notes or highlights from your presentation. It should be focused, actionable and task-oriented.
- Consider the format that is best for the information or task you are creating the job aid for. Possible formats include a step-by-step process, flow chart, checklist, decision table and worksheets.
- Design it to be fun, aesthetically appealing, and easy to print out. In other words, make it something people will want to post in their office. There are many tools out there to help you easily create a job aid.
So next time you’re presenting at a virtual event, or hopefully soon an in-person event, consider creating a job aid that will help attendees do their jobs long after your presentation ends.
B2B digital transformation by the numbers
A new study released by ecommerce platform Sana Commerce found that 94% of those surveyed agree that most manufacturers will shift their market strategy in 2021. The survey included 802 U.S. manufacturers, 88% of which sold through a combination of online and offline channels (only 12% were digital-only). The study was conducted in partnership with Sapio Research. The biggest takeaways:
- On average around 50% of overall revenue is generated via online channels;
- 45% are seeing an increase in sales as a result of investing in digital strategies;
- 67% are selling direct to consumers;
- 63% of B2B retailers are selling through marketplaces such as Amazon.com;
- 63% report purchasing an ecommerce platform from a third party (SaaS, licensed or on-premise application); and
- 52% report using a homegrown ecommerce platform (built and maintained in-house)
Why we care. First, it’s no surprise that digital channels open up direct-to-consumer sales. Consumers are more educated and well-researched than ever and often prefer to skip the so-called middleman and take over ownership of their buyer’s journey. Secondly, the wave of ecommerce platforms purchased or built in-house indicates the potential for a sea change across B2B marketing and selling that just about everybody, according to this study, believes will accelerate this year. Much of the change brought about by 2020 pandemic shutdowns is still down the road and not in the rearview mirror.
Quote of the day
“One day I think I have all the answers. The next day I have no freaking clue.” Dave Gerhardt, CMO, Privy
About The Author
Kim Davis is the Editorial Director of MarTech Today. Born in London, but a New Yorker for over two decades, Kim started covering enterprise software ten years ago. His experience encompasses SaaS for the enterprise, digital- ad data-driven urban planning, and applications of SaaS, digital technology, and data in the marketing space. He first wrote about marketing technology as editor of Haymarket’s The Hub, a dedicated marketing tech website, which subsequently became a channel on the established direct marketing brand DMN. Kim joined DMN proper in 2016, as a senior editor, becoming Executive Editor, then Editor-in-Chief a position he held until January 2020. Prior to working in tech journalism, Kim was Associate Editor at a New York Times hyper-local news site, The Local: East Village, and has previously worked as an editor of an academic publication, and as a music journalist. He has written hundreds of New York restaurant reviews for a personal blog, and has been an occasional guest contributor to Eater.
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