Marketing must change fundamentally in companies: The transformation of marketing and sales into the digital world is becoming a question of survival for many companies following the Corona pandemic. This is the key finding of a recent trend survey by Cloudbridge Consulting. According to the survey, it is essential to make better use of digital channels and to automate marketing processes even more effectively.
The digital transformation accelerated by the Corona pandemic will also have an even greater impact on marketing. According to the latest trend survey by Munich-based management consultancy Cloudbridge, the Corona crisis and the trend towards digitalization it has fostered will lead to a veritable race to catch up among companies to digitalize marketing processes and thus make them more effective. For the fourth time, Cloudbridge Consulting is shedding light on the trends surrounding modern marketing and marketing automation in companies from various industries.
According to the survey, marketing managers have so far made too little use of the opportunities offered by digitization. For example, only a quarter of the companies surveyed have implemented special software for marketing automation. However, the fact that 38 percent of the companies have started a project to select such a tool and another 15 percent are planning such a project shows that this aspect is becoming increasingly important. Only 15 percent of the companies are not yet dealing with this issue at all.
This proves that companies have recognized the need for a rethink. This assumption is also suggested by the answers to the current greatest challenges for marketing managers, according to which companies must and want to develop their marketing and sales structures into coordinated, agile units working in different channels. A large proportion of respondents cited this collaboration between marketing and sales as a key challenge for their organization – only 37 percent said that marketing and sales are currently pulling in the same direction.
“If there was ever a time to drive the transformation of the marketing and sales organization, it is now,” said Nicolas Wandschneider, managing director of Munich-based Cloudbridge Consulting GmbH. “Marketing and sales will have to evolve significantly over the next few years with an even stronger digital component in pre-sales and sales processes. Marketing can become the enabler for the end-to-end digitization of the B2B customer journey. Marketing departments that have consistently focused on digitally mapping customer needs in the past sometimes have significant advantages here over traditional and people-centric sales models.”
Employees lack key skills for digital marketing
However, there is still some catching up to do when it comes to employee skills, as the survey also proves. For example, 60 percent of respondents said their employees do not currently have the skills needed for data-driven marketing. These are primarily skills in performance marketing and in the fields of tracking and reporting, but also skills such as customer analytics and in the field of strategic conception.
Collaboration between marketing and sales still in need of improvement
While the importance of lead generation emerges clearly from the survey, it also shows that it must be actively supported and nurtured. This requires close interaction between marketing and sales. However, only just over one in three respondents believes that the two units in companies are currently pulling in the same direction. Two-thirds, on the other hand, think there is room for improvement. Among the points of criticism are the lack of a central marketing organization, but also the lack of a mindset that cooperation between the two divisions makes sense. A lack of capacity and outdated structures are also cited as hurdles to better cross-departmental cooperation. “Old silo structures that split marketing and sales into separate functional units are poison for bundling sales power,” says Wandschneider.
Collaboration between marketing and sales still expandable
While the importance of lead generation emerges clearly from the survey, it also shows that it must be actively supported and nurtured. This requires close interaction between marketing and sales. However, only just over one in three respondents believes that the two units in companies are currently pulling in the same direction. Two-thirds, on the other hand, think there is room for improvement. Among the points of criticism are the lack of a central marketing organization, but also the lack of a mindset that cooperation between the two divisions makes sense. A lack of capacity and outdated structures are also cited as hurdles to better cross-departmental cooperation. “Old silo structures that split marketing and sales into separate functional units are poison for bundling sales power,” says Wandschneider.
Content production becomes more important
In order to generate leads on digital platforms, content is of great importance to companies. Accordingly, companies attribute a central role to content production. When asked about the most important tasks for 2021, content production as a support for lead management was the top topic. Closely linked to this is inbound marketing, in which companies strive to be found passively instead of actively approaching contacts (“outbound”). Content marketing plays a central role here, because relevant content can lead customers to companies.
Artificial intelligence does not (yet) play a major role
It is striking that despite the digitization trends, artificial intelligence hardly plays a role in the marketing trends. One in three respondents even considers AI to be insignificant in marketing and sales, and around half cannot yet assess its role. Consequently, more than half of the companies have not yet tackled any concepts in this field. Particularly in SMEs, digital marketing strategies must first be implemented before companies can devote themselves to more advanced topics such as AI.
Methodology
The data for the trend survey was collected online over a period of six weeks in March and April 2021. The sample comprises 95 questionnaires. Only specialists and decision-makers from marketing, sales, CRM and IT in German B2B companies were surveyed. The participants were located at different hierarchical levels.
Methodology
The data for the trend survey was collected online over a period of six weeks in March and April 2021. The sample comprises 95 questionnaires. Only specialists and decision-makers from marketing, sales, CRM and IT in German B2B companies were surveyed. The participants were located at different hierarchical levels.
Contact
| Press contact Nina Mühlens T. +49 176 22507174 E. [email protected] |
Marketing contact Melanie Krug T. +49 89 4204970 E. [email protected] |