Throughout my career I have been on a mission to contribute to qualified pipeline & revenue, while lowering customer attribution costs. I always found inspiration in publications from analysts like Forrester and Gartner, and communities like Frankwatching. Around this time of year, all of them post their views on trends and market dynamics in the year ahead of us.
I have distilled 3 key investment areas that I believe are most relevant for revenue & marketing leaders, as these will determine the winners in 2023:
- Redefine & demonstrate the value of brand investments,
- CX forms your brand,
- Achieve superb cross-functional alignment.
Redefine & demonstrate the value of brand investments
The traditional demand waterfall allowed us to chase short-term revenue goals by generating leads and make a measurable impact on the business. Reality is actually much more complicated than the funnel suggests. Truth to be told, we can’t measure all sources and this is why this approach will eventually work towards diminishing returns. The solution lies in the dark funnel. This is part of the marketing funnel that is not tracked by analytics tools, like word-of-mouth, social posts, video views, podcasts, communities. (Pioneer Chris Walker describes the dark funnel best in this clip).
As the impact on pipeline from brand investments is difficult to measure and forecast, tactics that fuel the dark funnel have a hard time finding their way on the Field’s priority list during the marketing planning & budgeting phase. When underinvested, marketing teams risk a stagnating marketing pipeline, and efforts will be focussed on converting leads that don’t have the intent to buy in the first place. 2023 will be the defining year where brand investments need to be redefined & value has to be demonstrated.
CX forms your brand
While teams are working to optimize the customer lifecycle, reality shows that unintentionally, a customer struggle can be created. To illustrate, Frankwatching opens their 2023 predictions stating that the majority of B2B decision makers actually don’t want to meet a seller. With this in mind, if your inbound strategy is centered around the CTA “book a demo/meet sales”, let’s realize that 50-90% of the buyer journey might be completed before a buyer interacts with a sales rep. This requires a lot from marketing and xDR teams as it profoundly impacts journey design, success metrics, content strategy and channel investments. Helpful can be to analyze the least effective marketing tactics and pull the plug if they do not provide ROI after optimization. Forrester’s predictions 2023 says it best: “A willingness to shed distractions that don’t move the needle will be the defining factor of success in 2023”. Also, a perfect harmonious synergy with sales is a crucial requirement. This brings me to the third point:
Achieve superb cross-functional alignment
“Strategic marketing priorities, such as innovation, customer experience (CX), and digital commerce, have transcended functional boundaries and are now enterprise-wide priorities with complex cross-functional execution”, say Gartner’s Top Trends to Impact CMOs in 2023. Moving the marketing org into your revenue org does not automatically improve alignment. Forrester: “Success, regardless of where demand marketing reports, will depend on demand leaders fully embracing their role in delivering satisfying experiences across the customer lifecycle. That will require marketing and sales to evolve their alignment and integration in order to support buyers and customers. This cannot be achieved until both of their internal operations are tuned to address buying groups and multiple opportunity types.”
On this new revenue-intersection, requirements emerged that need focus and attention in 2023. While teams lack the bandwidth, skills or enablement to do so, business leaders are also experiencing major recruitment challenges. Freelance marketing professionals can help solve urgent challenges, bring valuable knowledge and experience, and keep the bus driving while leaders find a more permanent solution.
--- Jan van Zwet, Revenue Marketing Advisor With 15 years of B2B Marketing experience at high growth companies like Amplitude, Zscaler and Sigma Computing, Jan helps Revenue teams increase marketing’s contribution to qualified pipeline & revenue while lowering customer attribution costs. #inspire #attract #convert janvanzwet.com