Rebalance B2B Marketing Budgets to Maximize Sales
In this article, you'll learn...
- How you should rebalance your marketing budget to boost sales
- What the ideal marketing budget spread looks like
One of the fastest-growing large companies in the world is VMware, based in Palo Alto, CA. Its sales, for example, have tripled over the last four years, from $600 million in 2006 to $2 billion in 2009, and sales are expected to hit $3 billion in 2010.
That may be why VMware is a Wall Street darling—because compared with the competition the company is growing both profitably and predictably. Why is that? And what does this mean to B2B marketers?
While conducting research for my upcoming book, we analyzed B2B marketers' budgets and found that spending trends for most B2B companies show that marketing dollars are spent targeting the wrong level of audience.
Some 75% of marketing budgets is targeted at the user/purchasing levels. Only 15% is spent at the influencer level, and (sadly) only 10% is spent at the decision-maker level.
Let's examine this imbalance. The great companies that have separated themselves from their benchmark competitors have a marketing budget spread that more closely resembles the following: 35% to the users/purchasing, 35% to the influencers, and 30% to the decision-makers.
Note the approximately three-fold shift (compared with underperforming competitors) in spending aimed at decision-makers. So, clearly, rebalancing the marketing spend to hit decision-makers is important for success.
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Comments
excellent point about tradeshows - in essence, thinking ahead of time about the attendees and which of the customer "types" they are
well done
Well done Sean!
You provide an excellent and facts-based description of how smart companies engage with their ecosystem and leverage influencers and decision makers better than their competitors.
EMC used such an approach to launch their "fixed- content storage solutions in the early 2000s. In a few months they moved from the satus of an IT storage-box mover to thought leaders on compliance solutions ahead of IBM.
IBM also have re-organized and merged marketing and communications in order to better engage with influencers. Regarding events, a European IBM marketing executive was telling me recently that most events are now intended for selected guests and aimed at helping closing deals.
One last thing, when measuring ROI, you need to take a long enough reference timeframe as this game of influene requires some time and a sustained effort.
I just started a series of posts on ecosystem- and influencers-centric B2B marketing on my blog;
http://www.olivierriviere-consulting.com/blog
Kevin: Thanks for your comments...trade shows seem to be a legacy whose time is finally being realistically or properly evaluated.
Olivier: Great examples. Valid point of timeframe relative to ROI...it shouldn't be limited to the short-mid close rates...but rather relative to the level (user, influencer, decision maker) and sales cycle. Executive relationship building can have a very long payback, but without it, the road, deal size and margin aren't maximized. So to your point, measure appropriately.
This is interesting but what are some great examples of decision-maker marketing strategies?