Challenges Shaping Marketing Strategies
What are the most pressing issues shaping America’s marketing leaders? Frost and Sullivan, co-sponsored by the Business Marketing Association, surveyed 437 executives to find out. Whether B-to-B, B-to-C or both, there is considerable overlap regardless of the business model.
Top External Factors
Key takeaways: the top three external factors impacting marketing strategies are overwhelmingly negative. Companies reported at least 71% of the time that these three factors negatively impacted them:
- Adjusting to the economic downturn
- Intensifying competition
- Changes in customer buying behavior
Top Five Key Marketing Challenges
According to the results of the study, marketing executives are under pressure to focus on identifying new avenues of growth. Although the priority of these challenges may vary across business models, they are largely the same for all:
- Identify new, adjacent market strategies
- Identify new opportunities for existing products
- Measure marketing spending efficiency and effectiveness
- Prioritize content offerings to create maximum value with customers (ex: social media, white papers, benchmarking tools, etc.)
- Improve sales and marketing integration
Other Key Marketing Survey Take-Aways
Survey questions revealed some surprising results:
- On average, B-to-C companies have larger marketing budgets, allocating twice the amount of revenue to marketing as companies with other business models (8.5% for B-to-C vs. 3% for B-to-B or Hybrid models.)
- B-to-B companies spend 50% more of their marketing budget on online media vs B-to-C companies.
- Marketing executives predict either maintaining their existing marketing staff levels, or moderately recruiting new staff.
- They also believe that budget cuts are over – optimistically expecting moderate or substantial increases in budgets.
Marketers believe that the economy is rebounding, and predict a moderate increase in their company’s performance going forward. With such increases, they anticipate their marketing budgets to increase, too.
(Thanks to Frost & Sullivan’s “Growth Team Membership” research.)
What are YOUR predictions for overall business growth? For marketing budgets? Why?
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ABOUT Lisa M. Chapman:
Ms. Chapman’s new book, How to Make Money Online With Social Media: A Step-by-Step Guide for Entrepreneurs will be available very soon. With offices in Nashville Tennessee, but working virtually with international clients, Lisa M. Chapman serves her clients as a business and marketing coach, business planning consultant and social media consultant. As a Founder of iBrand Masters, a social media consulting firm, Lisa Chapman helps clients to establish and enhance their online brand, attract their target market, engage them in meaningful social media conversations, and convert online traffic into revenues. Email: Lisa @ LisaChapman.com