B2B marketers have come a long way in the last ten years. Technology has changed how we communicate and operate within our organizations. It has empowered B2B buyers, and made marketers accountable for pursuing and serving the buyer at every step of their journey. Technology has also produced a myriad of digital channels, managed with a portfolio of new tools to engage the buyer across these channels. But for all of the progress made in this digital transformation, chaos still reigns in most of our marketing efforts. Given the current complexity generated by digital, it is time for the pendulum to swing back toward simplicity and alignment—particularly in the experience we provide to our customers—in order to capitalize on new technologies and deliver a positive customer experience. Enter 2016: The Year of the Customer Journey

1. The Pendulum Swings Back Toward Alignment
Toby Murdock, CEO & Co-Founder
B2B marketing has been reeling over the past years as it withstands the
tidal wave of technology that has crashed over it. Marketing has been
scrambling from one tool to the next trying to meet their buyer in
every digital channel the buyer demands to be served. Disparate
teams have taken ownership over different tools at different
points in the buyer’s journey—corporate marketing runs the blog,
demand gen runs email, product marketing runs webinars, etc.
With all of these tools managed by siloed teams, buyers are
being ping-ponged from one value proposition to the next while
different teams deliver different and disjointed messages.
In 2016, B2B marketing organizations will work to rationalize the
chaos that their technology “scramble” has created.
Nader Akhnoukh, CTO & Co-Founder
Content marketing will continue its trajectory through the
early majority. The term, however, will begin its decline as
B2B marketers come to the realization that content powers
all marketing channels. Consistent marketing content is
needed at every stage of a buyer’s lifecycle, not just the top
of the funnel where “content marketing” has been thriving.
“86% of senior-level marketers agree
that it’s very important to create
a cohesive customer journey.”
-LinkedIn and SalesForce Marketing Cloud, The State of
Marketing Leadership: How Senior-Level Marketers are Redefining
Success and Integrating the Customer Journey
“As the customer focus becomes a cross-
functional responsibility, collaboration is
key. 56% of marketers view their relationship
with the CIO as absolutely critical or very
important, but that number must increase.”
-Salesforce, 2015 State of Marketing
Christine Viera, SVP of Marketing
In 2016, B2B marketers will put promise into practice to deliver a
marketing-driven customer experience. Here’s what to expect:
1. An increased focus on a strong content strategy,
tightly aligned to every stage of the customer’s
journey and mapped to revenue impact.
2. The dream of sales and marketing alignment
becomes a reality with true visibility and
consistency across cross-departmental plans.
3. Post-sale communications and messaging
cement the role of content as the glue of
customer experience.
4. The advances in these other areas bring alignment
of content with go-to-market plans to the CMO’s table.
Measuring satisfaction on customer
journeys is 30% more predictive of overall
customer satisfaction than measuring
happiness for each individual interaction.
In addition, maximizing satisfaction with customer journeys
has the potential not only to increase customer satisfaction
by 20% but also to lift revenue by up to 15%.
-McKinsey Company,
The Three Cs of Customer Satisfaction: Consistency, Consistency, Consistency
30%
20% Increase
in customer
satisfaction
15% Lift in
Revenue
MAX
Customer Journey
Satisfaction
Potential
Reward
Patrick Cameron, SVP of Sales
Sales people who do not engage their prospects with
compelling and meaningful content that drives business
value for their prospects will become irrelevant as
the customer journey shifts to immediate value.
Nine month roll-outs will become a thing of the past as
companies provide significant value sooner and free trials in
B2B software will go away—it’s a waste of everybody’s time
if you aren’t doing real work. Barriers to entry to demonstrate
real proof of value from within your own organization will drop.
Ryan Flynn, SVP of Customer Success
CMOs will feel the pressure to deliver on customer experience
and sales/marketing alignment as post-purchase customer
marketing “comes of age.” Those who succeed will insist
on an integrated, customer-centric strategy with set
and measurable performance metrics. It’s time to align
marketing to the ownership process not as an afterthought,
but as a critical piece of the go-to-market strategy.
Riley Gibson, VP of Product
Right content, right person, right time. It’s hard to find a 2014 or 2015
marketing prediction that does not include these words. But for
the B2B marketer, a major roadblock to this vision is forming.
Content being served up to prospects in a B2B environment will
become increasingly customer-centric, educating, informing,
and leading prospects through the buyer journey.
B2B marketers will continue to facilitate and navigate
a long and complex process, but consistency across
every channel, tool, and team will be paramount to
creating personalized customer experiences. Laggards
will struggle to unite their disparate technology ecosystem,
further siloing important business knowledge and meta-
data. In 2016, B2B marketers will pursue the need to create a
centralized content repository that connects to the tools and teams
that serve up content to prospects throughout the customer journey.
Start Here
FindoutwhyB2B
marketersmustownthe
customerjourney.
of marketers say that
customer satisfaction is
one of their top metrics
75% 82% 75%
75% of marketers say
CRM technologies are
absolutely critical/very
important to creating a
cohesive customer journey.
82% of marketers say
marketing analytics
technologies are
absolutely critical/very
important to creating a
cohesive customer journey.
75% of marketers say
content marketing
technologies are
absolutely critical/very
important to creating a
cohesive customer journey.