Forrester’s 2021 International Advertising Survey included a subtrack of greater than 500 senior B2B advertising leaders in varied industries throughout North America, Europe, and the APAC area. Fielded between December 2020 and March 2021, our survey reveals how B2B advertising leaders are adapting their advertising technique to help their organizations’ development targets in a interval that has challenged organizations like by no means earlier than.
For B2B CMOs, 2021 is about charting new paths to customer-obsessed development. Occasions of the previous 12 months have accelerated a shift that was already in movement. Dramatic modifications in patrons’ conduct, evolving enterprise fashions, and fast-paced technological advances have remodeled the function of the CMO. As B2B advertising leaders spearhead their organizations’ restoration and development efforts, they need to take the optimistic advertising practices discovered in 2020 and insights from our survey and perceive that:
- Buyer expertise will proceed to take heart stage. Throughout the pandemic, organizations acknowledged that focus and dedication to buyer relationships was integral to weathering the financial challenges of the previous 12 months. CEOs will proceed to look to CMOs to supply knowledge on advanced buyer wants, insights, and alternatives. B2B CMOs will even want to successfully join and empathize with the emotional decision-makers B2B patrons have grow to be.
- Cross-functional alignment and collaboration are important to development. B2B CMOs are uniquely positioned to unite the enterprise ecosystem. The shopper, accomplice, worker, investor, and influencer relationships are simply among the relationships advertising helps handle by creating methods, processes, KPIs, and behaviors which can be rooted in buyer obsession. In our survey, senior B2B advertising leaders stated bettering advertising alignment and collaboration with different departments was crucial think about supporting their advertising priorities.
- Not everyone seems to be recovering on the identical tempo. Some organizations have been in a position to faucet into new enterprise alternatives or adapt in response to disruptions. Nonetheless, others are nonetheless in an financial hunch in comparison with the place they have been to start with of the pandemic. Extra North American advertising leaders, as an illustration, reported that their organizations skilled important (50% or extra) income contractions than did their European and APAC counterparts.
Learn extra insights from our world survey of senior B2B advertising leaders by downloading our e-book and watching my latest dialog with Forrester CMO Shirley Macbeth. I additionally invite you to proceed the dialog with me on LinkedIn or Twitter.
