This month, we have been studying the returns from our Q4 2012 US And Europe B2B Marketing Tactics And Benchmarks Online Survey of more than 328 B2B demand management marketers in the US and Western Europe. We asked a total of 34 questions, covering the revenue acceleration tactics that marketers deploy and in which lead-to-revenue process phase; how effective these tactics were in terms of conversion rates across the L2R processing; and several other questions about resources. We also asked about their progress in adopting various systems of marketing automation software. Lori Wizdo presented some of this data in her Webinar on November 20which Forrester clients can replay. Data highlights and curiosities include:

·  US marketers prefer tradeshow and print. US-based companies have a 50% larger allocation on this spend item compared with European companies. They also  allocate 30% more for print advertising.

·  Top-performing marketers spend differently. Companies with better-than-planned revenue growth, or where marketing contributed more than 50% to the sales funnel, mixed the 16 possible tactics differently, with the biggest differences in their usage of trade shows, SEO, and social marketing for lead origination.

·  B2B marketers prefer to create their own content, mostly for lead nurturing. Even more, the data shows them stuck in the product marketing comfort zone, and their marketing content fails to deliver at all in the awareness phase.

·  Email campaigns can work, if done well.We asked if they “send out individualized mails based upon prospect-specific data and behavior.” While 30% said yes to this, among the top performers, it was 48%.

·  European marketers anticipate higher spending on marketing automation in 2013. A strong proportion of marketing automation projects are budgeted in European organizations.

   No lead management automation, less nurturing.Forty-nine percent of the respondents with lead management automation systems deployed were running lead nurturing programs, but only a third of those without systems could do so.

As well as segmenting the analysis by top performers or degree of L2R automation, we are also able to separate the respondents by sector; geography; company size; channel strategy; and by product vendors versus service providers. So watch for several reports in the next months as we unveil our survey findings about your peers’ use of a range of marketing tactics. Here are some of the reports planned:

                European versus American marketers                                                                 Peter O'Neill

                Content marketing lessons                                                                                  Peter O'Neill

                Channel-oriented companies versus companies that sell direct                             Tim Harmon and Jonathan Silber

                A range of industry verticals                                                                                Tim Harmon and Jonathan Silber

                Top-performing companies                                                                                 Lori Wizdo

                Social media strategies                                                                                        Kim Celestre and Zachary Reiss-Davis

                Marketing mix                                                                                                     Peter O'Neill

If you want to talk to us before these reports come out, just set up an inquiry with the relevant analysts. If you'd like to talk about other aspects of the survey, set up an inquiry with Lori Wizdo or myself. As always, I’d love to hear from you on this and other topics.

Always keeping you informed! Peter