Are modern B2B marketers outpacing the organisation?

As orchestrators of the customer experience, CMOs increasingly must serve as the pace car for digital transformation across the entire company, yet they frequently face institutional roadblocks.

The B2B buyer has shifted online, increasing opportunities for connection, and reducing the importance of the one-to-one relationship historically managed by Sales.

In parallel, organisational growth is increasingly predicated on customer-centricity and LTV, further shifting the customer relationship to those with a view across the full journey - Marketing.

As Marketing has taken more responsibility for the entire customer experience, CMOs have entered the boardroom as the voice of the customer, with 62% of the survey respondents agreeing with the statement, “over the last few years, I have seen a shift from a sales-owned customer experience to a marketing-owned customer experience.”

Yet while Marketing is adapting quickly to driving growth across the customer journey, broader organisational evolution has been slower. Functional and department siloes, misaligned goals, weak technology implementation, and legacy processes are restricting the extent to which Marketing can fully realise the potential of customer-centricity.

"I know we have data science, but it’s not in the local organisation, it’s in the
regional/global teams. I wouldn’t be able to relate back how this helps.” - Head of Marketing, Manufacturing, EMEA

"The total [customer] experience today is digital, so it can’t be separated across functions. It’s an ecosystem where you manifest your brand across the chain, so more integration is needed across the C-suite to be successful.” - Global Brand & Marketing, Professional Services, UK

Across the industries represented in the survey, Technology companies reported most progress towards organisational integration, such as a large US social tech company that has merged Customer Support and Marketing.

As the CMOs' remit has expanded, the responsibility for business results and proving ROI
has increased in importance, according to survey respondents.

Thinking about the core responsibilities of Marketing leaders and their teams, which of the below have increased most in importance over the past few years?

Metrics across the funnel have become more tangible and reliable, but accurately measuring contribution to business performance remains a web of discrete tools and creative integration. More than half of respondents (57%) identified ‘Proving ROI’ as the top-3 biggest challenge. EMEA respondents, in particular, felt the pain of ROI assessment (62% selecting it as a top-3 challenge).

"The goal is full funnel attribution of how marketing is ultimately affecting the business objective.” - VP Brand and Marketing, Telecom, Malaysia

The foundational business alignment in any organisation is what defines success. Yet whilst a data-enabled measurement framework, built upon business-wide alignment of goals, is well accepted best practice, it is less commonly realised. Eliminating the concept of ‘marketing’ goals that are independent of, or worse, in contradiction to, sales and business goals, requires a unified data spine that synthesises external buyer data with owned/CRM Data, plus a willingness to democratise that data across departments.

At the intersection of customer experience and business performance, marketers who have evolved into data-driven growth teams are primed to take the lead in modernising the approach to performance measurement. From brand to lead generation and business incrementality.

The 2023 Global B2B CMO Survey was conducted by EssenceMediacom and NewtonX, and is based on a study of 188 senior business-to-business (B2B) marketing leaders across North America, EMEA, China and Southeast Asia.