B2B Marketing Benchmarks…put some sizzle in that plan!

B2B Marketing Benchmarks…put some sizzle in that plan!

by | Oct 11, 2023 | Chief Marketing Officer

CEOs want to see marketing benchmarks in those 2024 plans!

Put some B2B marketing benchmarks in your 2024 plan to help it sizzle and make your CEO happy!

Nothing says A+ credibility like benchmarking your performance against your industry and competitors.

Here are 12 top B2B marketing benchmark resources:

Chuck Wicks, entertainer and business owner.

Industry Associations and Reports

Many industries have associated trade associations and organizations that publish reports and research related to marketing and industry trends. These reports often include benchmarking data and insights. Examples include the American Marketing Association (AMA) and the Content Marketing Institute.

Market Research Firms

Firms like Forrester, Gartner, and Statista regularly publish reports and data on various industries, including B2B marketing benchmarks and trends.

Competitive Analysis Tools

Tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, and SimilarWeb can help you assess your website’s performance and compare it to competitors in terms of traffic, keywords, and backlinks.

Social Media Analytics

Social media platforms provide analytics tools that can help you benchmark your social media performance against competitors. Tools like Socialbakers and Sprout Social offer additional insights and competitive analysis.

Email Marketing Platforms

Email marketing services like MailChimp, HubSpot, and Constant Contact provide benchmarks and insights on email open rates, click-through rates, and other key metrics.

Marketing Automation Platforms

Platforms like Marketo, Pardot, and HubSpot often provide benchmarking data on email marketing, lead generation, and other marketing activities.

LinkedIn Industry Insights

LinkedIn offers industry-specific insights and benchmarks related to B2B marketing, especially if you’re targeting a professional audience.

Marketing and Advertising Blogs

Blogs and websites like Buffer, Neil Patel, and Moz often publish industry-specific benchmark reports and guides.

Google Analytics and Google Search Console

These tools offer data on website performance and organic search traffic, allowing you to benchmark your website’s performance against industry standards.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Data

Plenty of CRM platforms let you analyze your sales and marketing data to benchmark your conversion rates and customer acquisition costs.

Surveys and Customer Feedback

Surveys and customer feedback can provide insights into customer satisfaction, which can be compared to industry standards.

Industry-Specific Conferences and Events

Attending conferences and industry events related to your B2B sector can provide valuable networking opportunities and access to industry benchmarks and trends.

B2B Marketing Benchmarks – Summary

Remember that the availability of industry-specific benchmarking resources can vary, and in some cases, you may need to rely on a combination of general marketing benchmarks and your own internal data. It’s also a good idea to collaborate with peers in your industry and share benchmarking information, as industry-specific data may not always be publicly available.

Best wishes for your 2024 plans!

If you need help, feel free to reach out. 

Marketing audit for tech and SaaS

Marketing audit for tech and SaaS

by | May 4, 2023 | B2B Strategy, Chief Marketing Officer

Why a marketing audit for tech and SaaS companies?

    As we move along in 2023 I’m seeing more clients ask themselves ‘why are we doing what we’re doing?’. They ask that because they haven’t done a marketing audit for their tech or SaaS company.

    As a tech CMO, I always start with “well, what’s working and what’s not?”.

    Many of them just don’t know.

    Young business woman pondering a question, used to illustrate a marketing audit for tech and SaaS.

    If you don’t where to start, look at the info on my web page about marketing audits. This will give you a current foundation on how to go about a marketing audit for tech and SaaS companies.

    There are 3 brief audio/video overviews plus links to The 2023 CMO Survey and The 2023 State of B2B Marketing Budgets.

    Disclaimer: Yes, this page was created for a marketing audit service I offer. But it will show you how the pros do it.

    Go to marketing audit page
    Pie chart populated with human figures, used to illustrate market segmentation.

    Marketing audits must be tailored to market segmentation

    Why change? Why now?

    Marketing audits for tech and SaaS companies answer these questions. Especially critical in 2023, a marketing audit shows:

    ✔︎ where are we wasting money?

    ✔︎ how should I focus the marketing budget?

    If your company is a going concern, a marketing audit is an essential first step to creating a marketing plan. How can you plan for next quarter or next year when you don’t know what’s working, and what’s not?

    Marketing audits for tech and SaaS are different

    Marketing audits for tech and SaaS companies are different because the B2B buyer has very different motivations than the B2C buyer.

    Yet, the tech and SaaS buyer has very different motivations than the office furniture buyer.

    Buyer personas in different industry verticals have different purchase preferences. So your marketing audit must be tailored to your vertical.

    What works for office furniture buyers typically won’t work for tech or SaaS buyers.

    What is the state of your marketing?

    A systematic appraisal of your marketing is a sure way to help you explain the marketing budget.

    Every business is its own ecosystem. Marketing presents your ecosystem to the marketplace, with incentives to engage and dive deeper.

    The best way to determine the state of your presentation and incentives is to do a marketing audit for your tech or SaaS company.

    Of course, allocating resources to do a proper audit is difficult for many companies.

    That’s where market strategy consulting firms like mine come in handy.

    Most of our marketing audits cost between $10K and $15K, depending on your company size.

    We complete them in two weeks.

    Feel free to check out the details on our web page.

    Go to marketing audit page

    B2B go-to-market strategy

    B2B go-to-market strategy

    by | Oct 11, 2020 | B2B Strategy

    Enterprise software company wins big with B2B go-to-market strategy

    sales presentation best practices

    Logo DataFrameworks

    Overview

    How do you choose the right B2B go to market strategy?

    DataFrameworks, a Silicon Valley company had a unique solution for file management in enterprise data storage environments.

    Additionally, they used an often overlooked go t0 market strategy.

    A year after beginning work with Harris CMO Partners, they were acquired by DellEMC.

    Here’s the story.

    Founders recognized a trend

    The founders recognized a growing trend in the data storage space. Rich content (sound, video and images used at the same time and place) was overwhelming enterprise IT departments with petabytes of unstructured technical data and rich media content. There was no dedicated solution for allowing end users to access and retrieve massive rich content files from storage environments.

    Consequently, IT departments were overwhelmed with requests from end users to find and deliver rich content files. Besides, this increased the costs of storage management dramatically in companies that are heavy users of rich media files. Affected industries included media and entertainment, software development, life sciences and more.

    The trend was forecasted to keep growing for years.

    Image of tall data servers in the clouds.

    Where’s my data file?

    The challenge…

    Like most early stage B2B companies, DataFrameworks had a limited budget. Correspondingly, they decided to forgo marketing except for a website, focusing on B2B go to market strategy instead. Also, they minimized direct sales and focused on partnering with large OEMs in their market space. These included HGST, Quantum, DellEMC and others.

    Instead, they used a small sales team to call on the OEMs. And they chose us to do the partner marketing. Selling their solution to thousands of OEM salespeople would be a lot of specialized work. DataFrameworks needed a variety of support materials created to get their new, expanded OEM sales teams up and running.

    The solution…B2B go-to-market strategy

    Harris CMO Partners was hired to help. Working closely with the founders, sales and technical teams, we created architecture diagrams, solution briefs, business cases, sales presentations, sales kits, press releases, event marketing and more.

    The great thing about this client was that they knew precisely the business value of their solution. “Bringing business and IT together to unlock the value of data trapped in silos.” With that, and a couple of white papers they had created early on, we went to work.

    Shortly after we started working with DataFrameworks, they partnered with DellEMC. It was a perfect fit with Dell’s Isilon product line, a family of scale-out network-attached storage systems, designed for demanding enterprise file workloads.

    Isilon’s sales team already had relationships with the companies DataFramework wanted to target. Now, all DataFrameworks needed to do was educate and coach the DellEMC team.

    Their B2B go to market strategy was working well.

    The first customers…

    We decided to focus on large OEMs (like DellEMC) serving data intensive industries including media and entertainment, life sciences, oil and gas, EDA, software development, automotive and others with complex workflows.

    In their first phase of sales, they focused on acquiring a handful of marquee clients. These included Disney, ESPN, Quantum, IBM, NetApp, illumina, Sony Pictures and many more.

    B2B go-to-market strategy success

    I worked closely with both DataFrameworks and DellEMC to execute successfully the B2B go to market strategy.

    I created the sales and marketing story, sales training and plenty of intriguing content.

    Once DellEMC had the new solution firmly established as a partner offering with its existing customer base, sales materialized quickly.

    The tech giant saw distinct value in acquiring DataFrameworks and completed a succesful acquisition.

    DataFrameworks’ solution is currently featured in DellEMC’s Enterprise and Midmarket IT Transformation solutions.

    https://www.dell.com/en-us/blog/dell-emc-claritynow-data-management-software-helps-transform-data-value/

    More on strategy

    Market strategy is hugely critical to your success.

    You might like this article on how Steve Jobs outfoxed the major competition in his time.

    How Apple Competes…And Wins