How did your investment or organization endure the past year? Did the pandemic allow you to capitalize on new growth opportunities? Was your business able to adapt and remain profitable? Or did it struggle to survive? Entering 2022, B2B marketers have focused their efforts on provoking customer-obsessed growth by fusing together the customer, brand and organization. However, in order to achieve this, they’ll first need to identify what’s preventing it.

When polled, marketing and sales leaders agreed that the lack of a clear strategy and resources were the two biggest obstacles prohibiting alignment and increased collaboration.

Improving Marketing Alignment and Collaboration

While some organizations cited improvement in collaboration between cross-functional teams, that same survey shows that “only one-third (32%) of the marketing and sales professionals surveyed say that the sales and marketing teams at their organization are totally integrated and work as one team.”

“Only one-third (32%) of the marketing and sales professionals surveyed say that the sales and marketing teams at their organization are totally integrated and work as one team.”

Customer Trust Requires Action

In 2021, B2B companies continued to grapple with the content marketing challenges caused by the pandemic, as well as with reduced budgets and internal resources. Some of these B2B marketing leaders identified the need to adapt their content marketing to the pandemic landscape or came to the realization that they needed a content marketing strategy that served as company-wide initiative, i.e., one that would close the communications gap between marketing and sales.

At the same time, this shows why B2B and B2C marketing isn’t mutually exclusive to each audience and why customers are demanding that companies shift from selling to generating content that is cultivating trust by demonstrating empathy, transparency, value and security.

“B2B and B2C marketing isn’t mutually exclusive to each audience and why customers are demanding that companies shift from selling to generating content that is cultivating trust by demonstrating empathy, transparency, value and security.”

As shared in this recent Forrester study, “A B2B purchase decision can carry professional and organizational risk for buyers. Consider the perspective of your buyers and how they assess the risks and rewards involved in a purchase decision. They also significantly overestimate the level of trust their clients have in them. As a result, trust is often relegated to a slogan or tagline, or is dismissed as only being important in a B2C setting.”

The B2B Omnichannel Mix

“83% of B2B leaders believe that omnichannel selling is a more successful way to prospect and secure new business than traditional, “face-to-face only” sales approaches—a notable sign of confidence, given the higher cost and hurdle of acquiring new customers.”

The pandemic has resulted in so many seismic shifts to the B2B and B2C marketing landscape that it will forever change how we choose to engage with brands and sales reps and conduct in-person interactions.

This McKinsey study galvanizes why omnichannel must now be the standard approach for B2B companies, and why two-thirds of buyers prefer a cross-channel mix that enables the prospect to choose between in-person, remote and digital self-serve interactions. The effectiveness of omnichannel as a new sales model in reaching and addressing customer needs is seen as being equally if not more Important than conventional marketing.

“83 percent of B2B leaders believe that omnichannel selling is a more successful way to prospect and secure new business than traditional, “face-to-face only” sales approaches—a notable sign of confidence, given the higher cost and hurdle of acquiring new customers.”

With buyers taking a more active role in controlling the purchase funnel, here are a few suggestions for driving awareness and inquiries:

In the Marketplace: Inform and guide conversations within message boards and via specific groups on social and platforms where buyers recommend solutions to other buyers.

Throughout the Customer Journey: Have a mix of both ungated and gated content and self-service tools that focus on engaging buyers based on their interactions and purchase intent and that align sales and marketing.

Within the Competitive Landscape: Develop content strategies that will encourage earned media coverage and pique interest from industry analysts

Solidify Your Commitment to DEI Initiatives: Review how your B2B content can communicate your organization’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) values to customers, prospects, employees and potential hires.

It All Comes Down to Communication

“What If you could bring the key leaders of marketing, sales and even finance together in a room (or on a Zoom call) under a structured setting and devise exercises designed to identify and remove these communication roadblocks?”

Based on the above poll, while communication ranks as the biggest challenge to sales and marketing alignment, I would argue that all of the other challenges that follow are communication related.

What If you could bring the key leaders of marketing, sales and even finance together in a room (or on a Zoom call) under a structured setting and devise exercises designed to identify and remove these communication roadblocks?

The end-goal of this exercise would create alignment, new processes and consensus on what is critical for the success of the overall business and would make everyone accountable for each other’s success, resulting in:

• • • Better qualified leads

    • More lead follow-up from sales

    • A more robust prospect pipeline

    • Ongoing competitive reporting

    • Increased brand awareness

    • Persistent use of CRM to centralize all data

    • Removing the barriers to success

With reduced resources compared to previous years, the pandemic has placed enormous stress on marketing and sales teams.

To negate this challenge, ScheinerInc. would welcome the opportunity to discuss how our topical expertise relevant to the business can support the content marketing needs of B2B organizations, and through brand workshops, help to align disparate groups under a unifying strategy that is actionable and goal driven.