What Do B2B Marketers Do Now? is an ongoing email. Join the mailing list to be the first to receive these weekly insights!

Summer’s here!

Wow – can you believe we’re halfway through the year already? Feels like just yesterday we were working through our 2023 sales and marketing plans! Are you sailing into the summer with confidence, or are you constantly under pressure?

Give this song by Queen (and David Bowie) a listen as we hear what the experts are saying this week.

Stats/Trends – Knowing what this world is about

Q2 is almost wrapped. How are your sales and marketing activities trending?

As you know, I started this weekly email/blog during the pandemic to share stats, successes, and trends during turbulent times. I feel like it’s been too long since I’ve shared some actionable and tactical sales and marketing stats from my sources.

So here are some quick data points that you may find useful:

• The most effective channel for RDR (Revenue Development Rep) to engage a B2B buyer? Phone – 53%. Email – 36%. InMail, Social Media, and Website Chat all under 5%. Text (SMS) still under 1%.
• B2B buyer’s journey continues to stretch out. More than half of B2B purchases take longer than four months, and buyers engage in an average of 17 interaction types. Compared to just a year ago, 67% of B2B marketers say buyers are taking longer to commit to a purchase!
• Only 53% of sales professionals said that their organization’s sales tech stack aids productivity and positively impacts results. WOW! That’s a depressing statistic – with all the marketing and sales tech out there, how is this possible?

(Thanks to #forrb2bsummit and my awesome colleagues here at Virtual Causeway for sharing their data.)

Do these surprise you? What are you finding in your organization? Longer buying cycles, more buyer interactions, under-appreciated tech stacks… That’s a lot of pressure on people – how are you coping?

More Catalog Sales – Never rains but it pours

I’ve been closely following artists as they’ve sold their song catalogues over the past few years – seems like a way for many (aging?) artists to capitalize on the revenue potential of their songs as their touring and recording years dwindle.

Looks like Queen is in talks to sell their catalogue for the largest sum yet! As of now, Bruce Springsteen is the leader, having sold his song catalogue for around $500 million last year. If the rumours are true, Queen could sell their catalogue for over $1 billion!

Are these valuations getting ridiculous, or is there really that much value in their catalogues? In B2B, we see company valuations (especially in tech) that sometimes make us shake our heads, but if someone is willing to pay…

Many artists and bands might be feeling pressure pushin’ down to sell their catalogues. But with this price tag? Seems like a pretty easy choice!

Want to see the whole list of artists who have sold all or some of their catalogue? Here’s the running list compiled by fellow Canadian Alan Cross.

As always, don’t hesitate to call me to brainstorm or just say hello!

Looking forward,
Rick

Rick Endrulat, President | ricke@v-causeway.com | www.linkedin.com/in/rickendrulat

The post B2B Trends: When it Rains, it Pours! appeared first on Virtual Causeway.

What Do B2B Marketers Do Now? is an ongoing email. Join the mailing list to be the first to receive these weekly insights!

Now check this out: I received a fax the other day. That’s right – a fax.

I don’t have an actual fax machine, but apparently I’m still paying for an eFax service subscription (who knew?). I saw it in my inbox, and my interest was piqued. So I opened it. It was a product promotion I wasn’t interested in, but I still opened and read it. Definitely not the same ol’ marketing email overflowing my inbox!

Give this song by Mötley Crüe a listen with me as we see what the experts are saying this week.

The B2B Buyer in 2023

What does your buyer look like? Insider Intelligence provides details on what the B2B buyer looks like in 2023. Some highlights:

• 75% agree that the average buying cycle time has increased
• 59% of B2B buyers are aged 26-40

Before a B2B sales meeting is accepted, buyers go to the supplier’s site, attend webinars by the supplier, conduct research, and evaluate the supplier on peer review sites.

The first time I saw John Neeson from SiriusDecisions (now Forrester) speak WAY back in 2007, the trends he identified in the B2B space were:

• A 22% longer sales cycle compared to 5 years earlier
• More people involved in the sales cycle (3.5 more stakeholders than previously for enterprise decisions)
• More research being done by the buyer BEFORE even speaking to a vendor

Sound familiar? It seems like the same trends are being regurgitated every year!

What are you seeing in your organization? Is the B2B sales process becoming more involved and difficult, or is this just the same ol’ ball and chain?

Radio Still Rocks!

New data shows that we still love listening to the radio. Tuning is up since people started going back to the office!

Just over 3,100 Canadians were asked about their habits when it came to audio listening. Compared to spring 2021, things break down like this:

• AM/FM radio accounts for 39% of all listening, followed by YouTube and then ad-free streaming services like Spotify’s premium tier.
• Tuning on smartphones is up by 5% (27-32%) and by 4% on computers.
• In the car, radio’s share is up to 62%, largely because we’re commuting to work again.
• For freemium model music streaming, ad-free listening is up from 23% to 25%, while the ad-supported tier is down from 22% to 18%.

You know we just gotta say, incredibly, old-fashioned radio still wins!

Maybe it’s not the same as a resurgence in fax communications, but it does show that some of these old-school channels are still successfully reaching audiences! Maybe we should rethink the channels we’re using to contact our buyers. There’s a lot of B2B noise out there – how do you get in front of your buyers without winding up in the same ol’ situation??

As always, don’t hesitate to call me to brainstorm or just say hello – and feel free to fax me at 519-489-2713! I’d love to hear from you!

Looking forward,
Rick

Rick Endrulat, President | ricke@v-causeway.com | www.linkedin.com/in/rickendrulat

The post Revisiting those Old Marketing Channels appeared first on Virtual Causeway.

What Do B2B Marketers Do Now? is an ongoing email. Join the mailing list to be the first to receive these weekly insights!

Take a deep breath in and lift your head to the sky… breathe out… do you feel that? Birds chirping, blue skies, fresh air – the first signs of spring are finally here! After what seemed like a never-ending winter, the temperature is rising and buds are beginning to blossom. As the end of Q1 draws near, how do you feel?

Take another deep breath and listen to this Pearl Jam song with me as we see what the experts are saying this week.

Benchmark Data, Closed Deals & Sales Activity

The latest HubSpot data gives us a good sense of the industry’s activity for Q1. And it looks pretty good. Is this the usual Q1 ramp, or are we seeing a larger trend? Quick snapshot:

Deals Closed rose to 24% over benchmark in February vs. 20% in January

Sales Emails & Sales Calls continued to increase

Sales Conversations showed a healthy increase to 53% over benchmark

Contact Growth dropped vs. January, but still 30% over benchmark

Are you seeing the same signs of optimism in your business? As more and more businesses re-open their offices, will the spending increase with it? How about marketing spend – have marketing mixes changed or started to shift?

Oh, if I knew where it was I would take you there…

Live Music, John Oliver, and Ticketmaster

Remember when Pearl Jam took on Ticketmaster? At the time, they were one of the biggest bands in the world, and they still hit roadblocks trying to avoid Ticketmaster’s hold on the live music industry. As a content producer, how careful do you need to be about your partners and your distributors?

John Oliver provided one of the best explanations of the current live music environment, and how Ticketmaster manipulates and benefits from the current supply chain in live entertainment. The layers upon layers of fees and reaching hands out grabbing things is mind-boggling!

According to Bob Lefsetz, we can’t blame Ticketmaster solely. You can’t trust the man behind the curtain, but you can’t trust those on stage either! The industry won’t change because everybody in the food chain likes it this way – entirely opaque, with Ticketmaster taking the heat instead of the acts. Yes, the acts, the promoters, the buildings, and Ticketmaster – they’re all making money, and Live Nation’s stock keeps going up.

As B2B marketers, how closely do we follow the business model of our distribution channels? Are we like these artists that feign ignorance as the system generates revenue for them – day in, day out accumulating?

I suggest you step out on your porch, see the world, and understand how your partners and distributors sell and engage YOUR audience and customers. If you’re ok with it, embrace it, be transparent. Otherwise – make a choice and a change.

As always, don’t hesitate to call me to brainstorm or just say hello.

Looking forward,
Rick

Rick Endrulat, President | ricke@v-causeway.com | www.linkedin.com/in/rickendrulat

The post The Right Channel Partners – Trust ‘The Man Behind the Curtain’ appeared first on Virtual Causeway.