“Bad companies are destroyed by crises. Good companies survive them. Great companies are improved by them.” – Mentioned by Ryan Holiday in his book “The Obstacle is The Way.”
Regardless of type or size, every business faces challenges, and the ones that transform those challenges into opportunities are likely to survive, grow, and set new benchmarks.
Being a B2B advertising agency, you would say it’s not as easy as mentioned above. You need to put in much effort to make a B2B business highly successful and profit-generating.
Yes, agreed. We all know that the prevalent B2B market is far more complex than ever. In the current times, buyers are overloaded with a plethora of information, so grabbing their attention towards your business and maintaining their loyalty is quite challenging.
In addition, B2B marketers face several challenges that need to be addressed to stay competitive and take their businesses to the next level.
Are you one of them?
If yes, this post can help you recognize the top 7 challenges of B2B marketing and overcome them to achieve your predetermined sales goals. Let’s quickly start with the top 7 B2B marketing challenges list.
7 Top B2B Marketing Challenges
Let’s elaborate on each one of these challenges and know how to overcome them.
Changing Buyers’ Behaviour
As per a recent report, 95% of B2B marketers believe that their buyers are changing their behavior faster than they can change their business strategies.
65% of B2B buyers are currently either millennials or Gen Zers. Their purchases highly depend on search engines, review sites, and social media platforms. After COVID-19, even the older generations followed these digital ways of finding the services and products they required. B2B buyers now avoid talking to sales directly, and the majority of their purchasing journey is done online anonymously.
Solution:
To overcome this challenge and succeed in gaining more buyers, B2B marketers need to have a robust research team that can analyze the platforms on which their buyers do all the research and then reach out to them through the content and resources they are looking for. B2B buyers today look for complete information like the cost and features of the products and services along with trusted customer reviews, all from their homes or offices. That means they need to go out and meet sales or marketing professionals to get all the information at their desks. Just make sure your buyers have easy access to this information on your business website and social media platforms, making it easy for them to make buying decisions.
Low Budget and Limited Resources
With rising digital marketing and advertising costs these days, it has become difficult to compete with several B2B companies for a limited pool of potential clients. Having a prominent online presence requires investing, which becomes difficult with a low budget. Additionally, you need a high budget to hire and retain skilled resources for content creation & management, targeted advertising, and other significant marketing activities. Low budget and limited resources make it difficult for B2B marketers to stand out from their competitors on search engines and other online platforms, which is important to gain attention from their potential customers.
Solution:
One of the best ways to overcome this challenge is to make efficient use of the budget and resources you already have. You can use free software subscriptions and outsource projects to freelancers instead of hiring expensive in-house staff. Training your existing employees in other technologies and promoting multi-tasking can save expenses on hiring new ones. Many businesses form partnerships with other firms to overcome the challenges arising due to limited marketing budgets. Finally, success doesn’t come from bigger budgets and unlimited resources; it comes from out-of-the-box ideas, dedication toward hard work, and determination to achieve goals.
Aligning with Sales and Marketing Teams
Not setting clear goals and responsibilities and a lack of communication within sales and marketing teams can lead to missed sales opportunities. Moreover, there are other factors too that make aligning sales and marketing teams difficult for B2B companies, like different opinions about buyers’ journeys, silos in processes followed, lack of integrated technology and tools being used within the organization, and many more. Additionally, the biggest obstacle in aligning these teams is that there is no systematic approach followed while transferring qualified leads from the marketing team to the sales team. Sometimes, these leads are transferred prematurely, which causes B2B businesses to lose potential customers.
Solution:
To keep sales and marketing teams aligned, you can first use CRM software that keeps track of sales and marketing efforts and centralizes information about your buyers and their journey. You can also establish a clear lead management process, set accountability, and define roles and responsibilities of each member of the sales and marketing teams. Also, assign clear goals and objectives, foster healthy communication strategies, and conduct regular meetings that can keep sales and marketing teams aligned, leading to improved sales and revenue generation.
Embracing the Latest Technology
There are several reasons that make B2B companies reluctant to embrace new technology. The foremost reason is accepting the change. New and latest technologies bring in several changes to the business infrastructure and talent selection. Also, there are problems in user adoption within the organization. The success of the latest technology implementation totally depends on user adoption. If the technology is complex, there is a chance that users will not adopt it, and implementation will fail. Moreover, technology evolves at a quick pace. Thus, the stakeholders are always concerned about whether the technology they implement today will become obsolete quickly. Their investment can go in vain.
Solution:
Embracing the latest technology is extremely important for B2B businesses to stay competitive. However, with so many challenges of integrating the latest technologies within the processes of a B2B business, it becomes necessary to implement technology that aligns with your business goals and is user-friendly so that your in-house staff can easily adopt it and yield the benefits you are looking for. Conduct thorough research and involve key stakeholders while selecting emerging technologies for your B2B business. The latest technology can help you implement speedy processes without any flaws, ultimately enabling you to overcome the other challenges of B2B marketing.
Measuring Performance Accurately
Measuring performance accurately in a B2B business is highly significant as it can help you analyze shortcomings in your current processes and decide future strategies accordingly. Measuring performance typically requires tracking and fetching data from different sources like marketing efforts, sales reports, and multiple channels used within sales and marketing teams. B2B processIn B2B businesses, sales cycles are long, and with so many stakeholders involved, it becomes more difficult to measure performance accurately.
Solution:
B2B setups can overcome this challenge by investing in Big Data & Analytics tools. AI-powered software and apps are available to help you measure performance accurately, even for complex processes of B2B businesses. Also, you can integrate customer feedback strategies and mechanisms, integrate data silos within different departments of your organization, and consistently monitor and improvise strategies to drive consistent growth and improve revenue generation for your business.
Differentiating Yourself From Competitors
With B2B setups, it becomes challenging to differentiate your products and services from competitors due to many reasons, such as the leader’s limited visibility, peer pressure of having some standard features and functionality, rapidly changing technology, pricing issues, and many more. These factors make the chances of the outcome be the same higher. As there are complex business decisions involved in B2B businesses, thinking and implementing out-of-the-box ideas require approvals from different authorities, and that again becomes an obstacle to standing out from competitors.
Solution:
To differentiate yourself from competitors in a B2B setup requires understanding the target audience and requirements and brainstorming on several ideas about how your products and services can provide unique value propositions to your potential customers. Also, internally within your organization, you can execute better systems using technology, enhance your brand awareness and programs, and keep all stakeholders confident while brainstorming for a new idea so that you don’t face difficulties while seeking approvals. Widen your vision and encourage your employees to think out of the box and develop innovative ideas. Also, you can customize your products and services to meet your clients’ demands and make your USP stronger.
For example, Google announced new AI features in Google Ads in 2023. One of them was Google’s Asset Creation for Performance Max. This feature helps marketers create custom images, text, and videos for Google Ads.
Staying updated with the latest developments and applying them to your marketing campaigns can help you stay ahead of the curve.
Making Data-Driven Decisions
In B2B setups, there are many departments and decision makers that sometimes lead to higher chances of being silos in data collection and fragmentation. There are chances that data is outdated or full of errors that make it difficult to decide on some critical aspects like how much order to place to the supplier or which tasks should be assigned to whom. There are many other decisions that are crucial for B2B businesses if the right technology and methods are not being used to fetch up-to-date information with minimal or no errors.
Solution:
Overcoming this challenge requires implementing robust technology that allows you to centralize the data and analyze it to come up with solutions that can help you make data-driven and informed decisions. You also need to encourage the training of your employees and help them understand the importance of making data-driven decisions. Past experience and performance, when ruled out in the form of accurate data, enables you to make accurate decisions. Also, foster a data-driven culture within your organization to follow a systematic approach throughout all processes and yield benefits in the form of improved revenue generation and delighted customers.
Conclusion
Thus, succeeding in B2B marketing is challenging. Addressing these challenges successfully requires high-scale digital transformation. Besides that, adopting changes in evolving B2B market dynamics can help in dealing with these issues head-on. B2B marketers require developing effective campaigns that consider their target audience and stakeholders.
In 2024, economic difficulties and cutthroat competition might become an uproar for most B2B marketers. However, the right strategic planning, adapting the latest technology, and partnering with the top digital marketing agency can help make your B2B company technologically sound and future-proof enough to face all these challenges we have discussed here.
Did we miss out on any B2B marketing challenges here? Do tell us.