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Most organizations are neglecting at least one of the three major marketing functions—brand marketing, demand generation and customer marketing, according to an Act-On survey of 250 senior level marketers from U.S.-based business-to-business and business-to-consumer companies.
The study found that nearly 69 percent of respondents have at least one area with staff coverage level in the “10 percent or less” category, while top performers are more likely to have solid staff coverage across all three major areas.
In addition, 92 percent of marketing organizations say that brand marketing, demand-generation and customer marketing functions are at least somewhat aligned under a cohesive strategy.
Top performers are much more likely to be totally aligned under a cohesive strategy, while a majority of B2B and B2C organizations responded that they are at least somewhat or totally aligned across all three marketing functions.
Top performers are also 23 percent more likely to have a significant portion of their budget allocated to each of the three major marketing functions than the laggards are.
The report found that—despite the hype and number of technologies available to support the demand-generation function—it is most likely to be neglected by marketing teams.
B2C organizations are most apt to neglect demand generation, while B2B organizations tend to neglect both brand and customer marketing functions.
The majority of companies (87 percent) spend more time doing other functions of marketing besides demand generation.
Top-performing companies (those that met or exceeded revenue expectations in the last fiscal year) spend less time on demand generation than underperforming companies do.
“Despite this balanced approach to marketing, marketers are not taking advantage of marketing automation outside of demand generation,” the report noted.
The report also revealed that 57 percent of marketing leaders use revenue generated and 47 percent use ROI as a key performance indicator (KPI) for brand marketing, while 61 percent of marketing leaders use revenue generated and 53 percent use ROI as a KPI for demand generation.
Finally, 57 percent of marketing leaders use revenue generated and 53 percent use ROI as a KPI for customer marketing.
Overall, 69 percent of marketing teams dedicate significant staff time to brand marketing, while the remaining 31 percent spend less than 10 percent of their total staff resources on this function.
A whopping 41 percent of marketing teams invest less than 10 percent of budget in customer marketing, according to the report, and B2B marketing teams tend to be the biggest offenders for underinvesting in customer marketing.
Less than half (49 percent) of B2B marketers invest less than 10 percent of their budget in customer expansion efforts, the survey found.
“Sales teams often believe that marketing doesn’t deliver the number of quality leads they need to meet their revenue number,” the report noted. “In turn, marketing departments feel that [the] sales [staff] doesn’t follow up on the leads they deliver. This too-common issue spans all industries and verticals.”