Too often in business, words and phrases become so interwoven into the daily lexicon that they become bigger than themselves. That is to say, these terms are dropped into conversations without anyone stepping back and asking, “What exactly do you mean by that term?”
Customer relationship management has entered that stratum. Is CRM a technology, a strategy, a process, a responsibility? What roles do front office functions like marketing, sales and service actually have in supporting the customer relationship and mid-sized B2B firm?
Act-On Software, a leading provider of integrated marketing automation software, partnered with Gleanster Research to survey marketing professionals at 750 B2B companies to understand how they perceive and support CRM. The survey, conducted in the fourth quarter of 2014 and the first quarter of 2015, assessed the allocation of marketing resources and budget at each stage of the customer relationship—awareness, acquisition, retention and expansion. The survey identified several profound differences between the priorities of top performers and average performers.
Good to great
Act-On reports that the survey found that no department is accountable for the stewardship of the customer relationship. “The survey results challenge traditional perspectives about CRM and spark one fundamental question: do B2B organizations need to rethink how marketing should be supporting the customer lifecycle?”
The study identified four noteworthy differences that separate average performers from those who stand out. Top performers:
Focus on retention and expansion. Average performers are consumed with new customer acquisition, spending 67 percent of their time and 54 percent of their budget on activities that support awareness and acquisition. Topperforming companies allocate significantly more time and budget on customer retention and expansion, where revenue is more profitable. Top-performing companies also tend to invest more time and effort than average performers personalizing campaigns and addressing customer preferences where budget is being allocated.
Focus on the entire customer lifecycle. Top performers spend proportionately more time, effort and budget on customer retention, up-selling and cross-selling. Whereas average marketers believe that sales and support own the customer experience and that marketing has a peripheral role, marketers at top-performing companies make it a point to be the central conduit for customer lifecycle engagement.
Manage to metrics. Measurement has a lot to do with top performers’ success. They are more likely to use metrics that have a direct correlation with revenue. Technology plays a key role in executing and measuring sophisticated marketing strategies. Top performers’ use of personalization and behavioral targeting and segmentation is 30 to 75 percent higher than average firms.
Believe and invest in their marketing team. Over 92 percent of top performers consider having the right skilled resources a big challenge compared to only 50 percent of average companies. When top performers have the right skills in place that understand emerging B2B marketing trends, practices and technologies, they invest in keeping those teams aligned to objectives and external and internal customers. Average marketers, by comparison lack accountability for process improvement and do not place enough value on understanding emerging B2B tactics.
“Customer lifecycle engagement is fundamentally broken for most B2B organizations because it’s still a series of handoffs between siloed departments—marketing to sales to service,” the report summarizes. “Technology integration and customer data management can help. But the problem remains that nobody is really responsible for holistic customer lifecycle engagement. This research is a rallying cry for marketing leaders to stand up and seize the opportunity to drive the customer experience. While marketing attribution is (and will remain) a challenge, marketing is undoubtedly a company’s best conduit for brand awareness, opportunity creation, customer onboarding, satisfaction, and loyalty.”
