The Role of B2B Marketing is Shifting from Lead Generation to Revenue Generation

For as long as I can remember, B2B marketers have considered lead generation as their primary focus. Organizations are spending considerable amounts of time and money on tracking and measuring lead generation metrics.

However, the role of B2B marketers is changing and evolving more into revenue generation. The recently released B2B Marketing Skills Survey jointly done by Genius and BtoB Magazine reveals some new trends and contradicts certain popular beliefs.

Here are some of the key findings from the study:

Emerging Trends:

• 61% of the respondents (500 total) cited Driving Revenue as the most important success metric as compared to Sales Accepted Opportunities (40%), Qualified Leads (39%) with website visits and click-through rates trailing way at the back at 12% each.
• In order to meet new revenue and ROI goals, marketers need to improve their strategic skills (50%) and sales skills (40%).
• 58% of respondents said their role, as marketers did not end even after they handed off qualified leads to sales. This one has a puzzling contradiction (see #3).
• It not just driving revenues for the company, 44% of marketers said their own compensation was tied to sales. (See contradiction #4)

Contradictions and Myth Busters:

1. Only 17% of the marketers felt they were “sales driven.”
2. Despite all the hype surrounding social media in B2B marketing, 50% of the marketers said they didn’t blog, 49% don’t use Twitter and 25% don’t use LinkedIn.
3. Even though more than half of the marketers saw their roles expanded well into the sales process, 58 percent of those surveyed met with sales just once a month or less and 8% or nearly 1 out of 10, admitted to never meeting with their sales counterparts. Huh?
4. One would think lead nurturing would be very important if marketing is to be held more responsible for revenues but that was not the case, it was seen as the least important role by 14 percent of the respondents − the highest level reported on the question. This is another one of those “scratching my head” contradictions.

Stay tuned as the role of B2B marketer continues to evolve. How has your role changed? Leave your comments below.