Given advancements in analytics and automation and the availability of customer data and AI tools, marketers should be doing a lot better at driving customer acquisitions, but nearly two-thirds of lead-generation and engagement strategies are underperforming, according to the latest CMO Council report.
The CMO Council found that marketers are falling behind in lead scoring, account-based marketing, accelerated pipeline, and intention-based marketing.
Key findings from the Q4 survey of 150 of B2B marketing, sales, revenue, growth, demand-generation and campaign execution leaders include show that 63% of marketers say they must own and optimize their company’s revenue-generation engine, and 64% say their lead-generation and engagement strategy underperform.
A year-end scorecard ranks proficiencies in critical areas of B2B marketing execution and demand-generation operations.
And after “exhaustive research,” the CMO Council gave marketers a C- grade for moving deals from contact to closure, a C for scoring actionable leads, a C for finding buyers already seeking a specific product, and a C- for account-based marketing when it comes to finding, winning, and growing big customers, and moving deals more efficiently from contract to making a sale.
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The report is based on a survey of 150 B2B marketing and sales leads driving revenue, growth, demand-generation and campaign execution in Q4 2023.
It also included content from in-depth interviews with executives from Netline, Autodesk, T-Mobile, NTT, ABM Consortium, TechTarget, IBM, B2B Marketing, Reachdesk, Momentum ITSMA, and Xometry.
The CMO Council segmented the study in three sets of factors that make up a model for better identification, engagement and conversion.
There are metrics for tracking and measuring performance, ways to compare one company to another, strategic demand-generation initiatives, and more.
The top skill sets contributing to improved ABM-driven business outcomes include: