In an interesting “Opinion” article (November p15) Danny Turnbull expresses the view that B2B is somehow lagging behind B2C in digital marketing. As a B2B marketer coming originally from the sales side of the industry, I can see all too clearly that this is the case. What’s very often missing in B2B is both uptake of the tools and measurement of their effectiveness. I would agree that we need to measure more – the problem is often that the selling-cycle times are much longer, with more influencers than in B2C. Combine the difficulty of tracking “conversions” with silo thinking in IT departments and you have a hole where measurement tools should be. This hole can be addressed, but the long cycle times mean that measuring marketing effectiveness (revenue generated) versus the rather easier marketing efficiency (cost per lead) is still going to be difficult.
to magazine
