@marketingmag
THE TRUTH ISSUEJust under half (47 percent) of Green
Hat’s respondents say that within
their business sales and marketing
are “strategic partners”. Other data,
however, suggests that much more can
be done to further this alignment –
only 20 percent of respondents report
having an agreed lead management
and lead scoring process, only 30
percent have an agreed defi nition
of a marketing-qualifi ed lead, just
35 percent have all marketing leads
followed up by sales and just over
a quarter (26 percent) don’t know
whether leads are followed up at all.
“It’s very alarming,” says
Haussegger. “The reality is, at the
end of the day, why are you
marketing? You’re marketing to
work with and support sales in
growing revenue. Marketing is all
about the top line, not the bottom
line. Marketing is all about growth,
market share, winning new segments,
launching new products, growing
share of your market and growing
your top line. To do that, marketing
has to help. There are a whole lot of
parts to it, but, ultimately, it has to be
helping in this pipeline.”
Unfortunately, Haussegger says
marketers aren’t tending to make a
lot of progress in this area, and the
existing data doesn’t seem to off er a
suffi cient explanation. “The power
base between B2B companies is
with sales, they have the stronger
voice. Marketing often can be seen
as a service arm or support arm
to sales – not in all cases, it’s
a generalisation, but yes, it’s a
subservient supporting arm.
“It takes a brave and courageous
marketer to stand up and say, ‘The
buyers have changed the way they buy,
we need to realign these functions and
work more closely together and get a86%86%
73%
49%
41%41%
40%
YOUTUBE
5%
brand in place to make ourselves more
competitive in the marketplace.’”RAT RACE
The review of social media use was
positive on the whole. In terms of
ROI, 82 percent of marketers reported
seeing “good/some results” from their
activities across platforms. For the
fi rst time though, it seems LinkedIn’s
stronghold as the B2B marketer’s
weapon of choice is seeing some
serious competition. Though it still
holds signifi cant favour among the
report’s respondents, LinkedIn fell
two percent in active usage from
2017, to 86 percent. Facebook,
however, saw a surge, gaining nine
percentage points to reach 73 percent,
meaning Facebook is now only 13
percent off LinkedIn as the leading
B2B social platform.
Does Haussegger expect to see
Facebook taking over the reins
anytime soon? “I’d be surprised, overthe next fi ve years. There’s too much
rich information on LinkedIn. I think,
there will be issues with Facebook; it’s
losing cred in the marketplace.”
Green Hat credits Facebook’s
increased employment to two factors:
increased usage of B2C techniques –
where Facebook excels – within B2B
marketing and a potentially lower
cost-per-lead, compared to LinkedIn.
Haussegger continues, “LinkedIn is
expensive. You could be paying $10,
$15 a click, so you want to know that
the person that’s clicking on that is
actually someone who’s relevant to
you. When we were asking about
social media fi ve years ago, there
was daylight between LinkedIn
and everyone else... massive. I think
actually Twitter was the second
platform at that point.
“In some segments we see
Instagram picking up a bit of space
and YouTube will always be there as
well.”WHICH SOCIAL PLATFORMS ARE YOUR BUSINESS ACTIVELY USING?