B2B CMOs and brands primed to accelerate growth

Most B2B marketing leaders consider their role to have altered over the past couple of years, moving well beyond simply generating sales opportunities to become more focused on growth.

The B2B mindset is changing

That’s according to the initial findings of the 2021 Growth Marketing Maturity Study from the ANA (with input from Stein IAS and WARC), which, in addition to noting how resilient B2B brands have been during the pandemic, charts a shift in mindset as B2B marketers progress from regarding themselves as ‘sales enablers’ to ‘growth enablers’ and ‘growth drivers’ . Almost half (45.5%) say this shift in focus has happened within the past two years.

But there’s a disconnect

There is, however, a striking disconnect in how B2B marketing leaders see themselves within their own organizations and how they view their peers at other companies.

• In their own roles they are primarily Growth Enablers (49%) and Growth Drivers (36%); just 15.2% say they are primarily Sales Enablers.
• But they think that B2B marketers in general are considerably less advanced, believing most remain Sales Enablers (40.2%) with just 38.4% being Growth Enablers and 21.2% Growth Drivers.

And there are barriers to growth

• Top barriers to growth include a more connected digital customer experience (67%), measurable revenue impact (52%), upskilling across growth responsibilities (52%) and investment in realizing growth (49%).

Sourced from Stein IAS