2017 Marketing and Sales State of the Industry Report: Fusion Marketing Partners, White Paper Review

Title:  State of the Industry Report 2017  Trends in B2B Marketing and Lead-to-Revenue

Published by/Authors:  Fusion Marketing Partners

Gated:  Yes

Download Link   

Length:  12 pages

Highlights: 

• The authors surveyed ,1425 marketing and sales pros
• Brand Awareness: 68% of the respondents feel that their product or company brand contributes strongly or very strongly to revenue. The authors feel B2B companies over-estimate the strength of their brand.
• Sales Process: 88% of the respondents feel there is a better than average chance of examining the sales process in the next year. And yet there are contractions later in the report.

Effective Lead Management: See the report on this one!    It is tragic.

Marketing Effectiveness: What percentage of leads come from marketing? A sales and marketing alignment eye opener.

Lead Flow: Can be better.

Marketing Budget: Would you believe under spending?

Customer Acquisition: Cost - Increasing or decreasing?  Forbes quote from John Hall. 

Content Investment: Going up a surprising amount.

Technology Investment: Marketing Automation observations.

Key Performance Indicators: Too few are being tracked.

Challenges to Lead-to-Revenue (L2R).

SLMA Comments:   

1. There is something in this for every title.  
2. The survey has substantial credibility because of the sampling size.  
3. This deserves a careful reading and each B2B marketing department should  question their practices and judge their programs against the findings.  
4. Each finding comes with a Suggested Action which is not self-serving for the authors. 

Why It’s Important:

"You don’t know what you need to know and this research tells you what you need to know to be competitive." 

Sales Lead Management Association 

Recommended for: 

• President
• CFO
• CSO
• CMO
• VP Marketing
• Director of Marketing
• Marketing Operations Management
• Lead Generation
• Digital Content
• MarCom
• Sales Managers
• Sales Operations Management

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This review was conducted independently without the advice or consent of the publisher.    

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