APAC B2B marketers focusing on personalisation and buying groups
B2B organisations are prioritising personalisation as marketers recognise the importance of engaging with prospects and buyers more effectively to ignite their growth marketing strategies.
This is a key takeaway from a new report from Adobe focused exclusively on the Asia-Pacific region, and based on a London Research survey of more than 300 companies.
The majority of those surveyed report a ‘major’ impact from customers now having greater control of the buyer journey, with more research carried out online.
There is also broad recognition that B2B buyers now expect at least the same quality of customer experience as they get from the best B2C brands they interact with in their personal lives.
The Case for B2B Personalisation – Asia-Pacific identifies a group of B2B marketing ‘leaders’ and finds that these leaders are significantly more likely than laggards to be employing a full range of personalisation initiatives.
These tactics include real-time targeting of information based on their needs and behaviour, and the creation of content to meet their individual requirements. Three-quarters (76%) of APAC leaders say they are very much focused on ‘personalisation’, compared to 42% of laggards.
Buying groups
The research also explores the importance of personalising content for different personas based on their business function and specific role in the decision-making process for buying B2B products and services.
Many organisations have historically focused on account-based marketing (ABM) and on reaching as many prospects as possible, without differentiating based on the needs of the different individuals within the buying committee.
According to the research, leaders are more than four times more likely than laggards to be focusing their overall sales and marketing activities on multi-person buying groups within an organisation (34% vs. 8%). And they are twice as likely to rate their B2B marketing automation platform as ‘good’ for its ability to identify and target at a buying-group level (78% vs. 38%).
Overcoming challenges
While personalisation offers significant benefits, the research outlines the barriers that organisations need to overcome. Challenges include fragmented data and insights, with businesses needing to invest in marketing technology and to prioritise data unification.
The research concludes that integration is crucial for effective personalisation. Data, technology, and sales and marketing teams must all work together to help create a 360-degree view of the customer. This integration can enable businesses to deliver dynamic, real-time personalisation through AI-powered marketing automation.
Voice of the CMO
Another finding from the research is that leaders are significantly more likely than laggards to involve a broad range of senior executives in the decision-making process when it comes to B2B engagement and personalisation technology.
This reflects the need for a collective approach at senior executive level in order to break down silos and facilitate sharing of data and insights, according to the report.
More than half (54%) of APAC leaders report that the Chief Marketing Officer is a technology decision-maker, compared to only 31% for laggards.
This is a finding that resonates for Ben Scott, the Head of Marketing Operations at professional services company Grant Thornton, one of the organisations interviewed for the research.
“One of the things we know in professional services is that to carry out a transformation you need to have a CMO on the executive, which we do. And we’re fairly rare in Australia in terms of that happening. A lot of the time the CMO reports to a partner or someone like a COO who sits on the executive, but as soon as marketing’s moved that one step down, their voice and their ability to drive change is drastically reduced.”
Ben Scott
Head of Marketing Operations, Grant Thornton
Key recommendations for B2B Marketers:
- Integrate your martech stack: A well-integrated technology set-up is essential for delivering personalised experiences.
- Unify and activate customer data: Create a 360-degree view of the customer to enable real-time personalisation.
- Target buying groups: Focus on understanding and engaging with the buying groups responsible for purchasing decisions.
- Strive for revenue team convergence: Align sales and marketing teams to ensure a unified approach to customer engagement.
- Embrace AI: Embrace generative AI to deliver personalised digital experiences at scale.
Download The Case for B2B Personalisation – Asia-Pacific report to learn more.
