Strategy+Design

Although B2B Marketing has made great strides in the last few years, it’s time for B2B Marketers to get serious about making their marketing programs strategic growth initiatives that focus on capturing market share and driving revenues, rather than wasting valuable dollars on disconnected marketing tactics.

Case in point: B2B Marketing budgets will increase by 6.8% in 2012

According to a recent Forrester research post on MarketingProfs, B2B Marketing budgets will increase by 6.8% in 2012, with high-tech still leading the charge (see chart above). Interestingly, pharmaceutical, medical, and biotech have shifted from cutting their marketing budgets in 2011, to increasing them in 2012. That’s good news because that means more B2B Companies are beginning to notice that they need to do things differently in order to get noticed. It also means B2B Marketers need to be smart about how these budgets are spent, because as budgets increase so should revenues.

The report also emphasizes that as budgets rise in 2012, B2B Marketers need to focus on partnership and experimentation. I love this because I have found that the best relationships between client and agency happen only when both are willing to try new things, go to bat for each other and help each other succeed. B2B Companies like Cisco, Intel, and SAP, for example, have established long-term strategic marketing partnerships that have set the creative bar higher than normal by experimenting with creative campaign ideas that go way beyond the traditional B2B “bland” creative – even borderline B2C ideas such as Cisco’s “Human Network” or Intel’s “Intel Inside”.

As a B2B Marketer, it’s encouraging to see that B2B Companies are willing to compete by thinking different, developing a unique voice and moving away from the traditional boring B2B Creative we’ve seen for far too long.

What are your experiences with B2B Marketing budgets? Are they increasing or decreasing? Are you partnering and experimenting? Let us know your thoughts.