Key Insights: Top 12 Marketing technologies, budgets sky rocket, and why B2B vendors lost business

30-second summary:

• Marketing technology budgets have risen from 32% to 42%, a straight 10% jump.
• The top 12 marketing technologies that are winning 2020.
• Top challenges businesses face with existing B2B vendors.
• Our Pulse Survey helps you look into the cracks with reasons why technology vendors could be losing business.
• How competitive pricing is a major reason for buyers to switch vendors.
• Curious to unravel all these answers? Dive in!

As the holiday shopping season inches closer, this week we revisit our Pulse Survey to uncover key insights around the marketing technology industry, budgets, top tier technology, why B2B vendors possibly lost business, and more.

Pulse Survey 2020: Latest findings

We’re back with some interesting findings from our Pulse Survey 2020 which peeks into Director+ level executives’ minds to discover where the marketing technology industry is headed in terms of budgets, technology preferences, and more.

These are some key findings:

• 38% of marketing budgets are dedicated to marketing technology
• Marketing technology budgets have jumped by 10% and currently stands at 42% at the beginning of Q2 2020
• Content & Experience is the top-performing marketing technology category
• 220+ Marketers mentioned that their current marketing technology stack is “average” in terms of achieving their goals.

Marketing technology budgets continue to rise in Q2 2020

While our previous key insights showed how technology adoption is the great divide between high growth and low growth businesses – our survey found that marketing technology budgets are actively increasing.

Marketing technology budget spends have consistently seen an upward curve. This is a straight 10% jump from 32% in May 2020 to a good 42% towards the end of July 2020.

Content & Experience wins a lion’s share of the martech stack

We further looked into what kinds of technology are winning the marketing right now. Content & Experience is a category that has stood tall as the marketers’ choice throughout the survey until August.

People being indoors and looking for new ways to educate themselves about the current climate and consumer content can safely be considered as one of the reasons businesses are tirelessly looking to enhance their target audiences’ experience.

The story doesn’t end at this. You’re definitely curious to know, “What about the rest of the technologies?” 

Top 12 Marketing technologies winning 2020

To give you a panoramic yet concise view of the marketing technologies we ran further analysis of all the six categories to pick out winners from each of them. Below is the list:

1. SEO (Category – Content & Experience)
2. Email marketing (Category – Content & Experience)
3. Marketing analytics, performance & attribution (Category – Data)
4. Mobile & web analytics (Category – Data)
5. Search & social advertising (Category – Advertising & Promotion)
6. Mobile marketing (Category – Advertising & Promotion)
7. Ecommerce Marketing (Category – Commerce & Sales)
8. Sales Automation (Category – Commerce & Sales)
9. Social media marketing & monitoring (Category – Social & Relationships)
10. Customer experience, service & success (Category – Social & Relationships)
11. Projects & workflow (Category – Management)
12. Budgeting & finance (Category – Management)

While there is money on the market and there is a sea of marketing technology vendors, how prepared are they to retain and win business? Or are they losing business? Our next segment tackles this. 

Reasons why B2B technology vendors are losing business

AI platform, PROS conducted a global survey of purchasing professionals to understand how COVID-19 has affected companies and B2B buying trends. 

What are the top three challenges businesses face with existing B2B vendors?

1. Slow, inefficient responses (35%)
2. Inconsistent, highly variable pricing (30%)
3. Lack of transparency (30%)

40% of the respondents said that their B2B vendors were prepared to enable digital purchase.

Buyers shift wallet share

PROS found that seven out of ten B2B buyers are taking business elsewhere. The top three reasons for doing so were:

• Competitive pricing (40%)
• Supply availability (39%)
• Better digital purchasing experience (35%)

Our Pulse Survey also has some crucial reasons that can supplement this key finding and help you foresee the cracks.

Lack of confidence in current marketing technology stacks

In our Pulse Survey, 220+ Marketers mentioned that their current marketing technology stack is “average” in terms of achieving their goals. Marketers’ confidence in their martech stacks ability to achieve their goals brimmed around 64%.

PROS also found that 58% of buyers would readily switch to a vendor that offered dynamic personalized pricing. These insights will definitely give you a taste of the power personalization can hold for your business. Now might be a good time to get cracking into your data to understanding how your business is faring in the customer-centric market, right?

ClickZ readers’ choice for the week

This week our readers have been interested in uncovering our weekly key insights, social advertising changes, and AI applications.

1. Key Insights: Mobile ads “the hotspot”, advertising growth projections, and CX dissected
2. Five changes in social advertising for brands during COVID-19
3. AI applications for digital out of home advertising

source https://www.clickz.com/key-insights-top-12-marketing-technologies-budgets-sky-rocket-and-why-b2b-vendors-lost-business/262770/