As most B2B organizations are realizing, online marketing is becoming an increasingly essential part of how the target audience first interacts with the organization. Research conducted by Gartner shows that nearly 80% of marketing budgets in 2020 were spent on marketing through online channels. For 2021, 74% of requested CMOs expect to spend more on online advertising and 66% expect an increase in the paid search budget.
Of course, shifting the focus to online marketing and increasing online budgets does not necessarily ensure more marketing success immediately. The effort and budget should be allocated to the specific areas that your organization currently needs. For example, if your website is not easily findable on Google and there are hardly any visitors, then it makes no sense to implement an (expensive) marketing automation system to achieve online success. In this case, the effort and budget will be better spent on increasing the measurability, findability, and visibility of the organization.
Every organization that wants to grow ultimately needs a sophisticated online marketing and sales process, where the entire pipeline and efforts are measurable and predictable. Building such a process is possible, but it takes time and energy. To provide guidance for organizations that seek to build this process and strive for online marketing success on a continuous basis, we suggest working with the Leadgate B2B Online Marketing Maturity Model:
What is the Leadgate B2B Online Marketing Maturity Model?
The Leadgate B2B Online Marketing Maturity Model helps B2B organizations focus on the right online marketing activities based on the maturity phase they have reached. It focuses on the 2 most important aspects achieved through online marketing: brand awareness, which translates into long-term success, and online lead generation, which translates into short-term success.
Based on 5 maturity levels, we work step-by-step towards reaching the online marketing maturity level in which success is achieved both in brand awareness and online lead generation. The collaboration between marketing and sales also plays a major role, which becomes particularly important during the higher maturity levels.
Each maturity level comes with its characteristics: these give a picture of what online marketing areas should be developed further and where the focus should be directed to reach the next maturity level. For example, in levels 1 and 2 the main focus is on measurability, findability, and visibility (brand awareness), while in level 3 the focus shifts towards lead generation, after which in levels 4 and 5 there is much more attention towards quality further down the marketing & sales funnel.
For each maturity level, specific KPIs are defined, through which the progress and online marketing success can be measured. Thanks to continuous progress and success on the set KPIs within the current maturity level, the defined focus areas to reach the next maturity level will be elevated. This way progress is made reachable step-by-step in a measurable way and value is increased for the organization.
Want to dive deeper into the Online Marketing Maturity levels and find out how your IT business can move closer towards B2B Online Marketing maturity? Contact us with no obligation through the button below or by sending an email to info@leadgate.eu
