3 Predictions for the Future of B2B Marketing

Eloqua and Influitive founder Mark Organ shares his predictions for the rapidly evolving B2B marketing landscape.

Where is B2B marketing headed? What trends should companies be taking advantage of today to to achieve rapid growth tomorrow? Entrepreneur and marketing pioneer Mark Organ has built his career on having smart answers to these questions, and those answers have served him well — from founding Eloqua (acquired by Oracle for $871 million) and creating the marketing automation category to more recently launching advocate marketing software company Influitive.

What does Organ see in store for B2B companies moving forward? He recently shared his predictions in an interview for our Founder’s Corner series (see the full interview here).

3 B2B Marketing Predictions

1) Every company is going to have somebody doing advocate marketing

Whereas today, the idea of having a team devoted to generating demand and nurturing leads via email and marketing automation is a no brainer, so, too, will having a team devoted to advocate marketing, Organ argues. Email and marketing automation still work, but there’s no denying the landscape is shifting. The social web has changed the way that buyers buy. Now, that same kind of nurturing can and should be done by peers. After all, that’s who buyers really want to interact with.
By focusing on advocate marketing, companies can shine a light on champions to encourage and enable them to become powerful marketing agents and partners. While Organ admits that word of mouth is not a new idea, he believes no one is really focusing on or harnessing advocates nearly as much as they should be.
All that is changing, however, and as advocate marketing is becomes more critical and integral to the B2B marketing process, we should also see an increased formalization and visibility around it.

2) Big data will change the process of marketing (and the composition of marketing teams)

Where it started in B2C, we’re now seeing it become a bigger and bigger part of B2B marketing. As a result, necessary marketing skill sets are becoming increasingly quantitative, as well. Many marketing leaders have at least one or sometimes teams of data scientists working for them. That’s certainly a big direction marketing is headed in, Organ says.

3) The future is mobile

Fact: Your prospects are carrying computers around in their pockets everywhere they go. How are you actively taking advantage of that? The truth is, many companies aren’t. If you’re one of them that’s something likely that needs to change in 2015 if you want to stay competitive.

The Full Interview

Check out the complete interview with Mark to hear his thoughts on when to pivot, the qualities of successful founders, the challenges and keys to creating a new category, and more. Full interview.
What are your predictions for the future of B2B marketing? Let us know in the comments below.