Priorities: B2B Marketing Execs Lean On PR, Content Marketing To Maximize Budgets

What has the recent economy brought B2B tech marketing leaders? Budget cuts, headcount reductions and increased expectations.

The marketing executives I talk with every day say they love the challenge of driving growth for their B2B tech and SaaS companies, but the grind of trying to achieve more with less budget is forcing tough decisions.

It isn’t only the marketers I talk with who are seeing this dynamic. Two in three B2B tech marketing leaders are currently being expected to achieve the same — or more — results despite inflation and recession driving current budget cuts. (Source: State of B2B Marketing Budgets Survey)

This pressure to do more with less is coming from the top. More than 40% of CEOs and GTM executives expect new business to come from new customers, yet they also anticipate cutting the sales budget by 13% and marketing budget by 24%. (Source: SBI survey)

Given the reality of tighter marketing budgets and expectations of equal or greater performance, it is no surprise that 4 in 5 B2B tech marketing leaders (80%) have taken steps to plan or prepare for an economic slowdown or recession. (Source: State of B2B Marketing Budgets Survey)

Gartner’s report, The State of Marketing Budget and Strategy, had already pinpointed a year ago the need for making tough decisions. “The combination of slowing growth and rising costs creates a particularly challenging situation, not seen in many markets for decades. It’s imperative that marketing leaders look for ways to optimize their budgets,” the report stated.

One way to optimize the marketing budget is to prioritize channels and tactics that provide the greatest returns.

Marketing Priorities: Return on Investment

Prioritizing marketing efforts to focus on what will provide the greatest return starts with analyzing the results generated during the last reporting period.

ZoomInfo’s chief marketing officer Bryan Law told HubSpot: “We're all feeling the pressures of a possible recession and almost every company is facing challenges with revenue growth and marketing spend. With potentially fewer dollars to put towards campaigns, adopting a data-driven marketing strategy will ensure that every effort is as impactful as possible." (Source: HubSpot)

Almost all our JONES B2B tech clients have analyzed the performance of their campaigns with a focus on identifying and cutting the poorest-performing channels. This ensures they can continue to allocate budget dollars to their most effective channels. The poorest performing channels are going to differ by company, of course. But data shows traditional advertising, paid search and ad words to be among the first areas to trim.

Among the key areas marketing leaders say they are prioritizing to maximize limited budget during this period of economic uncertainty are public relations and content marketing.

Let’s look at why you may want to do the same.

Why your marketing strategy should prioritize public relations

As public relations and marketing become more intertwined, earned media is an increasingly important element in building brand awareness and thought leadership authority, especially for brands that are expanding into new markets and focused on growth.

B2B tech marketing leaders say the most effective strategy for cutting costs in their marketing budget is to lean into earned media to increase visibility in key publications. (Source: State of B2B Marketing Budgets Survey)

In fact, nearly 7 in 10 B2B tech marketing executives (69%) are prioritizing public relations and social media right now. (Source: Marketing Outlook Survey of B2B tech CMOs’ and senior marketing executives)

B2B tech marketing leaders: The most effective strategy for cutting costs = earned media to increase visibility.

One primary reason earned media should be prioritized when doling out marketing budgets: it is what B2B decision makers want. Eighty percent of B2B decision-makers say they want articles, not ads, from potential partners. (Source: WebFX)

We have seen the power of earned media to drive results for our tech clients, including Intrado and MOLLI Surgical. Through a series of integrated PR campaigns, JONES earned Intrado more than 100 executive interviews with leading industry publications, along with additional coverage that led to more than 300 thought leadership pieces. When medical device startup MOLLI needed to introduce its solution to breast surgeons and radiologists, we put them on the map by earning more than 3x the visibility of the other wire-free solutions on the market. View some coverage highlights here.

Why your marketing strategy should prioritize content marketing

Alongside the public relations focus, executives seeking to prioritize their marketing spend are placing increased emphasis on content marketing.

According to a recent survey of B2B tech CMOs and senior marketing executives, approximately half of B2B tech marketing executives (49%) are prioritizing content marketing right now.

In yet another survey, B2B marketing executives confirmed that content strategy and creation are critical, even when budgets are tight. (Source: State of B2B Marketing Budgets Survey)

Again, the reason for emphasizing content marketing lies in the preferences of B2B decision makers. Research from Gartner shows that 83% of a typical B2B purchasing decision — researching solutions, ranking options and benchmarking pricing — happens before a buyer engages directly with a provider.

The information comes from third-party reviews, earned media and thought leadership, and owned content on company websites, including blogs, web copy, reports, case studies and more.

More than half of B2B decision makers (54%) say they spend more than one hour per week reading and reviewing thought leadership content, and 47% say thought leadership led them to discover and ultimately purchase from a company that was not considered to be among the leaders in a particular category. This highlights the importance, especially, of content marketing for “challenger” brands in growth mode looking to expand into new markets or break out of a perceived niche.

Additionally, 64% of B2B buyers say that an organization's thought-leadership content is a more trustworthy basis for assessing its capabilities and competency than its traditional marketing materials and product sheets. (Source: B2B Thought Leadership Impact Study)

The challenge, however, according to the Content Marketing Institute, is that in-house content marketing teams are frequently stretched too thin. This means they either simply don’t have the time or talent to dedicate to high-quality development or are relying on outsourced work that doesn’t meet expectations (84% outsource content creation).

The impact of poor content quality can be seen in one statistic from the thought leadership impact study survey: 7 in 10 B2B decision makers said that less than half of the thought leadership content they consume provides any sort of valuable insight.

That leaves open an opportunity for your brand to do it right, make an impression and stand out from the crowd with meaningful thought leadership and content marketing that provides value to the B2B buyers who consume it.

But what about SEO?

There is no doubt SEO matters, and I would be negligent to not mention it in discussing how you may want to prioritize your marketing budget for this year and next. After all, Neil Patel’s survey of 8,032 marketers shows that B2B marketers are increasing their SEO budgets.

In fact, more than 8 in 10 B2B marketing executives (81%) expect to pay at least $7,500 / month for SEO (Source: SEM Rush), and nearly 7 in 10 B2B marketers (68%) say they would be happy to redirect a mid-level marketing position’s salary to an outsourced SEO campaign. (Source: ahrefs)

It’s clear SEO is still a priority for marketing executives. But what many overlook is that SEO by itself is not enough. Content marketing is actually the foundation of a solid SEO strategy, not a separate effort. The content your brand develops—website copy, blog posts, linked thought leadership articles in third-party publications—provides the cues that feed into SEO success, from keywords and backlinks to user behavior factors such as time on page and pages visited that search algorithms use to determine the validity and value of your website.

As you prioritize how to use limited resources (both time and budget) for the greatest marketing impact, consider that an integrated public relations and content marketing strategy has the potential to drive multiple KPIs. Along with search results and website traffic, effective content marketing lays the groundwork for lead generation, lead conversion and sales by considering the entire buying cycle. And when created as a cohesive campaign by a single full-service team, it can provide a great return on your marketing budget.

JONES has more than 20 years of experience specializing in providing B2B tech companies with proven public relations, marketing strategies and campaign execution. We understand the entire buying cycle of B2B decision makers and tailor solutions that maximize the impact of campaigns and content across all stages of the buyers’ journey.

As a full-service agency, we provide all of the capabilities our clients need to execute marketing and PR strategies without duplication of effort or burdensome management.

If you are a VP of marketing, CMO or startup founder trying to maximize your current marketing budget and need support from an agency partner with the expertise to deliver integrated programs that achieve exceptional results, I’d love to talk. Book some time on my calendar to learn more about how we can help. You can access my calendar here.