[Research Round-Up] Two Surveys Take the Pulse of Senior Marketers

(This month's Research Round-Up features two recent surveys that examine the attitudes and plans of senior marketing leaders. While both surveys included B2B and B2C respondents, they provide several interesting insights particular to B2B marketing leaders.)

"2024 Global CMO Navigator - CX Edition" by Merkle (a dentsu company) 

Source:  Merkle

• A survey of 1,934 chief marketing officers from 13 countries (22% from the United States)
• Respondents represented more than 14 industry verticals
• 65% of the respondents worked at hybrid B2B/B2C companies, 19% were with B2C companies, and 16% were with B2B companies
• More than half of the respondents (54%) were with companies having at least 250 employees
• The survey was conducted in August 2024

The Merkle survey was designed to capture the attitudes and plans of global CMOs regarding several topics. One group of questions addressed economic and business conditions, and the surveyed CMOs were optimistic about both. For example:

• 88% of the respondents said the economy is in good or excellent shape

• 86% expected the economy to get somewhat or significantly better over the 6-12 months following the survey

• 87% said their company's revenue had increased compared to the previous year

• 89% expected their market budget to increase in the year following the survey

When the researchers asked survey participants what business results they are primarily responsible for as marketers, the top two results identified by the respondents were customer satisfaction and advocacy (54% of respondents) and growth of customer base (53%).

CMOs at B2B companies were 17% more likely than the average to say they are accountable for growing the customer base. B2B CMOs were also 6% more likely than the average to say they are accountable for median and long-term brand health.

The survey also asked participants what they expect the primary role(s) of the marketing function to be over the following 12 months. The top two roles identified by the survey respondents were understanding consumer/market trends (38% of respondents) and delivering business growth (36%).

B2B CMOs were 8% more likely than the average to identify delivering business growth as a primary role and 20% more likely than average to identify ensuring effective brand management as a primary role.

These findings are particularly interesting given that B2C marketers are usually seen as more focused on branding than B2B marketers.

Fall 2024 Edition of "The CMO Survey"

Source:  "The CMO Survey"

• A survey of 260 marketing leaders at U.S. for-profit companies
• 97.2% of the respondents were VP-level or above
• 58.3% of the respondents were with B2B companies
• The survey was in the field September 4-25, 2024

"The CMO Survey" has been conducted semi-annually since 2008. It's directed by Dr. Christine Moorman and sponsored by Deloitte LLP, Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, and the American Marketing Association.

For several years, each edition of the survey has asked participants about overall economic conditions, current marketing spending patterns, and future spending expectations. Here are some of the findings on these topics from the Fall 2024 survey.

Economic Outlook

The Fall 2024 survey found that marketing leaders were somewhat less optimistic about the economy than a year earlier. The survey asked participants to rate their optimism regarding the overall U.S. economy on a 100-point scale, with "0" being the least optimistic, and "100" being the most optimistic. The mean rating given by respondents was 63.8, down slightly from 66.7 in the Fall 2023 survey.

The survey also asked if participants were more or less optimistic about the U.S. economy compared to the previous quarter, and 37.0% of the respondents reported being more optimistic. That was down significantly from 49.0% in the Fall 2023 survey.

Marketing Spending

In the Fall 2024 survey, respondents reported that marketing spending represented 7.7% of total company revenue, which was down from 9.2% in the Fall 2023 survey.

Respondents also said that marketing spending increased 5.8% over the 12 months preceding the survey, and they expected spending to increase 8.6% over the 12 months following the survey. In the Fall 2023 survey, respondents expected marketing spending to grow 7.2% over the following 12 months, which shows that forward-looking expectations aren't always accurate.

The relative change in spending on digital marketing vs. traditional advertising remains significant. In the Fall 2024 survey, respondents reported that spending on digital marketing grew 11.1% over the prior 12 months. In contrast, respondents said they expect spending on traditional advertising to increase by only 0.8% over the 12 months following the survey.

An Emphasis on Brand Building

The survey also asked participants how much they expected their marketing spending to change over the following 12 months in five specific areas. The fastest-growing areas identified by respondents were marketing activities relating to new product introductions (8.1% expected growth) followed by brand building (7.0% expected growth).

One notable finding is that B2B marketers expect spending on brand building to grow at a faster rate than B2C marketers. Respondents with B2B product companies expected spending on brand building to grow 9.5%, and respondents with B2B services companies expected 6.2% growth. This compares to expected growth of 5.7% at B2C product companies and 4.8% at B2C services companies.

These findings suggest that B2B marketers are recognizing the importance of building strong brands.

The Recipe for Content That Creates Mental Availability

 

Key Takeaways

• If your company isn't in a potential buyer's initial consideration set, your odds of making a sale are no greater than 17%.*

• To improve your chances of being included in buyers' initial consideration sets, you must increase your company's mental availability with prospective buyers.

• Boosting mental availability requires marketing messaging and content that links your company to buyer needs and is memorable and easy to consume.

Why Initial Consideration Sets Matter

Creating an initial consideration set is an integral part of most B2B buying decisions, but most popular models of the B2B buying process ignore this pivotal step.

When a business person perceives a need to address an issue that may require a purchase, about 80% of potential buyers will create a mental list of companies they feel are worth considering before they do any research. And 90% of those buyers who purchase will ultimately buy from a company in their initial consideration set. (Bain & Co. and Google, 2022)

A potential buyer's initial consideration set is based on mental impressions that he or she has formed through touchpoints such as previous experience with a company, marketing messages, news reports, and conversations with colleagues and friends.

So, the perceptions that determine which companies will be included in the initial consideration set exist in the buyer's mind before he or she starts an active buying process.

What Is Mental Availability?

To increase the odds that your company will be included in your buyers' initial consideration sets, you must reach those buyers with the right messaging and content before they become active, in-market buyers.

More specifically, your objective is to increase your company's mental availability with your potential buyers.

The mental availability concept has been popularized by Byron Sharp and his colleagues at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science. In his landmark book, How Brands Grow, Sharp provided a simple definition of mental availability:  "Mental availability/brand salience is the propensity for a brand to be noticed or thought of in buying situations."

Mental availability is different from general brand awareness. It describes the likelihood that a potential buyer will think of your company in the context of a specific buying situation.

Many marketing thought leaders argue that effective brand marketing is the key to creating mental availability. While this is generally true, it doesn't provide specific guidance about what kinds of messages and content will be effective for increasing mental availability.

Messaging and content must meet three requirements to boost mental availability.

Link Content to Buyer Needs

First, the messaging and content must clearly link your company to specific buyer needs. As noted earlier, when a potential buyer perceives a need that may require a purchase, the buyer will create an initial consideration set of companies that he or she believes may be able to address the need.

The initial consideration set will include companies the potential buyer mentally associates with the specific need he or she is experiencing. It's these associations that create mental availability. Therefore, your job is to build and refresh the memory structures that connect your company to the specific needs your potential buyers are most likely to experience.

You can't predict what specific need will prompt a particular buyer to move into the market. Therefore, to increase mental availability, you need to build and refresh memory links that will connect your company to all the important buyer needs your company can address.

With broader mental availability, you increase the likelihood that your company will be included in the initial consideration sets of a larger number of potential buyers.

Make Content Memorable

Marketing messaging and content must also be memorable to increase mental availability. When your goal is to boost mental availability, most of the potential buyers you are targeting won't be ready to begin a buying process.

You communicate with those potential buyers at a given point in time, and you hope they will remember your message at a future point in time when they perceive a need and are ready to start a serious buying process.

As discussed earlier, your messaging and content must clearly link your company to the needs your potential buyers are likely to experience, but how you express those associations is critical to making your messaging and content memorable. 

In B2B, we tend to describe the benefits of doing business with our company in rational, "businesslike" terms - and sometimes in technical, quantitative, or economic terms.

To make your messaging and content more memorable, you need to capture in a visceral way what a potential buyer with a particular problem is experiencing, and you need to describe how your company can make that problem "go away."

Make Content Easy to Consume

The third important requirement for content that will effectively increase mental availability is that it must be easy to consume. By "easy to consume," I mean that the content doesn't require potential buyers to expend much cognitive energy.

This attribute is important because most members of your target audience are not actively engaged in a buying process and therefore won't be inclined to spend much time and effort consuming content that (at the moment) isn't a high priority.

As a practical matter, this means that most mental availability messages and content should be relatively short. That's why the 30-second or one-minute TV ad has been a staple of brand marketing for decades.

In B2B, we have the leeway to use somewhat longer content to build mental availability because most business people believe that keeping current on industry trends and innovative business practices is important for their career progression. Therefore, many business people will be willing to invest more time and effort to consume content if it's relevant to their work or career objectives.

The Bottom Line

If you want to drive revenue growth, you need to get your company into the initial consideration sets of more potential buyers. To accomplish this goal, you must boost your company's mental availability with potential buyers, and that requires the right kind of marketing messaging and content.

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*Research has shown that between 40% and 60% of prospective B2B deals do not result in a purchase. (Dixon and McKenna, 2022) Research has also found that about 80% of B2B buyers have a set of prospective vendors in mind before they do any research. And 90% of those buyers ultimately buy from a vendor in their initial consideration set. (Bain & Co. and Google, 2022)

Let's be optimistic and say that only 40% of prospective deals do not result in a purchase. Of the 60% that do result in a purchase, 48% of the prospects will create an initial consideration set (60% x 80%), and 43% will ultimately buy from a company in the initial consideration set (48% x 90%). That leaves only 17% of prospects that will buy from a company that was not in the initial consideration set. (60% - 43%).

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Image courtesy of Affen Ajlfe (www.modup.net) via Flickr (PD).