Demand Gen Report

B2B companies are increasingly adopting e-Commerce as a means of marketing and selling their products and services, according to a BtoB Magazine report titled: “The Emerging Role of B-to-B E-commerce.” The online survey was sponsored by SAP’s Ariba, Inc. and conducted in March and April with more than 220 marketers. According to Forrester Research, B2B e-Commerce transactions within the U.S. exceed $550 billion annually.

More than 30% of B2B marketers are “strong” or “complete” adopters of e-Commerce, in comparison to the 25% from last year. With only 15% of marketers currently avoiding e-Commerce entirely, BtoB predicts that by 2014 40% of B2B marketers expect to be as committed to e-Commerce as a means of marketing and selling.

According to a report from Accenture, 40% of top marketing executives don’t feel prepared to meet their objectives, citing inefficient business practices among the top impediments to performance.

In response to these concerns, executives reported that they are shifting their investments to analytics to measure the changes in demand for multichannel marketing. Almost half (48%) of executives will be dedicating more funding to managing customer data, 40% will focus on web analytics, and 39% will invest in market analytics.

Data analytics has never lacked for coordinates. Filling a spreadsheet with lead scoring algorithms, customer retention costs or predictive conversion metrics is second nature for most B2B marketers.

While the coordinates have provided an embarrassment of riches, the accompanying cartography has been barren. However, analytics is about to get a new set of maps.

MarketingSherpa, a research firm, released its 2013 Marketing Analytics Benchmark Report, which explains how marketers are justifying their marketing decisions and proving the return on marketing investments, according to a company release.

 In the report, MarketingSherpa found that although 40% of marketers have an average amount of data, approximately 50% of them said they gain insight from it. Close to 40% said they routinely and efficiently gain insight from the analytics, while a small, but significant number said they lack the tools/skills to turn data into actionable information.

At a DemandCon event session earlier this month, Jon Russo, Founder and CEO of B2B Fusion Group, asked a room full of marketers how many were still using Excel spreadsheets to track their performance. About 90% of them raised their hands.

Russo said he wasn't surprised at the show of hands. But he is definitely concerned about it.

"This is risky business for a marketing organization," he said. "Executives are now accustomed to seeing metrics integrated with tools like Salesforce. When they see these reports dumped onto spreadsheets, they're going to question the validity of the data."