B2B Marketers Frustrated with Ad Waste in their Marketing Campaigns

SAN FRANCISCO, March 1, 2016 — Demandbase, the leader in Account-Based Marketing (ABM), today revealed the results of its Ad Waste Survey, issued in conjunction with Wakefield Research. Overall, 71 percent of B2B marketers surveyed believe their organization’s digital advertising frequently fails to meet their expectations. The survey showed that while the rise of digital marketing is rapidly transforming B2B advertising, the true impact of digital advertising can be difficult to measure and, without the right tools, can lead to program inefficiencies and ad waste.

While a January 2015 poll found that the majority of B2B marketers were planning to put more than half of their overall marketing budgets toward digital, the Demandbase survey revealed that an overwhelming majority of respondents know that aspects of their digital programs are ineffective:

• Difficulty in measuring ROI is the number one challenge B2B marketers face
• 96 percent admit that their digital advertising inevitably reaches a significant number of people outside of their intended target, leading to ad waste
• 89 percent agreed that their digital marketing mix is not optimized and a different mix would yield better results

Digging deeper on this theme, the survey asked how success is tracked. Findings concluded that there is still a large focus on metrics that are typically more suited to B2C campaigns. In fact, more than 50 percent measure success by conversion rates and cost per impression.

“B2B marketers are realizing that while their digital advertising strategy may be reaching a large audience, it’s not necessarily delivering the right results,” said Peter Isaacson, chief marketing officer at Demandbase. “This ad waste dilemma isn’t new – most companies know that they are wasting a significant part of their digital ad dollars, but the problem is they don’t know which part. B2B marketers need to adjust their strategy away from B2C best practices and look at B2B-focused solutions that can deliver more effective advertising, personalization and sales programs to the specific accounts that will really deliver business results.”

ABM is fast becoming the B2B strategy of choice because it truly aligns sales and marketing by focusing their teams on the highest value accounts. Demandbase offers the only comprehensive set of marketing solutions built for the account-based needs of B2B. The technology has been adopted by hundreds of leading enterprises and includes a programmatic advertising platform, personalization solutions that integrate into more than 40 marketing and CRM solutions, and a robust data model that enables account-based measurement across the entire funnel.

The Demandbase Ad Waste Survey was conducted by Wakefield Research among 500 B2B marketers at the manager level or higher, at companies with 250 or more employees between February 3 and 12, 2016, using an email invitation and online survey.

Demandbase is also hosting a webinar about zero waste B2B advertising on Wednesday, March 2. To attend, please RSVP here.

To learn more about Demandbase, visit https://www.demandbase.com/ or follow us on twitter @Demandbase.