5 predictions for B2B CMOs in 2023

Planning for 2023 is already well underway as marketers gear up for the new year, drawing upon lessons learnt this year and tweaking their strategies based on new insights and evolving customer behaviour. LinkedIn recently found that 85% of APAC B2B marketing leaders are confident that their marketing strategy will create impact over the next six months amidst the economic uncertainty. They also see it as an opportunity to prove their relevancy and rethink their brand story (34%), as well as strengthen relationships and trust with customers (30%).

Like their B2C counterparts, B2B companies are now forced to take on more predictable growth strategies next year as a result of the economic headwinds. This includes ditching the "me-first" mindset that B2B companies usually have that places their needs ahead of what consumers and buyers truly need.

To succeed in the coming year, B2B organisations and marketers need to rethink these relationships. But how will they go about doing it? Here are five predictions by Forrester:

1. Customer health of utmost priority to thrice as many CMOs

Forrester predicts that over 33% of CMO dashboards next year will showcase customer health scores and trends as more B2B marketing leaders start taking customer health seriously to boost loyalty and secure revenues.

B2B CMOs are also expected to formalise reporting relationships, put in place joint planning processes, and have new shared objectives with post-sale customer success teams.

At the same time, customer success teams must grow engagement programmes to accommodate content and messaging specially designed for retention, cross-selling, and upselling.

2. Companies to cut a third of point solutions from revenue tech stack

New marketing and sales tech tools now allow brands to connect with buyers in a more automated and personalised manner. However, the rate at which these new tech is launched has outpaced the changing go-to-market processes. As such, companies are left with siloed and poorly aligned technologies, Forrester said.

Next year, B2B companies will do well to cut point solutions to consolidate their tech across the revenue engine to create more enriching customer experiences.

A tech audit must be carried out so companies can effectively choose which solutions to consolidate and identify current solutions that are not meeting the needs of the business or customers.

3. More than 40% of B2B firms will cut channel marketing function

B2B companies are creating partner ecosystems that go beyond traditional channel routes-to-market to fully actualise the value across the full customer lifecycle.

According to Forrester's Routes-To-Market Survey 2022, 67% of B2B channel leaders said the creation of new or optimised partner ecosystems is extremely crucial to their company.

Hence, broadening the focus to the full spectrum of ecosystem business models, from build, influence, and sell to service and manage, will lead to channel marketing being revamped into a partner ecosystem marketing function.

In the new year, leaders overseeing partner ecosystem marketing need to have a new focus which includes multi-partner collaboration and ecosystem orchestration. According to Forrester, doing so will allow the leaders to meet ever-changing buyer preferences and realise the impact of partnerships with transactional and non-transactional partners.

4. The number of demand teams reporting into sales will increase to 20%

As leads-based contributions to revenue results decline, Forrester said the number of demand marketing teams reporting into sales departments will jump by 20% by the end of next year. While many companies might think this move will improve alignment at companies that have poor revenue performance, a change in reporting lines alone won't solve alignment issues.

In fact, Forrester said that success, regardless of which department demand marketing reports to, is dependent on demand leaders fully embracing their role in offering satisfying customer experiences across the customer lifecycle.

This means that marketing and sales need to evolve in their alignment and integration to aid customers. However, this cannot be attained until the internal operations of both groups have been adjusted to address buying groups and several opportunity types.

5. There will be no post-pandemic event budget rebound

Events are a crucial factor for B2B companies and Forrester said that these events formed 27% of the demand programme budget pre-pandemic. However, the pandemic has resulted in event investment fluctuating and some functions even cut their budgets by 17% while others are mulling increasing it by 48%.

As B2B companies find new digital and more accountable ways to engage with consumers, Forrester said that previous budgets that used to be allocated to events done in the past are no longer available. Hence, B2B CMOs need to rethink their event strategies and have clarity of event goals, quantitative selection criteria, and revenue impact.

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