Crystal Ball CD (image credit/Pixabay/moritz320)FINITE, a B2B technology marketing community has released its new research in B2B marketing. The research was delivered in partnership with B2B technology digital marketing agency 93x.

The research was conducted by FINITE, a global community of 1000+ B2B tech marketers. FINITE found that the majority of B2B tech marketers are optimistic about 2021 despite current economic fragility.

Looking confident

This confidence could stem from the fact that over 75% of B2B tech companies met or outperformed their targets during an uncertain 2020. Going into 2021 34% said their marketing budgets will increase, while 50% said budgets will remain the same.

Alex Price, Founder at FINITE (Image credit.LinkedIn/Alex Price)
Alex Price, Founder at FINITE

Alex Price, Founder at FINITE commented: “Despite the complexity, uncertainty and challenges that 2020 brought with it. It’s fantastic to see that B2B tech companies have been able to achieve what they originally set out this year”

As COVID-19 cancelled events and conferences, 37% of B2B tech marketers reallocated their budgets to other digital channels. Twenty-five percent spent it on virtual events. While 30% did not spend their field marketing budget at all. Of the digital channels that B2B tech marketers turned to, aside from webinars, SEO was deemed the channel that rose in importance the most during 2020. 40% of those surveyed increasing their focus on organic search.

Embracing Martech

Aside from SEO, the other channels that have increased in importance for B2B tech marketers include: email marketing, LinkedIn ads, social media and PPC advertising.

The report found that as digital channels grew in importance, investment in digital experiences offered by websites followed suit. Nearly 70% of B2B tech marketers believe their website has become more important as the hub of their marketing since the COVID outbreak.

The report also found that in 2021, 64.4% of B2B tech marketers expect to increase their use of MarTech. Darrell Alfonso, Global Marketing Operations Manager at Amazon Web Services commented: “This will be primarily driven by the transition to digital-only experiences. You will also see marketers putting a stronger emphasis on overall effectiveness and productivity.

Finally, B2B tech marketers revealed their biggest challenges going into 2021. Forty-eight percent thought ‘balancing quality and quantity’ in 2021 will be the most challenging. While 44% expect ‘digital fatigue’ to be their biggest nemesis going forward.

Grace MacDonald, Marketing Manager, Content & Social at LinkedIn commented: “It’s no surprise that the top two challenges are linked back to the ‘noise’ of 2020. The only way to cut-through is to laser focus on your customer.

The research and data below was gathered in November 2020 by surveying 100+ B2B tech marketers within the FINITE community members

Enterprise Times: What this means for business

The results of the research is limited by the size of the data collected. Despite all of the challenges of the year gone by, the FINITE research paints an optimistic picture. It appears that B2B technology companies have generally been able to stay the course despite the complexities of 2020. More then 75% of businesses have been able to meet or outperform their targets in 2020. This is pretty surprising. It also seems particularly high, considering the pandemonium that COVID-19 has wreaked across many sectors in the economy. Hopefully positive vaccine news and a good Christmas break will get everyone feeling positive by the start of 2021!

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