The State of Demand Generation 2021: Executive Summary
by
Following a tumultuous year for organisations navigating the pandemic-hit economy, durhamlane conducted research for our 2021 State of Demand Generation report. The survey was sent to B2B sales, marketing and revenue leaders across different industries, to benchmark the trends around the key areas that characterise the profession.
Despite the chaos, over 100 commercial leaders within the United Kingdom responded to the first-in-series annual survey. Respondents provided their views on the challenges and successes experienced throughout the year, whilst highlighting the opportunities and their strategic plans for the next 12 months.
Co-Founders Lee Durham (CRO) and Richard Lane (CEO) offer their executive summary of the report’s key findings:
As a company that lives and breathes B2B demand generation strategy and execution every day for our customers, we wanted to understand the bigger picture, and to get under the hood of the State of Demand Generation today.
In what’s been a turbulent year (to put it mildly), sales and marketing leaders have faced many challenges; particularly in understanding their buyers’ ever-changing needs (61%) and experiencing said buyers being more cautious than ever (61%).
Some have faced huge pressure just to survive. Others are thriving with the introduction of new technologies (55%) and seeing the disruption as a catalyst for growth, with 68% planning to enter new markets and 73% feeling optimistic about driving greater opportunity creation in the months ahead.
Many have even been able to achieve strategic goals, such as closer alignment of their sales and marketing functions (84%) and mastering new forms of strategy and execution – generating demand (not just leads), transitioning from ‘Account-Based Marketing’ to ‘Account-Based Strategy’, and even integrating all three commercial functions (Marketing, Sales and Customer Success) into one Revenue Operations (or ‘RevOps’) function.
What’s surprising is how much of the age-old ‘sales vs. marketing’ debate seems to rage on. However, the scales look to be tipping for ‘quality vs. quantity’, with 56% of respondents agreeing that marketing should prioritise quality over volume of marketing qualified leads.
Moreover, our respondents feel that over the next 12 months integration and automation technologies will be key to helping companies achieve greater flexibility, while cutting costs and maximising ROI. As businesses realise that investing in online presence is now essential to growth and revenue generation, digital marketing will remain the driving force of B2B demand generation strategy.
At durhamlane, our agility has proven invaluable in helping our customers achieve their strategic goals over the last 12 months. By quickly establishing remote working capabilities and adapting our Outsourced Sales, Demand Generation and ABM services to suit the new environment, we’ve been able to continue generating high-quality, qualified opportunities for our clients despite the uncertain economy.
As such, we remain committed to driving demand, supercharging sales and becoming the partner of choice for every ambitious business through 2021 and beyond.
We believe every Sales, Marketing and Revenue leader, should take the time read this invaluable report, due to quality of the content, the incredible insight and the difference – ‘the durhamlane difference’ – it will make to your organisation.
