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Apart from salaries, Google and LinkedIn pay-per-click costs are the most consistent and costly expenses a marketing department will have.  However, one must look at the mechanisms employed. 

Google G Logo

Starting in 2010 marketing automation and demand generation linked to landing pages in the hope browsers will fill in forms so that BDRs can cold call to make appointments.  This led to ABM strategies being deployed from 2016, none of which work effectively as it is common knowledge virtually 100% of buyers hate filling out forms.

LinkedIn logo 256

Considering most businesses pay between £0.50 and £1.00 per click, it seems very few marketers are willing to analyse the real ROI and genuine attribution.  The question must be, which customers can be proven to have clicked a pay-per-click advert, filled out a form and connected with the company and ultimately purchased the product. 

Understand Where You Are to Know Where You’re Going!

It’s a fact of life business fail.  But why?  Are CEOs really unable to control what’s happening or are there other factors?  CB Insights published over 50% of the reasons for business failures were directly attributed to poor marketing activities and issues.

Statistics from the FT and Havard Business School: -

  • 20% of business fail in the 1st year
  • 30% of business fail in the 2nd year
  • 50% of business fail in the 3rd year
  • 71% of business fail in the 10th year
  • 40% of all invested business fail
  • 75% of all invested business fail to achieve their own targets
  • 95% of all invested business fail to achieve an ROI for investors

Sadly, it is clear there is significant apathy within SME and Enterprise B2B marketing.  There seems to be no entrepreneurially creative marketers employed within these organisations and if one appeared they wouldn’t recognise them or worse they would refuse connection or engagement for fear of being exposed for poor performance over the past ten years.

Yes, things are as bad as they seem, possibly worse, however, every cloud has a silver lining. 

The Reality of B2B Revenue Success

The average turnover per person, per annum for SaaS businesses or annual recurring revenue, full time equivalent (ARR-FTE) is as follows:

Slide2 ARR FTE

The fact that most businesses are achieving approx. £90k illustrates why many businesses, not just SaaS, keep needing more investment to keep going or simply go bust.

These figures have not changed for the past ten years which supports the notion that much of new business is simply the work of salespeople – as it has been for years.

The shift in budgets has become eye-watering.  Sales often have zero budget, yet marketing have extensive personnel, a staggering budget, averaging 10% of gross profit, which includes a jaw-dropping subscription commitment to MarTech SaaS.

Of all the 30,000 SaaS platforms in the world, nearly half of them are related to marketing, which is no surprise, especially as the past ten to fifteen years has proven that every B2B is a sucker for MarTech that might, just might, bring in the cash.

Tech Infographic - MarTech

37 martech platforms

As from May 2024 the total is 13,008 Martech SaaS platforms!

The bottom line, business owners do not buy new solutions out of choice.  They buy them to increase profitability and expect an ROI.  They do not buy new items as they would a consumer item like cars, clothes, holidays or any other item.  However, marketers have been convinced to market to them in this way.

Identifying the True Gross Profit

Business is about gross profit or GP, so this metric must be front and centre before any further budget is spent or allocated.  It’s not complicated; take your last ten deals and work them back to their source!

Before anyone correlates the pay-per-click cost against the gross profit from a deal.  Be sure to include the entire marketing budgets, SaaS and subscriptions, and HR cost for every member of staff!

In light of the Google Issues: SEO Document Leak & The PPC Anti-Trust Case revelations, it is safe to say most B2Bs will now understand why they have experienced poor results, simply because they have listened to marketing making promises but never delivering or analysing.  In a nutshell, most current digital marketing strategies, i.e. demand gen, ABM, PPS, SEO etc., are now proven to not work unless you have very deep pockets.

The general consensus is to build your B2B brand outside of Google.     

The Solution to B2B Growth

For once it’s not about buying more SaaS.  Businesses need to take stock and understand why new business has not been as forthcoming as they planned (I did not say expected!). 

It starts with looking inward and asking some simple questions of other members of the board such as “well, how do you buy!!!”.  As individuals, we all want to get to ‘know’, ‘like’ and ‘trust’ someone before we buy from them.

A new approach needs to begin with CEOs putting themselves in the shoes of their prospects and simply creating an infrastructure that looks to serve prospects before they become customers.  To instruct their teams to serve them (prospects) as everyone would expect to be served if the boot was on the other foot.

Transparency is the key, transparency to prospects, customers, partners and employees.  Having this mindset is the beginning of changing your presence on and offline.

Because buyers want to self-serve, self-educate, and work out their ROI before they’re ready to speak to a salesperson, just like you and me, then you simply need to present them with everything they need and wait for them to come to you.

 One of the problems is waiting!  If you have been previously convinced to go out finds the business, the cost of mechanisms to achieve this will have been costly.  That’s why we recommend starting the new strategy in parallel to existing activities. 

Rethinking Marketing: Step-by-Step Solution Summary

We realised in 2018 marketing and SEO had already taken a turn-for-the-worse.  We identified B2Bs needed video, podcasts and live streaming to communicate effectively to their market.  Content needed to educate prospects before they would want to know, like and trust a new vendor.  The main points are below: -

  • Stop listening to marketing and become sales driven – again!
  • Make your website open access
  • Adapt content to educate prospects, using video where possible
  • Focus on Who, What, When Where, Why & How for article titles
  • Broadcast a weekly live show on LinkedIn & convert to podcasts
  • Email market to your total addressable market
  • Post 10-15 inhouse adverts every day on social media to promote your content
  • Do not repeat an advert in any given month

Conclusion

I hope this has given you an insight from my perspective and my forty years’ experience in sales and marketing. I implore you to take heed of these facts.  As CEO or founder, you are not expected to be a marketing expert, however you have been led to think you know all you need to about marketing and your CMO is an extension of your expertise and is only going to going to execute your collectively agreed marketing plan.  Being cynical, I see this as the CMO agreeing with everything the CEO says simply to keep his/her job.

The above may well explain why the average tenure of a CMO is between nine to eighteen months as sycophants can’t pay the bills. 

Yes, we have got a complete plan and revolutionary strategy with everything mapped out from start to finish, but nothing can be done overnight.  No one can click their fingers and expect an instant result, especially with the damage so many marketers have done and inadvertently misled businesses for so long.  It’s almost like starting again.

The next page for you to read needs to be our Pioneering System for B2B Expansion.  From this page you can connect to the next stages of your transition, breaking away from the reliance on traditional digital marketing and build out your digital selling infrastructure.

Apart from reviewing everything on our website, it’s probably easier to have a chat with us first to understand how a change in strategy would pan out, all things being equal.

Go to our Digital Selling pages to see how you can change the way you work and scale up your business.

Author

The author and founder of salesXchange, Nigel Maine is a B2B marketing and sales expert with a proven track record in scaling up growth for Technology, SaaS, and Professional Services organisations. With 30 years hands-on experience and unique approach, Nigel has developed an effective strategy that dramatically increases exposure and profitability for B2B organizations.

Nigel has founded multiple start-ups, is a published author, public speaker and hosts both a podcast and business live streaming show, broadcast on LinkedIn Live, YouTube & Facebook. He also has extensive knowledge of MarTech software, creative hardware and software, and A.I. prompting tools.  Contact: 0800 970 9751 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.