• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, August 24, 2022

Marketers can be forgiven if they fail to understand the phrase “go to market” (GTM).  

B2B practitioners themselves can’t seem to agree on what it is, judging by the 2023 GTM Benchmark Survey, a new study from Demandbase.
They define it as:

• How you take a new product to market — 40% 
• All customer-facing activities, including marketing, sales, account retention, and growth — 32% 
• How you position your company in the market — 15% 
• Another word for marketing strategy — 10%

This proves is that brands are moving beyond new product introduction in their GTM strategies, the study notes.
Even email must fall in there.  

Whatever you call it, brands say these activities will be most critical in driving growth in the coming year:

• Improving sales and marketing alignment — 61%
• Increasing marketing investments — 49%
• Improving AE & SDR— 30%
• Through partnerships and channels — 30% 
• Hiring more AEs — 21%

But there are many challenges. For example, the biggest alignment hurdles are:

• Measuring different metrics — 33% 
• Poor handoffs: sales and marketing having parallel, disconnected conversations with accounts — 28% 
• Lack of communication — 26% 
• Looking at different data/operating in different systems — 13% 

The biggest data challenges are:

• Missing or incomplete information — 59%
• Data quality (e.g. dirty/out of data/duplicate) — 56%
• Disconnected/siloed data sources — 40% 
• Hard to turn data into action — 32% 

How are these GTM practitioners using data? They are applying account data and intelligence (i.e., intent and technographics) as follows: 

• Account prioritization — 59% 
• Competitive intelligence — 55% 
• Personalizing messaging and outreach — 49% 
• Account selection — 39%
• Timing your engagement — 26%

Here are the data points they utilize in their GTM strategy:

• Account history — 57%
• Contact data — 57%
• Website activity — 38%
• Marketing campaign activity — 37% 
• Intent data — 35% 
• Social insights — 33%

How do they tracking marketing influence on the pipeline? They measure: 

• Multi-touch attribution — 54%
• First touch — 18%
• We don’t — 14% 
• Last touch — 11%
• Unsure — 11% 

How is GTM evolving to support the desire of buyers to self-serve? Brands are employing:

• Product tours (in-app walk-throughs/tutorials) — 46% 
• Interactive demos (clickable, simulated demo environments) — 45%
• Online calculators (ROI, quota, etc.) — 43% 
• Demo videos — 39%

Demandbase surveyed 224 B2B sales and marketing leaders, including directors (42%), C-level executives (40%) and VPs (18%).