• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, July 5, 2023

It shouldn’t be that hard for B2B executives to wrap their minds around the idea of revenue marketing: Simply, it means focusing on revenue as the ultimate goal.  

Of course, it also calls for alignment of marketing with revenue goals, integration of sales and marketing and 

But 97% say they can define it, according to the 2023 Revenue Marketing B2B Benchmark Report, a study by Demand Spring. 

However, only 19% say they are very mature at it, while 46% are only moderately proficient. And 35% are lacking in maturity.  

They face many hurdles, including: 

• Marketing and sales alignment — 30% 
• Poor data limiting marketing — 29% 
• Talent — 27%
• Budget — 26%
• Lack of a revenue marketing strategy — 24% 
• Shifting marketing & organizational priorities — 24% 
• Staff — 23% 
• Technology — 20%
• Lack of skills — 20%
• Buyer insights — 20%
• Lack of customer-centric content — 19%
• Effective marketing leadership — 19%
• Marketing is not aligned with goals — 4%

Revenue marketing teams generally have purview over these activities: 

• Demand generation (including ABM) — 76%
• Customer expansion — 62%
• Analytics — 56% 
• Data, process and technology — 53%
• Product marketing —4 9% 
• Customer retention — 47% 
• Customer advocacy — 41%
• Operational model — 37% 
• Customer onboarding and adoption — 34% 
• Customer experience — 31% 

Their revenue marketing priorities?

• Improving lead/account conversion rates — 66% 
• Generating demand to acquire new customers — 64%
• Improving the ability to measure and analyze marketing impact — 62%
• Aligning content to the entirety of the customer life cycle — 49%
• Optimizing the marketing technology stack — 47%
• Executing ABM strategies — 44%
• Marketing team effectiveness and performance management — 44%
• Improving customer/buyer insights — 37% 
• Defining the marketing operating model — 37%
• Improving marketing’s alignment to the rest of the business — 36% 
• Maximizing the customer lifetime value through cross-sell and upsell — 33% 
• Improving product/solutions go-to-market — 32%
• Improving the customer experience — 24%
• Improving customer retention rates — 18% 
• Other — 4%

How do they measure success? They look at:

• Revenue sourced — 46% 
• Lead conversion rates — 41%
• SQLs — 37% 
• MQLs — 36% 
• Pipeline sources (FT or LT attribution) — 32% 
• Revenue influenced — 27%
• Pipeline influenced (FT or LT attribution) — 25% 
• SALs — 22%
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) — 20% 
• Total inquiries & responses — 11%
• AQLs — 9% 
• Customer retention — 8% 
• Other — 6% 

For this year’s report, Demand Spring surveyed 100 marketers in North America.