• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, November 30, 2022

Big business-to business (B2B) brands are in a good frame of mind -- yet cautious -- as the year draws to a close, judging by Data and Tech: Enterprise B2B Marketing Priorities For 2023, a study from Anteriad, conducted by Ascend2. 

Of those polled, 78% with 1,000+ employees are enjoying growth of 10% or more in 2022. But most respondents foresee only moderate boosts in their ability to meet their goals/KPIs in the year to come: 

• Increase significantly — 33% 
• Increase moderately — 51% 
• Decrease moderately — 7% 
• Decrease significantly — 3% 
• No change anticipated — 6%

The big revenue drivers will mostly be net new logos (20%), equally net new logos and upselling/cross-selling (53%) and 27% primarily upselling/cross-selling. 

To get there, firms plan the following changes to their tech budgets:

• Increasing significantly — 36% 
• Increasing moderately — 50%
• Staying the same — 11%
• Decreasing moderately — 3% 
• Decreasing significantly — 1%

At the same time, 30% foresee a significant increase in zero-party data use, and 37% anticipate a moderate hike. 

And 26% expect to greatly increase their first-party data use and 40% to moderately boost it. 

As for intent data, 23% predict a significant rise and 33% a moderate one. Only 21% plan a major use in second-party data use, and 23% in third-party data. 

Their top priorities for improving their data use in the year ahead are: 

• Centralizing/unifying data — 46% 
• Adopting a data first culture — 42%
• Updating tech stack — 39% 
• Developing a data strategy — 38%
• Creating data governance — 37% 
• Updating privacy policies and practices — 24% 
• Other — 4%

The study notes that enterprise B2B marketers are “most focused on unifying data, which helps with the creating of a “single source of the truth” across marketing use cases from content marketing to email and programmatic campaigns.” 

Ascend2 surveyed 370 B2B marketing professionals at businesses in the U.S. (66%) and UK (34%) with more than 250 employees. Of the firms represented, 43% have 1000+ employees, 38% 501-1,000 and 19% 251-500.