• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, November 15, 2024

A survey by Anteriad and Ascend2 earlier this year found that only 30% of B2B brands achieved significant revenue increases in the prior 12 months. 

What separates that 30%? Anteriad has explored this in a new analysis titled “Unleashing Growth: What B2B Marketers Are Doing To Stay Ahead.”

For one thing, 72% of the so-called growth gurus have the right data strategy in place, versus 36% of the others.

Moreover, 85% claim they are targeting the right personas and customer profiles, while 37% of other brands are not. And they are much more likely to be making effective use of personalization and ABM, which suggests they are also better at email marketing.

Growth gurus also embrace a culture of testing and innovation. For instance, they are more likely to be using tactics such as programmatic advertising, once thought to be the domain solely of B2C and influencer marketing. 

Of the growth companies studied, 35% now deploy programmatic and 55% influencer marketing. In contrast, 25% of all other firms use programmatic. And influencer marketer is used by 43% of the non-growth gurus. 

One area where non-growth firms score a higher numbers is paid email (40% vs. 28% for growth leaders).

And 22% use more than five channels, compared to 8% of all others. 

But they cautious with AI, with 61% saying they are “very concerned about their brand’s authenticity in the age of AI marketing, compared to only 20% of other marketers,” the study notes. 

The takeaway?  “A mind-shift toward future improvement can greatly open up opportunities for growth,”  the analysis concludes. “Simply shifting focus away from scale-at-all-costs, and instead prioritizing data that drives results or testing channels that reach younger audiences, could yield significant changes in outcomes.”