During the last few years, substantial changes have taken place that are transforming the ways B2B buyers engage with potential suppliers. Now more than ever, B2B buyers want to research on their own before engaging sales. According to the 2011 Marketing Leadership Council Customer Purchase Research Survey, customers' first serious engagament with sales occurs when they’re 57 percent through the purchase process.

In the initial phases of customer due diligence, individuals are talking to their trusted networks, engaging social media contacts and performing extensive Web-based research about the market, the vendors and the buying process. They’re performing these activities on their own time and on their own terms. Only when they’re satisfied with what they learn do they reach out to the vendors they believe can address their challenges or improve their business.

For B2B companies, the shift in the buying process requires a change in how marketing departments are configured. Yet many businesses haven’t evolved to meet the demands of today’s more educated, self-reliant and social buyer. The problem is that if you don’t rebuild your department to be more transparent, more helpful and more human, your prospects may seek out a competitor that does. The bottom line is that it’s more important than ever to have a foundation of smart systems-thinking specialists who can leverage technology to drive efficiency within the marketing department.

The Evolving Marketing Department

The shift in when prospects want to engage with sales has led to a change in ownership regarding early customer education and awareness. These tasks, which used to be the responsibility of sales, now lie solely in the hands of marketing. And this means that marketing organizational shifts and new marketing investments are necessary to accommodate the new responsibilities.

This change represents a great time for marketing leadership to evaluate whether core functions should be performed in-house by employees, in-house by contractors or outsourced to speciality firms or consultants. This could be a unique opportunity to realign marketing duties and communicate anew the roles and responsibilities of the organization. The transition to new marketing models also mandates new skill levels of many marketing employees.

Those organizations that don’t emphasize training ƒ†…‘ƒ…Š‹‰ƒ‡‹‰•ƒand coaching marketing staffers will find themselves woefully out of date and unable to compete in this new era of the empowered customer. The Sirius Decisions Research Brief, “Marketing Automation: Mind the (Skills) Gap,” indicates that just 5 percent of B2B organizations have a formal, systematic marketing training program.

It also indicates that in 75 percent of companies, the only way marketers learn is through trial and error. So for those readers who have marketing management responsibility, let this paper serve as a wake-up call that you must invest in upgrading your employees’ skills. If you don’t, you risk being overtaken by the more nimble, skilled marketers found in your competitors’ organizations. One of the most important skills marketing departments need to develop within their organization is deep expertise in marketing automation.

The Role of Marketing Automation

Marketing automation allows departments to scale communication efforts with and prospects while at the same time employing deep personalization and dynamic content that results in highly personalized, relevant messages. According to Sirius Decisions, more B2B organizations are deploying marketing automation, yet few have realized its full potential.

Skilled resources must be put in place in order to leverage all the capabilities that the technology provides. These skilled resources can either be new hires, retrained individuals or outsourced agency specialists, but they must be obtained quickly to stay abreast with changing marketplace demands.

This white paper will review common marketing organisation functions and staffing considerations and highlight key roles and duties in each of the departments in the organization. Please keep in mind that there may be overlap in duties and assignments in the major department or functional areas.

For example, responsibilities around data acquisition may fall under the domain of demand generation or under marketing operations. The ultimate assignment of the data acquisition duties is your choice based on the skills of your employees, contractors or outside resources.

The marketing department also absolutely requires a team approach in order to achieve overall objectives. Between messaging, campaign design, deployment, logistics and measurement, many different groups are involved. It’s imperative that roles be crisply defined and hand-offs be formalised so that all marketing processes are smooth and efficient. Here’s a look at some groups within the marketing department, with an emphasis on key responsibilities and how they’re evolving.

Marketing Operations

Marketing operations is a relatively new discipline within the marketing department, but one that’s rapidly being adopted as a result of the shift to the empowered customer. IDC defines the purpose of marketing operations as:

"both and to build a foundation for excellence by reinforcing marketing with processes, technology, metrics, and best practices.”

Sirius Decisions has also been one of the early proponents of marketing operations and defines its function as:

“responsible for the capture and dissemination of marketing information to the enterprise, be it performance metrics, data or strategy/planning and initiatives and budgets, as well as the systems and processes that help generate this information in a systematic, predictable fashion. It drives both visibility into— and productivity for—the marketing organization, which in turn benefits the functions that work with marketing on a regular basis.”

Individuals in this organization have strong communications skills and are proficient in process design. They also must have good technical aptitude, as they are often called on to articulate and document the system-level integration requirements between marketing automation, customer relationship management (CRM), order management and other production systems.

According to the IBM October 2011 CMO Study, one of the biggest challenges CMOs face is the proliferation of marketing data. The marketing operations group can take ownership of turning data into actionable insight for the company, communicating anecdotes, trends and results to the product, sales, service and executive functions.

Core duties of marketing operations include:

• Marketing Processes and Alignment
• Definition
• Handoffs
• Recycling
• Service Level Agreements
• Data
• Strategy
• Analysis
• Acquisition
• Systems
• Email
• Marketing Automation
• CRM Integration Technology
• Reporting
• Analytics
• Dashboard

Budgeting

The budgeting function may reside within the marketing operations group. Budgeting in the marketing department can be a significant undertaking due to the sheer numbers of vendors and line items required to achieve all of marketing's objectives. It’s imperative that you have a person or group (depending on the size of your budget and organization) who’s tracking budget versus actual, spending trends and allocations. This role can also provide valuable insight on compensation for both internal employees and outsourced vendors.

• Segmentation
• ROI Measurement
• Planning
• Goal Setting
• Measurement
• Best Practice Compliance

How to Evolve: If you don’t have a formal marketing operations organization within your company, consider building these capabilities into your department by either hiring the talent or retraining existing staff to assume these duties.

Keep in mind that the best marketing operations candidates may not have a background in marketing at all; rather, they’re experts in systems thinking, hands-on technologists who also have a creative flair.

Demand Generation

In short, the mission of the demand generation group is to generate incremental revenues for the company. This group is responsible for both the top of the funnel (finding net-new leads) as well as middle-of-the-funnel activities (strategies and tactics that progress individuals and companies through the marketing-owned portion of the buying cycle). It’s responsible for designing, deploying and measuring campaigns and tactics that over time bring in revenue for the company.

Depending on the mission of this group, it may or may not be responsible for implementing programs for existing customers. In some organizations, the demand generation group may be solely responsible for identifying net-new customer opportunities, while in other companies it will also have the charter to find growth areas within the existing customer base.

Many demand gen groups also have a telemarketing function and are responsible for lead qualification and inbound lead follow-up

Core functions of demand generation include:

• Campaign Design (nurture marketing and net-new name acquisition)
• Campaign Management
• Marketing Automation Setup and Execution
• Landing Pages
• Web Forms
• Email
• Lead Scoring
• Lead Routing
• Data Management (can overlap with marketing operations)
• Data Entry
• Lead Distribution and Management
• List Acquisition
• Campaign Reporting
• Telemarketing
• Lead Follow-up
• Inbound Call Handling

How to Evolve: This department has both a creative and a tool/technology focus. If your demand generation group is small, make sure you have individuals that are comfortable with both left- and right-brain activities, as the best demand gen marketers have both a flair for the creative and the discipline for tasks such as project management and measurement. Also, if your or

Also, if your organization still has individuals with titles of email marketing manager or marketing manager, it’s strongly recommended that you upgrade their skills and change their titles. The title change alone will drive home the message that these employees have a new focus in the company.

Product Marketing

Product marketing has a primary focus on ensuring that sound marketing and sales strategies are developed to allow the company to continue to win and succeed in the marketplace. Product marketing typically includes the most senior staff members in the marketing organization, and they often have experience working for either a client or a competitor.

The role that product marketing plays in sales situation support varies widely from company to company. In some organizations, product marketing gets very involved in being a second-level sales resource. It can often get introduced in sales situations for large opportunities or when a prospect’s requirements are unique.

Core duties of product marketing include:

• Product Messaging and Positioning
• Competitive Analysis and Market/Customer Intelligence
• Industry Influencers
• Go-to-Market Strategy
• Buyer Personas
• Sales Readiness and Situation Support
• Launch/Rollout Planning and Execution
• Customer Marketing
• Partner/Alliance Marketing
• Selection
• Co-Marketing

How to Evolve: In many cases, sales support can literally take up all the time and resources of the product marketing department. This then leaves important duties such as messaging, positioning and strategy on the back burner, and the entire company can suffer as a result.

To help overcome this challenge, product marketing needs to make sure it has a comprehensive framework of sales tools, slide decks, client case studies (in both slide and collateral format) and RFP response templates to address the widest array of sales situations in an "off the shelf" manner.

Marketing Communications

The marketing communications organization acts as a central hub for written, printed and digital communications. While this organization may not write every piece of content produced for the company, the staff plays an important role in editing to ensure you're depicting a consistent voice and tone in all company communications. If you employ outside resources to help you in content creation, you’ll need to invest the time and effort to bring them up to speed on your solutions and standards.

Core duties of marketing communications include:

• Content
• Presentations
• Collateral
• Sales Tools
• Blogging, Guest Posts
• Case Studies
• Web Content
• Public Relations
• Social Media
• Production & Logistics
• Traffic Management
• Show Logistics
• Event Management

How to Evolve: Consider hiring staff members with journalism degrees or experience. Obviously, the more they understand the challenges your industry faces and the features and benefits of your products, the more effective the team will be.

Given today’s more social buyer, it’s imperative that the marketing communications group also become more social, crafting a strategy that connects the company/brand message with critical social channels and influencers to build its social audience. In addition, your team should also be prepared to respond to social critiques and stream helpful social PR snippets where applicable.

Decentralizing Your Marketing: Factors To Consider

Another important consideration for today’s marketers is whether to centralize the marketing function or have resources decentralized across the organization. Typically, when organizations elect to decentralize the function, they feel there are benefits with closely aligning marketing talent to a business unit, geography, product or industry organization. If decentralized resources provide increased responsiveness, then there may be a strong case to staff with this model.

It's important to make sure that these field marketing resources have the skills and depth of capabilities to provide proper service to their organization. To back them up, you may want to consider having a “center of excellence” at the corporate level. This elite organization would reside at the corporate level and has a charter to coach and mentor the field marketing organization.

For example, you may have mobile marketing or marketing automation resources at the corporate level who can be “on call” for assistance to the field marketing organizations. They can provide vital education, guidance and strategic assessment assistance to the decentralized organization.

Outsourcing: Your 5 Step Guide

Because marketing often requires a myriad of specialized resources, it’s rare that your marketing organization has the breadth or depth of resources in-house to handle everything you need to effectively achieve both your short-term tactical and long-term strategic objectives. In the pre-Internet era, companies could hire an advertising agency that would be a long-term partner and manage everything from messaging and creative to direct mail and advertising. Today, those all-encompassing relationships are rare.

Instead, modern organizations usually rely on a melting pot of specialist outside resources that can include consultants, technical resources and creative talent. And while there used to be a sense of pride associated with hiring a Madison Avenue agency, most companies today don’t have qualms about hiring a solo practitioner as long as he or she provides deep, specialized skills or a large portfolio of topnotch past creative work.

Marketing areas to consider for outsourcing include:

• Marketing Database Design and Analysis
• Integration to Other Systems such as CRM, Order Management and Shopping Cart Technology
• Search Engine Optimization
• Email and Marketing Automation Campaign Design and Setup
• Competitive Analysis
• Event Registrations and Trade Show Logistics
• Lead Score Definitions & Assignment
• Social Media Strategic Planning
• Website Design and Programming
• Content Creation
• Corporate and Product Positioning and Messaging
• Media Planning and Press Pitching
• Online Ad Buying & Placement

‡‡ƒ‡Here are five steps to help you make the right choice if you're considering outsourcing:

1) Do an honest and thorough evaluation of the skills you have in your company. Identify the gaps in talent and decide if you want to hire permanent employees to address the need or hire longer-term on-site contractors to address your requirements.

2) Determine how you want to address the remaining needs within your organization. Perhaps you’ll want to bring on a resource that can lead a skills transfer effort so that your own employees can assume the responsibilities over time. If that’s your plan, make sure you’re setting internal deadlines to make this happen or you might find that the outside talent is staying on for far longer than you had planned or budgeted.

3) Give each firm a "blank slate" from which to begin its capabilities presentation. When interviewing agencies and other resources, this can help you evaluate the best fit. The firms usually prominently present the work that they’re best and most comfortable performing—and the topics and capabilities they don’t present can be equally telling.

4) Clearly communicate objectives, results expected, time frames and work scope When hiring outside talent, good communication will help prevent any unforeseen disagreements or misunderstandings that could be costly, embarrassing or worse. This can be challenging in today’s environment, where many marketing organizations have contracts with a number of different specialty firms. To overcome this challenge, make sure you allocate permanent employee resources to actively manage these firms and ensure you're receiving full value on your terms.

5) Build a review period into your calendar. This will enable you to assess the performance of the firm and the impact they’re having on your overall marketing efforts. If the firm or resource isn't performing up to snuff, then by all means make a clean break and either bring the function in-house or look for other outside talent.

Final Thoughts: Solving the Skills Challenge

According to Sirius Decisions, there’s “a widening gap between the skills of b-to-b marketers and the processes and technologies they are now being expected to employ". Yet Sirius reports that 81 percent of organizations spend less than $1,000 per year on marketing training—and 36 percent spend nothing at all. This is clearly unacceptable for both employees and the companies depending on them to drive incremental revenue, create preference in the minds of prospects and clients and win in the marketplace.

So how can you go about solving the skills challenge? You can ire individuals who already have the experience with the marketing processes and with the technology you’ve selected, or you can train existing employees to assume new duties. Either way, carefully assess the aptitude of the individuals you want to train. If someone in your department has had a specialized role in media planning and advertising, for example, it may be a stretch for that person to learn the skills he or she needs to be a top contributor in a marketing operations role.

Rely on your technology vendors to provide training (either online or in person) and certification programs to get your employees up to speed as quickly as possible. User group meetings and other regional events can also provide valuable education and networking opportunities.

Regardless of how you do it, focus in terms of time and budget is needed to bring the skills of marketers up to date in this new era of marketing. But it’s well worth the investment.

By combining staffing strategies and organizational considerations that reflect the new era of B2B marketing, with an increased emphasis on training and automation, you can ensure you meet and exceed the expectations placed on today’s marketing departments.

You'll help maintain alignment within the department, deliver a consistent voice and message across multiple communication channels and, most importantly, deliver a more rewarding experience for customers and prospects.