• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, October 26, 2023

B2B marketers face many obstacles when creating a multi-channel strategy, the main one being setting up the strategy itself. But they are coping, judging by The B2B Perspective on Multi-Channel Marketing, a study from Zoominfo, conducted by Ascend2. 

Only 20% rate themselves as very successful, but 75% say they are somewhat good at it. And a mere 5% are unsuccessful. 

But they are trying: 39% say it is very important to have a multi-channel strategy, and 50% that it is somewhat essential. At the bottom end, 8% feel it is somewhat unimportant and 3% extremely unimportant. 

The main challenges are:

• Creating an effective strategy—57%
• Insufficient budget/resources—46% 
• Data quality—44%
• Data quantity—26% 
• Ineffective marketing attribution—16% 
• Disconnected technology stack—15%
• Siloed/conflicting data—9%

Another issue might be sales-marketing alignment. Of those polled, 19% say they are in sync to a great extent, and 49% that they are somewhat so. But 20% admit to having very little alignment, and 12% none at all. 

Email is rated the most effective channel for connecting with prospective buyers:  

• Email—73% 
• Phone—39% 
• Events—31% 
• Ads—25% 
• Text—19%
• Mail (print)—19% 
• Chat (bot/live)—6%

The respondents also rate email as the channel having the most impact on their multi-channel strategy:

• Email marketing—50%
• Social media—33%
• Content marketing—26% 
• Digital advertising—18% 
• Partnerships—16%
• Public relations—15% 
• Account-based marketing—14% 
• Video marketing—13%

What do multi-channel marketers need most? Data. But not all B2B firms feel they are able to utilize data across multiple channels for a consistent customer experience:

• Strongly agree—19% 
• Somewhat agree—57% 
• Somewhat disagree—18% 
• Strongly disagree—6% 

What are the challenges in collecting and analyzing data for multi-channel efforts? They are:

• Lack of resources or expertise in data analysis—42%
• Difficulty in tracking and consolidating data from different sources—36%
• Incomplete or inaccurate data—34% 
• Lack of an overall data strategy—33% 
• Privacy and security—27%

Still, B2B marketers are avidly deploying data to achieve personalization:

• We use data to personalize product recommendations and promotions—47%
• We use data to segment our audience and create targeted marketing campaigns—42%
• We use data to create personalized email campaigns—40%
• We use data to personalize website content and messaging—39% 

Despite the challenges, 23% use the same messaging across all channels, 35% customize messaging for each channel, 16% customize messaging on targeted personas and 22% use a combination of the above approaches. 

And many say they are automated, at least to some extent:

• Fully—7%
• Mostly—18% 
• Partially—32%
• Very little—26%
• Not at all—17%

Ascend2 and Zoominfo surveyed 101 B2B marketers in April 2023. Of this sample, 19% were in firms with more than 500 employees, 23% had 50 to 500, and 58% fewer than 50.