How important has analytics become for successful B2B marketing? The DemandGen’s latest report – Marketing Technology: The Road Ahead for 2013. Challenges, Opportunities and Key Priorities for B2B Marketers – tries to answer this and other technology related questions on the table for the year ahead. B2B marketing automation burst on the scene in the not too distant past, with companies acquiring platforms like Eloqua and Marketo with little thought of how they might actually employ them in their marketing efforts. While at the time this might have been seen as premature, those acquisitions might finally be paying off in spades – or at least the potential is there.

The accumulation of massive amounts of data, affectionately known today as Big Data, is defined by Wikipedia as:

A collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using on-hand database management tools or traditional data processing applications. The challenges include capture, curation, storage, search, sharing, analysis, and visualization. Examples include web logs, RFID, sensor networks, social networks, social data (due to the social data revolution), Internet text and documents, Internet search indexing, call detail records, etc.

For B2B companies, a smaller definition for the purposes of marketing might be any of the information and analytics that they accumulate on prospects and customers from any number of sources, including social media, prospect interaction, outside appended sources, and website analytics. While it may seem daunting, this data can yield a treasure trove of information that can take marketing to the next level.

In the DemandGen report, Malcolm Friedberg, head of LeftBrain DGA, a marketing partner of ours sums it up best:

The application of technology is rebirthing marketing and, quite literally, shaking our discipline to its core. New expertise. New agencies. New approaches. Sure, some of the same skills still apply, but there’s a complementary set that’s now essential. And while brand may not be dead, it certainly has a new, left brain-focused partner in crime: marketing analytics.

The marketing analytics revolution promises to help B2B marketers achieve new levels of professional excellence. Yet this endless horizon also has the potential to derail a whole generation of marketers.

The proliferation of technology is expanding so rapidly that it’s impossible to keep up with every niche product. The best marketers won’t necessarily be the ones with the best strategy or most skillful execution. Success will hinge on something much more pragmatic: understanding technology and how to apply it.

In the midst of this growing challenge, however, one thing is absolutely assured: The requirement for analytics-based decision making is here to stay. No matter which set of tools marketers use, we must continue to embrace this new standard. The renaissance of marketing is about measurement, accountability and ROI. And marketers that become skillful at extracting marketing intelligence from this watershed of integrated data will become tomorrow’s marketing leaders.

For all those companies sitting on marketing automation solutions, the time is ripe to start using them. Dive into the data and make sense of the analytics. It’ll point the way to B2B marketing (automation) success.

You can get a copy of the DemandGen report by emailing Mark Evertz at LeftBrain DGA.

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Chuck Swanson is Co-Founder of Digital C4 in Portland, Oregon. Chuck and his team help companies enhance their online brand and content visibility using proven SEO, Social Media Marketing, and Custom Content Creation and Blogging.

I lost my car keys once and it was a nightmare. Why? I didn’t have a spare set. I bought my car used and had put it off because it was an expensive and time-consuming process to create a duplicate smart key with a transponder. And yet there I was, unable to go about my normal activity because I neglected to do what I knew I should have. I learned my lesson the hard way.

Based on the amount of available resources I’ve come across, it seems like a lot of people feel the same way about creating program documentation for their marketing automation programs. It is challenging but try thinking about it this way: your marketing automation platform is the car, the content is the fuel, your marketing plan is your map, your program managers are the keys and your documentation is your spare set. All of these items are needed to reach your desired destination, whether it is in a Ford or a Ferrari.

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A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post called “Who is Buyer 2.0?” I followed up last week with “How to Engage Buyer 2.0,” stressing the importance of buyer persona research and analysis. Now that we know how to properly identify prospects, influencers, their content consumption patterns, and their sources of information, lets take it to the next level and talk about moving away from old school batch-and-blast techniques to thoughtful, well-designed nurture processes.

Is your marketing one-to-one or one-to-many? One-off email blasts to your house list offer a very low probability of your critical information making it through to your potential buyer. Even the greatest piece of marketing content does nothing to support the buying process if it is delivered to a prospect too early or too late in their journey. Marketing automation can be an effective tool for delivering content but it is often misused. Utilizing it without an integrated buyer-driven strategy that maps relevant content to your buyer will only add to your list fatigue challenges.

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Greater access to information has provided B2B buyers with unprecedented power – resulting in “Buyer 2.0.” Marketing success in the Buyer 2.0 environment requires a new set of people, processes and content to better leverage new marketing technologies and to engage with buyers on their terms.

Buyer 2.0 rejects traditional, interruptive marketing tactics, preferring a buyer driven, Web-educated and peer communication approach. Why? Because it’s a process buyers can control and it helps them get the answers they need from the sources they trust, when and where they want.

This new buyer behavior requires marketers to focus on buyer-centric demand generation. Buyer-centricity in demand generation means tightly integrating inbound marketing efforts, such as search, Web and social, with elements of outbound marketing, such as email nurturing and offer landing pages.

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Last week was my first at Left Brain DGA and in true jump-into-the-deep-end spirit, I spent it largely in client meetings. I’m pleased to report there were no major surprises, since I was already familiar with the company’s basic methodology (the Left Brain Model)  and had met most of the key players. I did learn a bit about my new co-workers drinking habits (Jack and Coke? REALLY?) but that was about as soul-revealing as things got.

One thing that did surprise me was how much content our programs require. This may rank with Newton discovering gravity in terms of stating the obvious (was he really the first to notice that things never fall up?) But as someone who has focused largely on marketing strategy and technology, I haven’t given much thought to content except as something to test. Here’s what I realized last week: a basic Left Brain program involves four lead stages and three levels per stage, so somebody has to draft at least a dozen emails plus whatever white papers, webinars, worksheets or other materials are offered as response bait. Add unique versions for three buyer personas across four vertical markets and you’re well past one hundred items.

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