Do B2B Marketers want a seat at the strategy table or a new gadget to play with?

June 8, 2010

Earlier this year email marketing firm Emailvision surveyed over 400 UK Marketers on the matter of Marketing Training.

The key finding of the study for me is that only 45% of those questioned had access to any kind of training budget and the vast majority expected to fund their professional development themselves.
The skills most in demand amongst the marketing community varied widely between in-house or agency-based staff although strategic planning was a priority for both (48%).

I doubt whether the survey made a distinction between Consumer and B2B Marketing but if they did I’m sure B2B marketer’s results would be equally as gloomy.

As a Marketing Lecturer I frequently encourage my students to be more assertive and ‘demand’ investment in training and marketing in general. B2B Marketing Managers in a Small Business are frequently the only such resource within the company and there are just so many areas to cover. Although the CIM Marketing Diploma, which I lecture in at The Marketer’s Forum, has been recently overhauled it continues to offer only a ‘basic’ training for B2B Marketing and all its complexities. Check-out CIM’s short-courses and you’ll see there is little on offer for B2B specialists.

Since the vast majority of CIM’s London members are B2B Marketers the question remains “Why is the majority of your constituency so neglected?”

There is certainly a lack of appropriate courses available for B2B marketers to get maximum benefit from. At least this was that shared view of a B2B Marketing Agency Director and myself over coffee at the IOD a few weeks ago. While vendor-led training is probably well intentioned it tends to be focused on ‘tactics’ (SEO/Email/Direct-Mail) and is biased towards the use of the vendors services/products. Where do b2b marketers go for the ‘strategic-planning’ respondents say they want and that will give them a context for the tactical choices they make?

Attending an SEO course serves no purposes if you need to invest in lead generation or should be prioritizing e-mail marketing. Selecting the right tactics (which strategic planning training covers) should precede investment in learning ‘how to’ tactics for SEO, PR and E-mail marketing that are so prevalent in the UK today. That’s the key point of Funnel Academy a course specially developed for B2B Marketers. A Pay Per Click/Ad-words course will not earn you a seat at the strategy table. So take care where you spend your very limited training dollars.