Perilous Pitfalls of a B2B Marketing Budgets

Ah, the treacherous terrain of business to business (B2B) marketing budgeting, where countless dollars evaporate into the ether. Let us navigate the six most hazardous budgetary black holes:

• Google Ads - A veritable quagmire, the place where money disappears with alarming alacrity.

• Trade show booths and conference sponsorships - A fiscal sinkhole consuming millions yearly I have learned from experience.

• Gated content syndication - A costly exercise in procuring email addresses available for a pittance elsewhere.

• LinkedIn lead gen - Pursuing vanity metrics while genuine leads languish in obscurity somewhere else.

• Staffing to prop up low ROI programs - When the curtain should have fallen long ago for company’s that don’t understand the sunk cost fallacy.

• Overzealous investment in marketing technology - Ignoring the fundamentals as budgets balloon over to every new promise.

These were all valuable marketing approaches to take a decade or more ago so the reason why people are still doing it isn’t ignorance because they did once work very well once. The real reason is complacency and or an inability to change tactics and acknowledge that strategies have and must change. Many marketing maestros lament the lack of budgetary largesse, but the stark reality is:

Your budget is adequate; it simply needs to be steered towards vastly improved return on investment (ROI).

How, you ask? By critically examining your marketing budget and programs, and making the arduous decision to jettison the deadweight.

The majority of B2B enterprises resist such choices, resulting in a smorgasbord of mediocre marketing programs that yield subpar results. Resources, budget, and focus are spread thin.

It’s a bewildering spectacle: companies that boast of their data-driven, attribution-focused ethos, yet blatantly disregard glaring evidence that highlights their budgetary blunders. A paradox, indeed.

But fear not! Scrutinize the finances of a high-growth SaaS company, and suddenly, a cornucopia of capital materializes, ripe for reallocation to ventures of significantly greater efficacy:

1. Launch the preeminent podcast for your industry or target audience.
2. Host weekly, content-driven events to generate demand and power your social content engine.
3. Appoint an evangelist to champion your podcast and lead your community.
4. Master the art of Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn ads that genuinely drive demand, rather than accumulating hollow “leads.”
5. Cultivate a community for your target audience, offering unparalleled professional development, peer support, and advancement opportunities.

These untapped strategies lie dormant for now, constrained by the erroneous belief that “we don’t have the budget.” Yet these too soon will become irrelevant, the point I hope to make here is not that these are the strategies you should do for now but rather that they are what works at this point and that too will look different in a decade or more.

Instead, B2B companies squander their resources on obsolete tactics that inflate vanity metrics and yield pitiful ROI. The reluctance to scrutinize the efficacy of these activities remains a confounding enigma.