Top Post-Pandemic Priorities for Marketing Executives

As we emerge into the brave new post-pandemic world, it’s been fascinating to pay attention to the changes in the B2B product marketing landscape. To track these trends, Aventi Group sponsored a study conducted by Gatepoint Research to explore the current top priorities for sales and product marketing teams. I was lucky enough to sit down and discuss what we found in terms of B2B senior marketing leaders’ key priorities with Fawn Annan, CMO of ITbusiness.ca (ITWC), on her podcast “CMO Talks.” 

Download the Aventi/Gatepoint report findings.  

These days, sales enablement is at the top of the list of product marketing executives’ careabouts: 61% of the respondents in our survey named sales enablement as their team’s top priority, with 63% saying they would like to prioritize creating dynamic, robust content for sales & marketing. Why? Well, sales were tough during the pandemic without being able to meet face to face, and much remains virtual to this day. As a result, investing in stellar sales enablement tools has become even more important in a hybrid or all-virtual sales environment to allow sales reps to make their quotas. 

This echoes a move we’re seeing in general toward getting more bang from your marketing buck. Emphasis now is on ROI in terms of total conversion to revenue cost––just like with the sales enablement piece, I’ve noticed executives focusing on maximizing business results instead of just giving high fives to reward activity. Events have taken a similar turn, with a move away from big trade shows and a new focus on smaller, more intimate events that are way higher touch––and deliver a lot more value. 

If you’d like to find out more about what marketing executives are doing to adapt to the post-pandemic environment, you can either download the report or listen to the podcast. 

Written By

Sridhar Ramanathan

Sridhar Ramanathan has 20+ years of experience in technology companies – from startups to blue chip firms. As the Marketing executive for Hewlett-Packard’s Managed Services business, he was responsible for marketing worldwide and managing the portfolio of HP services’ $1.1B unit. He also held profit & loss responsibility for electronic messaging outsourcing and e-service business units. Thanks to Sridhar’s efforts, HP became the #1 ERP Outsourcer and experienced growth in the data warehouse market, now well over a $1B revenue stream. Sridhar has played interim executive roles for a number of technology firms, leading their sales and marketing functions in the high growth phase. Sridhar holds an MBA from the Wharton School of Business and a BS in Engineering Physics from U.C. Berkeley. He is active in non-profit work as Vice Chairman Emeritus of the Board of Child Advocates of Silicon Valley, an organization that provides stability and hope to abused and neglected children.