New B2B Marketing Survey Finds Tech Brands Are Prioritizing Customer Satisfaction Over Net New Sales

Alloy’s State of the Modern Customer Journey reports that 91% of B2B tech companies are placing a greater emphasis on serving existing customers

Alloy, the precision storytelling and experiences agency for imaginative brands, released its annual tech marketing data report, entitled State of the Modern Customer Journey. The longitudinal report follows the same titled report that Alloy published in 2022, which revealed that tech companies had begun prioritizing the customer lifecycle over the sales funnel.

“Two years ago, we found that B2B organizations were beginning to hyper-focus on the customer lifecycle and lessen their focus on net new sales. At the time, we predicted this shift could fundamentally reshape global sales and marketing departments,” said David Randolph, senior vice president of strategy at Alloy. “So, this year we set out to check in with revenue leaders again to see if 2022’s findings had advanced or retracted. What we found was that 91% of B2B tech companies are still placing a greater emphasis on serving existing customers. However, factors driving this focus are different today than they were immediately post-COVID.”

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Among the survey findings, Alloy discovered that:

• Customer satisfaction / NPS scores” topped the list of customer lifecycle priorities, beating “customer acquisition.
• The number two challenge that sales and marketing teams are facing is sluggish net new sales, which they say forces them to work hard to retain existing revenue (38%).

“Knowing that existing customers are highly prized by our respondents, we delved deeper to understand how they are finding success at engaging with these customers, improving the customer experience and building brand loyalists. What they shared is that digital channels dominate,” Randolph continued.

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Specifically, when it comes to building customer engagement and loyalty, respondents overwhelmingly said the top four most effective channels are 1) website, 2) customer portals/apps, 3) email marketing and 4) content marketing – beating in-person and direct human interactions, like tradeshows and account representatives. Moreover, 76% of survey takers said they’re ramping up marketing budgets in the next 12 months to support the customer lifecycle.