B2B marketers in the Asia-Pacific region are struggling with increasing workloads and a lack of regional content to target effectively, a new survey has found, and worryingly, staff and agencies seem to offer little relief with over 75% of marketer surveyed indicating that staff lack a sense of urgency and outsourced agencies are not flexible enough to support the increasing workload, which is deemed out of scope.

This adds to the growing pressure as accountability based on business metrics is increasingly demanded of marketing activities. Today’s B2B marketers are faced with an increasing pressure to deliver quantifiable results with limited resources.

The new survey titled ‘B2B Marketing in Asia Pacific,’ conducted by agency Coactives Asia, reveals most marketers feel that there is room for improvement, but are are frustrated as marketing staff and outsourced agencies are not aligning to new marketing objectives measured on business value.

Regional marketers are facing the pressure to deliver more results with less resource and there is a divide in the staff skill sets. While upgrading and keeping staff engaged, there is a general consensus that not all marketers are feeling a sense of urgency. This is further exacerbated by the requirement for regional execution with local content in multiple languages.

Key survey findings include:

• 82% of respondents have priority in delivering quality leads to the business, while more than 70% of the respondents who highlighted staff and agency alignment to marketing objectives as top priority,
• over 80% of marketers felt their workload was increasing and lacked the regional content to target effectively
• 75% indicate that staff lack a sense of urgency and outsourced agencies are not flexible enough to support the increasing workload, and
• 73% of marketers believe there is a need to drive more demand through sales and marketing automation platforms but are lacking the right skill sets and the relevant content to achieve this.

Methodology: The survey was conducted from 1 June to 30 June 2013. The survey sample equals 418 total respondents (71 in Australia, 59 in China, 88 in India, 42 in Japan, 125 in Singapore and 33 in South Korea). All respondents must have marketing management responsibilities, either as an individual contributor or with people management responsibilities. Survey results may have a +/- 1.8 percent margin of error with a 95% confidence level.