System-relevant B2B marketing: From cost center to profit engine
When economic conditions get tougher, a painful reflex ensues in many B2B companies: The marketing budget is cut first. Why Because marketing is often not perceived as business-critical. Anyone who wants to pass this “dismissal test” must free themselves from dysfunctional lead acquisition processes and the crippling fear of data privacy protection laws. In this article, you will learn why up to 95 percent of CRM contacts in B2B organizations remain completely unused today and how you can fully exploit the true potential of your existing contact base with a clear business case instead of “German Angst.” Learn how marketing becomes real, system-relevant sales support.
This is how CRM marketing becomes systemically relevant in B2B companies
The “dismissal test”: Why marketing often seems unnecessary today
The bitter truth is revealed in the crisis: While sales are considered indispensable, marketing is often treated as a “nice-to-have” department. The reason is a massive lack of measurable impact. When marketing misses the impact, it's usually not the “what” but the “who”: It simply reaches too few of the really important decision makers. As long as marketing only digitally addresses a tiny subset of contacts in the CRM system, it can never pay off economically.
The end of the truce: CRM marketing as real sales support
In B2B organizations, there is often an ineffective peace agreement between marketing and sales. The “Marketing Qualified Leads” (MQL) model has largely failed: Sales complains of poor quality, marketing lacks follow-up. Real relevance can only be achieved through a radical change of perspective: away from focusing on individual clicks towards analyzing the “buyer intent” at account level. Modern CRM marketing provides condensed “sales insights” that evaluate the behavior of the entire buying center. By combining CRM data and intent signals, marketing becomes a navigation system that enables sales to interact with relevant decision makers at the right time.
The 1:10 trap: The wasted gold in CRM
There is a dramatic mismatch in most B2B organizations: Only around 10 percent (or less) of existing CRM contacts can be addressed digitally for marketing. Analyses of B2B companies that have been on the market for a long time and have a corresponding number of existing contacts show that between 70 and 95 percent of these mostly relevant and interested contacts do not have an “opt-in” for advertising and therefore remain unused. Yet new business, cross-selling and upselling among existing customers is dramatically much easier and cheaper than hunting for “net new leads.” We call this the “refrigerator principle”: Customers often don't buy anything for years, but are highly satisfied with the product. This silent majority must be bound and monetized through continuous, useful communication.
Foundations before roof extension: Use existing assets
System-relevant marketing also means resource efficiency. Instead of constantly launching new costly measures, existing assets such as the CRM database and the website must be combined and fully exploited. According to Aristotle's principle (“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”), CRM marketing only develops its full power when newsletter marketing, content marketing and CRM data mutually reinforce each other. A central lever here is the company blog as part of the website. Continuously published, useful contributions not only increase SEO rankings, but also serve as ideal responders for “long-tail” searches in Google and AI chatbots. At the same time, these contributions function as targeted landing pages for email marketing, which in turn directs valuable traffic from the existing contact base to the website.
This scenario is rounded off by visitor recognition tools. While 99 percent of website visitors normally remain anonymous, these tools identify their company names in compliance with GDPR and provide sales with purchase signals in condensed form. It is indicative of the current malaise in B2B CRM marketing that almost all companies are investing massively in maintaining and relaunching their website, but very few in this country use such identification tools. The rest is criminally letting this huge lead potential lie idle.
The business case: “German anxiety” vs. millions in turnover
The biggest obstacle to system-relevant marketing is the widespread “German fear” of a data breach. For formal reasons, guardrails are often drawn so tight that they cause massive economic damage without creating any additional marginal benefit in terms of potential legal risks. We have to come up with a sober calculation: The extremely low theoretical risk of a warning of perhaps 500€ is offset by a guaranteed loss of turnover in the six to seven-figure range if 90 percent of the customer base is not used. In addition, current case law (ECJ) suggests that the draconian GDPR fines for pure email marketing are often not relevant at all, as the UWG acts as Lex Specialis. C-level decision makers must be empowered to weigh up such risks entrepreneurially instead of being paralyzed by “scaredy-cat marketing.”
Conclusion: The courage to achieve economic success
In order for CRM marketing to become systemically relevant in B2B companies, it must answer theoretical legal questions with practical relevance. It must stop thinking in silos and instead focus consistently on the economic well-being of the organization. Only those who do things that pay off will remain a mainstay of the company's success in the long term.
Find out here which 10 levers can help you get your CRM marketing up to speed from now on.
