As com­pa­nies bleed rev­enues, prof­its and jobs, it’s ironic that peo­ple are debat­ing the death of B2B mar­ket­ing or its obso­les­cence. And yet I’ve been in sev­eral con­ver­sa­tions over the past week on this topic.

I think a bet­ter fram­ing for the con­ver­sa­tion, rather than death or obso­les­cence, is B2B marketing’s strate­gic rel­e­vance and value con­tri­bu­tion to the cor­po­ra­tion and the mar­ket­place.

I believe that B2B mar­keters need to rede­fine their roles and fig­ure out how to con­tribute more directly to rev­enue growth, mar­ket share gains, bet­ter mar­gins – while solv­ing mean­ing­ful cus­tomer prob­lems and nur­tur­ing 2‑way cus­tomer rela­tion­ships.

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