Some interesting B2B research figures have been published recently by the US-based Direct Marketing Association (DMA) and by an independent research consultancy SiriusDecisions.

The DMA research was based on an online survey of 299 respondents and showed how a variety of B2B companies allocated their marketing budgets.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the findings show that a significant proportion - 42.9% - of B2B marketing budgets are spent on various forms of direct response communication; of this, direct mail receives the largest budget share, at 27.5% of expenditure, followed by online marketing at 18.8%, trade shows 13.7%, product literature 15.7% and telemarketing 12.1%.

Of perhaps greater interest is the finding that 65% of marketing resources are devoted to new customer acquisition and only 35% to retention.

This last set of figures merit further thought, especially when one considers that most businesses in the B2B sector generate the bulk of their revenues from existing customers. It could perhaps be argued that spending almost two thirds of marketing budgets on chasing new customers rather than ensuring that existing customers remain loyal is not always the best use of limited marketing resources.

Of course, many marketing activities, such as advertising and P.R., newsletters and web sites, impact on both existing and prospective customers, so the difference in budget allocation may not be as clear cut as it first appears.

Nevertheless, customers are often an overlooked yet extremely valuable commodity, so it's worth reviewing the level and quality of both marketing communications and regular sales contact that your business has with them to ensure that you're maximising retention rates.

The second set of data was issued by SiriusDecisions and analysed how B2B companies of various sizes allocate their marketing budgets.

Field marketing and demand generation accounted for the largest area of expenditure, at 64.7%. This was followed by corporate communications at 15.0%, product marketing at 9.5%, brand advertising at 7.2%, channel marketing at 2.5% and market intelligence at just 1.1%.

The figures for field marketing and demand generation were broken down still further with direct marketing accounting for 30% of spend, tradeshows 16%, tele-sales 13%, email marketing 13%, seminars/webinars 19%, and PPC and search engineering 9%.

Although it's unclear from the figures if demand generation activities are aimed at new or existing customers, it is nevertheless interesting to note that the finding of 64.7% is close to the DMA figure of 65% for new customer acquisition.