As we move closer to the holidays, many things are once again cropping up, just like clockwork.  Some – including the airing of The Christmas Story and It’s a Wonderful Life – are always welcome.  Others, like frenzied mall traffic and egg nog, you want to forget.  And then there’s the blitz of year-end predictions – just like holiday songs, they can be a mixed bag.

I promise I won’t declare 2013 “The Year of fill in the blank”.  But as we look forward to the New Year, there are some trends that CMO.com highlighted earlier this year that are worth revisiting. In fact, it’s my view that three are going to be increasingly important for B2B CMOs to pay attention to as we look toward 2013:

1.      Show Me the Money – I mean it.

With the economy teetering on the edge of what many are calling a “Fiscal Cliff,” I can’t stress enough how important marketing ROI has become in our field.  As I noted previously, what matters most is what has the most measurable impact on sales and customer retention.  Did sales increase, did sales velocity increase, did average customer value increase? What about marketing to sales qualified lead conversion ratios and customer retention rates, and what was marketing’s measurable impact on any and all these numbers?  There are many ways to objectively demonstrate relative contribution by marketing.  Getting agreement on what to measure and what success looks like is key to showing the true value that marketing contributes.

2.      The Silos are Broken

Marketing is no longer viewed as a stand-alone function. It is now expected to strategically drive more of the customer experience to help support customer acquisition, expansion, loyalty and retention goals.  As one CMO recently told me, “I need to prescribe the ideal customer experience at every touch point – Web, call center, retail store, etc. – regardless of reporting structure.  I’m providing guidance on how to drive a better customer experience so our company can optimize every interaction and drive positive word-of-mouth momentum.”  This new dictate applies equally well to B2B and B2C marketers.

3.      Word of Mouth Spreads

As CMO.com notes, social has proven to have vast benefits for all companies that become adept at it.  While that’s a big “if” in some cases, the role of social media is relentlessly increasing as it becomes more prevalent.  Companies that once turned a blind eye to certain channels like mobile or Twitter or LinkedIn are now being forced to embrace them all – simultaneously. Or else they risk losing impatient customers who can go elsewhere for better customer experiences.

There’s little doubt that B2C organizations – especially those with millions of customers that come into daily contact with consumers – have more opportunities to show they’ve embraced this. At Pega, while our target-account approach differs from many other B2B organizations, social has become an integral and formidable medium for us to leverage throughout our marketing and communications. We’re active on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to ensure we’re engaging with our customers appropriately, but also so we can continue building our brand awareness. As we move into 2013, we’ll continue to increase participation in these areas, with the objective that we’ll be drawing more attention to our increasingly known brand.

For all organizations, the key to getting ahead in this area will not only be proactive listening.  Companies mastering social will be continually participating in opportunistic ways to drive customer engagement and improve business outcomes.  That ultimately impacts the way enterprises respond, what solutions they sell, how they sell them and their relative market success.

Sure, this is no easy task. But then again, neither is enduring those long lines and packed parking lots.