While marketing might look a little different for B2B (business-to-business) companies than consumer-facing entities, it’s still a crucial component of driving growth and generating sales. To stay relevant and compete in a continuously evolving digital space, it’s important for business owners and marketing managers to keep their fingers on the pulse with industry trends.
Look Out for These B2B Digital Marketing Trends
Digital marketing is now vital for the success of your business. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 56% of B2B companies are allocating budget to digital marketing, making it the largest marketing spend across companies. Staying ahead of the changing industry and the latest strategic opportunities is important to your business growth. While not all will be relevant to your B2B company, it’s worth looking into ABM, learning hubs, retention marketing, personalized content, voice marketing, virtual events, and cause marketing.
ABM
According to a survey by Smart Insights, account-based marketing (ABM) is one of the top 2021 B2B trends, with nearly half of marketers saying it’s a priority this year. Sometimes called key account marketing, the strategy targets best-fit accounts through marketing and sales communication efforts to turn them into clients. Finding a marketing partner that can help build and formulate this longer, highly focused strategy has been the key to a lot of B2B company success.
Learning Hubs
A learning hub is a digital educational platform offering valuable information and resources for other businesses, such as how-to guides, videos, and online training courses. While it’s not exactly a new strategy, more and more B2B businesses are adopting it as part of their SEO (search engine optimization) and content marketing efforts.
Retention Marketing
Retention marketing is driven by the idea that it’s easier and more cost-effective to sell goods or services to existing clients than to attract new customers. A report by the Harvard Business Review found that a 5% uptick in customer retention can drive revenue by as much as 95%. Marketing teams are seeking out help more and more in developing and executing retention marketing strategies because the long-term value is so high.
Personalized Content Marketing
Personalized content marketing builds on the notion that customers—yes, even B2B clients—expect meaningful, engaging experiences. This marketing strategy ensures that, when they interact with your brand, they’re seeing content that not only resonates but is also the most beneficial to their business efforts. This past year, roughly 70% of B2B marketers said they expect to invest in content creation. With well-developed research and a corresponding content strategy, personalized content marketing can make a difference in creating long-lasting relationships.
Voice Marketing
Voice marketing allows B2B brands to connect with other businesses and target new audiences through audio. Radio has evolved into a robust world of podcasts and listening news networks, which offer lots of opportunities for paid media and marketing collaborations. Many B2B marketing companies are leveraging digital marketing content for their audio audience.
Virtual Events
When the coronavirus pandemic shut down conferences, trade shows, and speaking engagements in 2020, many B2B companies made the pivot to virtual events. This includes live-streamed networking events, webinars, and remote gatherings. Not only are virtual events safe, but they can also be a cost-effective strategy for boosting brand awareness while allowing you to connect with other organizations. Well-promoted virtual events have been the key to a lot of B2B company growth over the past 12 months.
Cause Marketing
Cause marketing (sometimes called purpose-driven marketing or social impact marketing) is a multifaceted effort to drive profits and make a meaningful impact by engaging in socially and environmentally responsible practices. This might involve creating a sustainability page outlining your eco-friendly supply chain or using activist messages in your paid media efforts. Values-aligned marketing agencies can help B2B companies find this message and expand brand awareness in a positive way.
Check out our digital marketing blog for more B2B insights, or drop us a line to find out how we might be able to help your company increase its success in the year ahead.
