B2B Digital Marketing Trends 2022
Introduction:
When embarking on a campaign that is direct to business, it is pretty different than a direct-to-consumer campaign. Therefore, we have compiled this article to show the latest trends in marketing directly to business.
Business to Business Digtial Marketing Trends in 2022
[1]Last year, we saw how the pandemic dramatically accelerated the digital destinies of business marketers. An array of accelerated trends expands the organizational remit and lays down new mandates for B2B marketers. Evolving buyers and technology, coupled with changing values and expectations, have led corporations to aim for a higher purpose in a changing market landscape. Our B2B team got together to predict how marketing leaders in 2022 will transform their organizations from the legacy of brand stewardship, lead generation, and sales support to become the architect of organizational success.
Each of our predictions is specific, vetted with multiple analysts, and founded in data so that it can be measured and we can be accountable. That level of additional detail is available in our full report, but here are the highlights:
- Fragmented revenue marketing teams will consolidate in 20% of B2B firms. A dismal end-to-end conversion ratio, an underserved customer lifecycle, and a confluence of demand and account-based tactics and techniques are conspiring to drive a redesign of the need-to-revenue process. In 2022, an emerging cadre of growth marketers will go how success is defined, pursued, and measured.
- CMO’s will stake a claim on partner experience (PX) for the first time. B2B partner ecosystems are changing as the number of nontransactional partners dramatically increases in volume over traditional reseller and dealer partners. We predict that in 2022, half of B2B marketers will start to look at partner ecosystems as creators of value, not just as channels to markets, and will establish a PX function.
Three-quarters of personalized engagement strategies will not meet ROI goals. Persistent digital engagement will become the norm, with 70% of marketers adopting an always-on digital engagement strategy in 2022. B2B marketers will turn to more complex tech stacks that employ autonomous or automated solutions as part of their digital strategy, but 75% of efforts to create automated, personalized engagement will not meet ROI goals because of inadequate buyer insight.
Marketing-sourced metrics will spiral downward toward irrelevance. The significant decline in the appearance of marketing-sourced metrics on the CMO dashboard since 2015 demonstrates that sourcing metrics are misaligned with the way B2B marketing organizations are expected to create value and remain disconnected from marketing’s role in driving business outcomes. As a result, Vanguard B2B marketers will embrace a new vision of lift-based performance indicators to better express marketing’s impact on the revenue engine.
“The great resignation” will give rise to the fractional marketing practitioner. The employee upheavals from the COVID-19 pandemic will drive the successful fractional executive model downstream to independent fractional practitioners in digital, creative, and marketing executive roles. As a result, CMO’s needs to rethink their organizational strategies, which are too often geared toward operational efficiency and effective governance. Instead, CMO’s must build a cadre of strategic executives capable of orchestrating critical changes and initiatives across the enterprise.
[2]B2B MARKETING TRENDS TO LOOK FOR IN 2022
Key Concepts Within This Blog/Article
2022 is right around the corner, which means it’s time to forecast a new era of B2B marketing trends. Why is digital content so important in 2022? Well, we’ll tell you. Here are some trends in internet-based business-to-business marketing practices to expect more of next year and how they can be effective when integrated with an efficient cold calling strategy:
- Increased Brand Personalization
- Enhanced Video Marketing Measures
- Customer-Focused Content Marketing
- Greater Customer Experience Efforts
- Utilization of Advanced CRM Platforms
A new year is only a few short months away, and you know what that means—new movies coming to a theatre near you! One of the most anticipated movies for 2022 is “Jurassic World: Dominion.” The “Jurassic Park” and “Jurassic World” movie series are admired by movie-goers of all ages, which is in part what makes this series so exciting.
Even though the movies essentially have the same concept, the way they’ve been produced over the years has changed drastically—many of the characters are different, editing styles have changed, and the CGI is more advanced than we could have ever imagined. Nevertheless, advancements in technology have enabled the “Jurassic World” filmmakers to carry on the legacy of “Jurassic Park.”
When you think about it, the ongoing creation of the “Jurassic Park” series is similar to the evolution of B2B sales and marketing trends. Over the last 12 decades, marketing trends have evolved in ways that we never saw coming. For example, when “Jurassic Park” first came out in 1993, the film’s sales and marketing team only promoted the feature film on billboards and newspapers. Today, the film is still promoted on billboards and in newspapers, but it’s also advertised across various other platforms that weren’t available back then.
Even though new technology and ad delivery are available and used today, traditional promotional methods still work well. Do the billboards look the same as in 1993? No, but does your sales and marketing process look the same either?
Are your B2B business’s sales and marketing strategies still stuck in 1993? Are your appointment setting and digital marketing efforts outdated and not following today’s B2B marketing trends? Before you say “cold calling is extinct,” we’re going to stop you in your tracks because that’s not true. Instead, cold calling has evolved and become much more effective with digital marketing efforts. Here are some ways that businesses are approaching sales efforts and B2B marketing trends in 2022:
INCREASED BRAND PERSONALIZATION
As the growth of B2B businesses continues to rise, having a unique brand voice is more crucial now than ever before. Brand personalization enables your business to stand out in the sea of competitors and is a major B2B marketing trend for the year.
When personalizing your brand, it must reflect the voice of your target audience. By remembering the voice of your target audience, you have a more significant opportunity to catch their attention and relate with them on a deeper level. A brand voice humanizes the interaction between you and your target audience. Rather than just having a name and a logo, a brand voice helps B2B businesses relate with potential customers on a more personal level.
Learning your target market’s brand persona is essential to closing business opportunities. When developing a brand voice, make sure you understand how they talk and value in a B2B partner. For example, pitching for an HVAC company may differ from pitching for an MSP company because the personas are incredibly different. When pitching for an HVAC company, a sales development representative (SDR) may need to be more casual, calm, and collected. On the other hand, when working on MSP lead generation, IT managers may want in-depth, network-focused, and jargon-heavy discussions with SDRs. Hence, they know that your business is knowledgeable about promoting.
Most importantly, your brand voice should be implemented across each sales and marketing channel. This includes your B2B appointment setting efforts like cold calling along with your website, blog posts, social media profiles, and marketing collateral. Brand voice consistency is crucial to gaining and maintaining the trust of potential and current customers, and without it, you risk losing company credibility.
ENHANCED VIDEO MARKETING MEASURES
As individual attention spans continue to decrease due to the amount of new content readily available, video marketing efforts are ideal for capturing users’ attention. According to a Cisco report, the video will account for 82% of all online traffic by 2022. In addition, 84% of users say that they are more likely to invest in a product or service after watching a video. As visual content marketing trends advance, your business must stay in tune with best practices to drive more sales. This B2B marketing trend is here to stay.
Types of Video Marketing Assets
While there are various video marketing assets to choose from, each asset should serve a purpose. Here are a few of the most common video assets created and distributed by B2B companies to keep up with 2022 marketing trends:
Corporate Videos
Corporate videos are designed to highlight company culture and establish what makes your company different from competitors. These are significant video assets for mortgage and real estate companies looking to recruit successful loan officers and Realtors. Corporate marketing videos are trending because you can highlight how your company has contributed to team members’ personal and professional growth.
Corporate videos can also be distributed in various places. Many B2B businesses share these videos through their social media profiles or embed them into their website. Many companies also include them in their email marketing campaigns to be sent to prospects in their cold calling sales pipeline.
TV Commercials
Many people will try and tell you that TV advertising is dying; however, we’re here to tell you that’s not the case. While TV commercials are much more generic and not as targeted toward a specific audience, they are great for gaining local recognition. As a result, a booming marketing trend for 2022 is broadcasting commercials across local television stations, then uploading the commercial to your website or YouTube channel for optimization and gaining digital traction.
Collateral
One of the best things about B2B sales videos is customizable and used across different platforms. In 2022, many businesses plan on using collateral videos to highlight their product or service and promote impactful case studies.
Unlike TV commercials, collateral videos are geared toward a specific audience. As a result, collateral video marketing trends are incredibly effective, especially when embedded into your website or an email marketing drip campaign for prospects to view. Collateral videos can also be integrated into a sales presentation to highlight the impact you’ve had on other similar businesses in the region.
Animated Videos
In some industries, processes are too complicated to explain with words. Therefore, animated videos are becoming a significant marketing trend for companies in complex industries, such as software, because they explain their program’s processes in-depth. These videos can be embedded on the website under a “Resources” page for easy access or uploaded to YouTube as a “How To” video to reach a wider audience.
Short-Form vs Long-Form Videos
Short-form videos are typically the go-to for B2B businesses because they’re under 2.5 minutes and make the most sense for clickthrough goals. As a video’s length increases, so do viewers drop off. Recent marketing trends point towards short-form videos for social media posts because they increase user retention, engage more, and encourage users to take the next step.
Long-form videos are impactful because they are often used to tell a story. Many B2B businesses embed long-form videos onto their website under the “About Us” or “Case Study” pages. For example, under the “About Us” page, a family-owned business can embed a video to highlight the company’s history. This provides excellent brand personalization and gives a face and a feeling to a company. On the other hand, under the “Case Study” page, long-form videos explain the partnership in-depth and show how the two companies benefited each other.
5 B2B Digital Marketing Trends
Trend #1 B2B Decision Makers Prefer Digital Self-Service
The first trend which will shift how marketers will generate B2B sales leads for their organizations is how B2B decision-makers prefer to communicate with the brand, get information and inquire about products and services.
The COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally changed how B2B organizations were doing business, and both B2B sellers and buyers were forced to go digital in a massive way. Even the most skeptical of digital channels did not have a choice.
And while this change was difficult for many sellers and buyers, the new study from McKinsey on decision makers’ behaviour globally across industries since the crisis began reveals that the significant digital shift is here to stay.
Most B2B seller interactions have moved to a remote or digital way of doing business. Thus, marketers must also shift their marketing activities into the digital space.
And that’s exactly what customers want. 70-80% of B2B decision-makers prefer remote human interactions or digital self-service as it’s easy to schedule meetings, cost-effective, and safer.
We can also see that B2B buyers are no longer afraid of making big purchases online. Instead, buyers are willing to spend big using remote or self-service.
This is one of the most impacting results of digital marketing adoption, as previously, selling online was only for e-commerce and smaller-ticket items. However, this could soon significantly change, and high-ticket e-commerce shops for B2B could be the next big thing.
Research shows, 70 percent of B2B decision-makers say they are open to making new, fully self-serve, or remote purchases over $50,000, and 27 percent would spend more than $500,000.
Trend #2: Creating Content to Enable Buyers to Complete Buying Jobs
The second B2B digital marketing trend, I believe, is super important for your content marketing plan and how you should fundamentally think about creating content for your organization and your buyers because only traffic doesn’t pay the bill.
Now please pay close attention to Valuable, Relevant, and Consistent Content, a clearly defined audience, and profitable customer action.
This means that your content marketing plan must be targeted mainly to your B2B target audience that buys from you, and you should ultimately focus on this type of content.
But how can you create content like this?
That is why I want to talk about the second B2B digital marketing trend that will change how B2B content marketers will create and distribute their company content.
A new insight from Gartner shows that the B2B buying journey has changed, and your digital and sales strategy must too.
And to understand how to best help your customers and ease their complex purchases, Gartner has identified six B2B buying “jobs” that customers must complete to their satisfaction to finalize a purchase successfully:
Problem identification. “We need to do something.”
Solution exploration. “What’s out there to solve our problem?”
Requirements building. “What exactly do we need the purchase to do?”
Supplier selection. “Does this do what we want it to do?”
Validation.” We think we know the correct answer, but we need to be sure.”
Consensus creation. “We need to get everyone on board.”
Trend #3: Create Personalize B2B Buyer Experience with AI
The next trend in B2B digital marketing is how AI technology enables us to create even more personalized customer and B2B Buyer experiences to orchestrate the customer journey across multiple channels.
Using AI is nothing new, and artificial intelligence has been here for already some time. However, as technology progresses, marketers have further options to improve their marketing results and save time.
From the more straightforward use of technology like when AI helps make decisions through the automated scheduler, spam score, and automatic winner selection of A/B email tests to use fully rendered dynamic content.
Using artificial intelligence for your marketing brings many benefits for your company, like minimizing errors, saving costs, and increasing ROI.
However, one of the most important benefits of using AI for your marketing is that it helps you connect your data and analyze it to create customer insights, which allows your marketing, sales, and customer service to be aligned finally.
Trend #4: Founders Position Themselves as Relevant Thought Leaders
The next on our list of B2B digital marketing trends for 2022 is founders will start positioning themselves as the thought leaders to drive more revenue for their business.
Business owners, founders, and entrepreneurs realize that having just a fancy logo, long years of experience, and many customers is not enough anymore to win business.
Winning trust from modern B2B buyers is much more complicated than it used to be. Showing a long list of customers is not enough to win the faith because buyers search for helpful information and thought leadership to make informed decisions.
B2B buyers want to do business with somebody they trust and build trust. Therefore, you must show expertise, experience, and knowledge. Google call this E-A-T, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
Trend #5: Privacy First Marketing to Users and New Targeting
The last on our list of B2B digital marketing trends is privacy first marketing to your users and new ways to do targeting and remarketing.
A big shock for advertisers and the advertising industry comes with the privacy-first approach from Google, Safari, and Firefox, where these browsers are blocking third-party cookies.
Conclusion:
B2B marketing is quite different than B2C marketing. Nevertheless, we hope that this article has been informative, and should you need any assistance, do not hesitate to reach out to hughesagency.ca.
Article compiled by hughesagency.ca
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