Top 6 B2B Digital Marketing Trends in 2017
by Gagan Gaba
1 3777
B2B is simply an acronym for business to business. Most small businesses sell to other businesses instead of the consumers, and these relationships are represented in abbreviated form as B2B. For example, advertising agencies, web hosting and graphic design services, office furniture manufacturers and landlords who lease office and retail space interact with other commercial trades directly instead of the consumer mass.
B2B decision making may take place at more than one level which makes it a long process. For instance, the salesperson meets with the departmental manager, who then has to get assent from the business owner before the deal is finally closed. So here are the top B2B digital marketing trends for the near future which one can easily make use of.
1) Marketing Automation
We now live in a digital and technology enabled world that entirely flourishes on content. This is the modern marketing landscape. This calls for advancement in companies to improve engagement and increase efficiency in order to grow revenue faster, which is done perfectly with marketing automation. These are software platforms and technologies used to automate repetitive tasks and designed for advertising departments and organizations to more effectively market on multiple online channels such as emails, social media, websites, etc.
2) A Customer Centric Approach
Today's B2B buyers are increasingly influenced by their consumer experiences and have come to expect similar, if not the same experiences in their professional lives. Social media provides B2B firms with opportunities to connect and engage with prospects and customers directly.
This is reflected on the products people want nowadays, and consequently the retailers who seek to make it available for the consumers. This goes on to prove that all communication is two-way. You need to listen, react and respond in addition to speaking, and this is best possible with a direct connection with the consumer mass.
3) Account Based Marketing
Account based marketing, or ABM, is a calculated approach that coordinates personalized sales and marketing efforts, to target specific accounts for new business and create deeper and broader relationships with existing customers.
There are many benefits with this approach, including better use of marketing resources by focusing on a smaller number of accounts. This is clearly a more personalized, efficient marketing strategy which is already creating stronger engagement with prospects. It also optimizes up-sell and cross-sell with customers and enables to close bigger deals faster within targeted accounts. It is well known that in B2B digital marketing, quality trumps quantity. And what better way is there to attract a good crowd of clients than a promising ABM policy?
4) Video, Live Streaming Video and More Video
Videos have already been hot in marketing for a while now, but it is predicted to get more dominant because of their ease of use and its engaging and concise nature. Besides, with live streaming tools such as Twitter-owned Periscope, Facebook Live, U Stream, Live Stream and Instagram Live Video, marketers have the power to easily broadcast live events as well. Besides these, virtual reality is also becoming a craze in the marketing world.
Since B2B requires you to be much more personalized, targeted, and specific than B2C, you need to appeal to the nature of someone's business field unlike B2C. This implies that B2B may have a few issues getting off the ground with virtual reality advertising. But this newly and widely accepted marketing trend can win you many customers with just some potential and creativity.
5) Multi-Touch Marketing Attribution
Multi-touch attribution is a way to allocate credit towards marketing touch-points that preceded a conversion within a customer journey. In other words, it is the process of tying specific marketing campaigns and initiatives to specific closed deals and revenue.
Nowadays, when the marketing teams are under a lot of pressure to demonstrate their impact on the bottom line as well as provide analytical insights to defend marketing initiatives and budget, multi-touch marketing attribution bridges the gap between being a support service and revenue generator.
6) Social Media Marketing
As more B2B companies adopt social media; the need for social lead generation has grown. But B2B businesses often approach social media advertising with an attitude like "the more the merrier". Little do people realize that a successful B2B digital marketing doesn't strive to add zeroes to your follower counts! Instead, its goal is to attract and engage your community, the people who are actually paying attention and actively seeking information on the same subjects.
Plus, your followers will represent targeted prospective customers rather than empty seats. So, smaller numbers can sometimes prove to be better, so long as they change, because that means you're targeting the right attention for your blog and social media. LinkedIn is probably the best example of this since it's one of the most valuable social networks for professional marketing.
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Catherine Jan 22, 2019
Thanks for posting. I think that it's just the beginning with the marketing automation evolution. Companies, such as Mailchimp or GetResponse, also offer now marketing automation. I think it's a clear sign that that's the way the market is heading. Automation can change the way we create dialogues. Live streaming is a fine trend, though it could get a bit better. The companies need a bit of strategy to use it wisely.