B2B MARKETING STRATEGIES: THE MAIN TRENDS IN B2B MARKETING IN 2020

The network often says that 2020 was invented by George Martin, known for his craving for cruelty in the series of books “A Song of Ice and Fire”. Indeed, the crisis has affected all areas of life, which is why B2B Marketing budgets in many companies have dropped significantly. In such periods, the space for maneuver is reduced, and the cost of error increases by an order of magnitude. Therefore, it is so important to understand which strategy to adhere to and which tools to choose in order to achieve maximum profit.

THE MAIN TRENDS IN B2B MARKETING IN 2020

This is not a rating from best to worst, but a list of tools that will really work in the current situation. The material was prepared jointly with Drozd.red, a B2B Marketing Strategies agency .

CONTENT MARKETING

This direction does not require the launch of a content factory, which every day will stamp 10 long-reads and a full-length film about the life of the company. Before the content there is no task to capture the entire media space by the number of publications.

B2B Marketing Strategies involves a lot of analytical work at the stage of developing the plan, in-depth research, the stage of adaptation to a specific site and proper distribution. Materials on the same topic for LinkedIn and Facebook should be different and take into account the user scenario of the sites. The creation of each content block should solve a specific problem. A constant question to yourself helps: why is this content created?

In 2020, the trend for UX-content became clearer. It involves the placement of content based on the history of user behavior on the site.

This type of content should give the user the maximum idea of ​​the product. Users are waiting for capacious and useful materials that will help solve the problem or answer questions.

The priority areas of content B2B Marketing have changed. Now market researchers give priority to interactive and video content, which by 2021 will amount to 82% of all Internet traffic.

Video Content Trends

• Increased interest in short video feeds.
• Streaming events as an alternative to webinars in the recording.
• Interactive infographics.
• Videos showing the anatomy of complex processes.
• Trivia and online voting.

BRANDING

In recent years, many new channels of communication with users have appeared, so it is logical that the attention to the brand on the Internet has increased. Increasingly, users make choices based on company reviews from company cards provided by a search engine or specialized sites.

The strength and reputation of a brand is something that competitors cannot copy. What will remain with the company even with the loss of employees. A brand’s strength can protect a company from bullying if its credibility is compromised in the news field.

There are a number of tools to track company mentions on the Internet, from telegram bots such as MediaMonitoringBot, to large paid resources like Medialogy. Critical reviews and controversial situations should be stopped not only by working with objections, but also by the emergence of fresh content that covers the whole controversy. First of all, it is necessary to draw the attention of search algorithms to content that the company fully manages online. In this case, the negative can be worked out with minimal user involvement.

NEW CHANNELS

On the one hand, an advertising campaign built on one channel quickly saturates it, and on the other, the channels themselves tend to die. Now advertising on Facebook in many regions has become a luxury item. The cost of a click in B2B Marketing there increased to $ 2.5, that is, about 5 times.

In 2020, podcasts became another growth point. To lead a podcast means to form a certain habit in the audience. Podcasts are rarely the main occupation of a person in the moment. More often they act as a backdrop to the main action: driving or cooking. This does not mean that information is absorbed worse, therefore the goal of any podcast is to at least become an integral part of this action.

For this reason, you should always be on the lookout for new sites and channels. Yesterday everyone considered TikTok a seasonal hobby like Periscope, and today they are making plans to capture the platform, because the application outpaces WhatsApp in popularity and earns more than YouTube.

ATTENTION TO THE SITE AND ITS OPTIMIZATION

In the B2B Marketing Strategies segment, the site’s function itself is changing - it becomes a showcase of competencies and shows the success of the company.

The new construction of the site will focus on the client himself, on understanding his needs and pain points, and not on the "About the company" data, which will have a greater impact on the construction of content, forms of captures and collection of leads.

The new approach will be characterized by a more complex internal structure. A branched, but more understandable architecture for visitors, as well as an emphasis on the security of users' personal data.

The costs of creating, redesigning or redesigning the site in 2020 will increase, but will be fully justified, since the site itself is central to the current concept of B2B Marketing.

MICRO COMMUNITIES AND CLUBS

Micro-communities and closed clubs reflect the principle of “here only their own,” so the trust in such resources is much higher. If the industry does not have such a community, this is a unique opportunity to create and manage it yourself.

Drozd.red specially for the Managed IT provider ITGLOBAL.COM implemented a turnkey project for an IT club in Minsk. When the company entered the Belarusian market, a series of offline meetings were organized for entrepreneurs and developers to discuss problems and best practices in various fields. The contacts collected during the meetings formed the basis for creating a closed Telegram community with an invitation-based login system. The group has become a kind of meeting point for business and proven IT solutions.

THE TEAM NEEDS A T-SHAPED MARKETER

The term T-shaped appeared almost 40 years ago, but today began to sparkle with new colors. The vertical line of the letter T in this prefix indicates the deep level of marketer's immersion in one area, and the horizontal line indicates the ability to contact experts from other areas to apply the information received from them in the work. In other words, today it is worth making a choice in favor of team players, because they can bring great benefits to B2B Marketing business.

PERSONALIZATION

The transition to real personalization is now expressed in empathy for the client and understanding of his psychography. This process aims to identify triggers that prompt the client to make certain choices.

Personalization is closely related to the use of AI, as new services help not only to change the name in the mailing list so that the letters look targeted, but also show the user content that is relevant to their history of interaction with the resource. For example, music streaming services have learned to collect personal playlists based on what the user is looking for, what likes and dislikes are.

Not only content can be personalized, but also design. This is especially evident in the practice of the modern creation of landing pages, which can be adjusted to specific groups of the target audience.

This also includes over-targeted targeted advertising in which an ad can be shown to just one person based on his not-so-obvious habits and interests.

The key to success here is data collection. B2B Marketing Strategies

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE - NEW CURRENCY

Now the client can get comprehensive data about the product in real time, so he needs a new level of interaction, customer focus 2.0. This can improve conversion at all levels of the sales funnel.

In the new approach, it is necessary to take into account not only user experience, but also the experience of employees, as well as the experience of other brands, understanding of their cases. Such a holistic view and coordination of all three types of experience forms a new competitive advantage.

ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING

Account-based marketing (ABM) or the marketing of key customers in the 2020th year will be under special attention in the B2B Marketing segment. Especially this tactic will be a priority for companies with long sales cycles and a high check, because it is more effective than the "inbox" during the generation of leads.

According to new information , using the individual ABM approach, it is possible to achieve 25% conversion where previously it did not exceed 2%.

BE AT THE INTERFACE WITH THE PRODUCT MANAGER

The marketer must thoroughly know the product, communicate with developers and understand the essence. It would seem that for these purposes, as a rule, there is a special person - a product scientist, but in practice, such a bunch without proper marketing immersion works idle. This is reflected not only in the definition of Central Asia or in determining competitive advantages, but also in the figures of income.

You can look at the same product through the eyes of different experts and see different accents. It is especially useful for the marketer to include the vision of the product specialist and to collect the knowledge of all involved. This will help to get a new audience, notice growth points, come up with unexpected features and get additional profit with beautiful packaging. For this reason, a marketer should consider several types of experience in advertising campaigns at once: their own, client’s and product manager’s experience.

AUTOMATION

The current level of technology allows you to create automated processes in almost all marketing tools. The list can be used as a checklist.

Content Marketing and Content Distribution

Automating the selection of sites for content placement solves the problem of expensive long-term readers who do not find their audience.

PPC Advertising Campaigns

Timely adjustment of CPC bids and other indicators are often impossible due to the huge amount of data, therefore automation in this case can also significantly save budgets.

Lead generation

In B2B Marketing, the first place is not set up an auto sales funnel, but unobtrusive forms of capture and collection of leads that work when a user executes certain scenarios.

Newsletters and customer service (email, SMS, calls, push, chatbots)

In addition to the fact that all these processes are laborious, manual execution has a great chance of disrupting the systematic distribution, which significantly reduces their effectiveness.

Automation of delivery and payment processing in e-commerce. 

An insufficient level of automation of processes at this stage can adversely affect sales and increase the percentage of return.

Cross-cutting marketing analytics

Reading the marketing investment performance indicators (ROMI) without automation is perhaps the biggest mistake that can distort the whole idea of ​​an advertising campaign, so this area is a must have in the current situation.

VOICE INTERFACES

Serious talk about optimization for voice queries has been going on for the past two years. At first they began to be successfully used in B2C, but over time, the technology began to respond to B2B Marketing business specifics, so it is now being actively introduced in the West. In many ways, this is also connected with the psychological moment: people are accustomed to having devices listen to them, and therefore they have become more trustworthy about them.

In order to accustom users to buy through the voice interface, it is best to supply the goods with a special offer that is valid only in this channel: an additional discount or an extended trial period.

Now comes the moment when the voice interface from a beautiful toy turns into a marketing tool, so in 2020 you need to allocate a resource and conduct proper query optimization. If we talk about priorities, first it’s better to optimize for ordinary queries, and then do voice calls, but this needs to be done this year, while competitors consider the tool “raw”.