If you’re involved in B2B marketing, you will already know that it involves marketing products, services and solutions to other organizations, companies and government officials within your niche.
Unlike buyer to consumer (B2C) marketing, which focuses on emotional tactics to persuade purchases, B2B marketing is all about the facts.
The main focus has always been on the return on investment (ROI) that a specific product or service will bring to the organization that purchases it.
Despite the rigidity on reliable facts, B2B marketing couldn’t be expanding at a faster rate than what it is at the moment.
With new techniques and technology providing us with a greater understanding of how to attract our target audiences, there are lots of things you can do to change up your B2B marketing strategy for good.
One big way of doing that is by engaging in trends to make sure that you remain ahead of your competition and modern enough to survive in your industry.
B2B marketing trends change and adapt every year, so we’re here to tell you about the things you should be looking out for in 2019.
Make Your Approach Customer Centric
The B2C market have already caught on to the fact that the most successful businesses are those who think about the customer at the centre of their business model.
Just because you don’t need to focus too much on the emotional triggers involved in B2C clients, however, it doesn’t mean that you need to be thinking any less about your customers and what they need you to help them with.
In fact, a recent study found that customer experience was the key in differentiating your company and sustaining an advantage over your competition.
Some experts have even gone as far as to suggest that we are currently living in the “age of the customer”.
In B2B marketing, your customers are the businesses you are approaching first hand.
More and more firms are jumping of board with creating more engaging experiences by upping their customer experience budgets, and doubling down on research efforts.
This is definitely one to look out for if you want to get ahead of your competition and be known within your niche for being helpful, and engaging with other businesses.
This could also increase your popularity with other forms of marketing, like word-of-mouth and conversational sales.
Better Branding & Brand Initiatives
If you were to compare B2B businesses to B2C businesses, it’s clear that the latter has, in the past, spent far more on their branding.
That isn’t to say that B2B marketing businesses haven’t had any branding at all, but it’s usually quite basic.
Most companies will have a logo, a tag line, a colour palette, branded appeal, giveaways, and so on, but they don’t go out of their way to do anything that other brands have yet to try.
It’s only this year that B2B businesses have begun to realize the importance of branching out to become distinct and different in the marketplace they’re targeting.
It’s predicted that, in 2019, many B2B marketing businesses will go back to creating tighter branding concepts, like brand purpose and brand promise, with the aim of helping to create a clearer understanding of the businesses vision for those that they work with.
2019 will also see B2B marketing businesses creating more sophisticated branding overall, in areas including visual identity, website design, signage, and even corporate office interiors.
For many companies, this will mean increasing branding budgets and resources in 2019, but it’s well worth it if you don’t want to be left behind in your industry.
Account-Based Marketing & Sales Approach
Account-Based marketing is an approach that puts personalized marketing into action, as well as delving deeper into sales and success efforts to land and expand named accounts.
This marketing trend is based on the understanding that repeat business represents a significant portion of most firms’ revenue streams.
You might be wondering what I’m talking about when I say this is going to be a trend in 2019.
It’s true that the B2B marketing industry has become more understanding of this method in recent years, with 92% of firms admitting they recognize the value of ABM.
However, there are still a lot of B2B marketing businesses that have yet to start utilising Account-Based Marketing & Sales Approaches in the most efficient way possible.
As more people begin to utilise these, we will see businesses reap many benefits from doing so.
They are good for B2B marketing businesses with long, complex sales cycles that involve many stakeholders and transactions that are typically high-value in nature.
If this sounds like your business, you want to invest in ABM sooner rather than later.
As you can see, this trend has already blown up, and you don’t want to be the last one within your industry to take advantage of it.
More Efficient & Sophisticated Use Of Content Marketing
Content marketing is another marketing trend that B2B businesses have been trying to get their heads around for a few years at this point.
When it is successful, you can attract customers and increase your conversion rate by sharing valuable information that is relevant to your niche market.
Unfortunately, a lot of companies are still failing to use this effectively, with many B2B companies admitting that they don’t feel like their content is relevant enough for their niche to take notice.
Surprisingly, a recent study revealed that just 42% of B2B brands find that their content is sophisticated.
If you’re looking to switch this up and improve your content marketing strategy in 2019, you need to look at examples within your niche and work out how you can use what they’ve done well to benefit your own website.
If you’re looking to venture into content marketing with your B2B marketing business this year, we have a few pieces of advice:
Know what you’re talking about, provide value to potential customers, and don’t write filler posts for the sake of keeping your blog regularly updated.
