Now that we’ve entered the final quarter of 2020, let’s take a look back at five B2B marketing trends that caught our attention this year.
1. Personalization in B2B Marketing
Without a doubt, personalization is becoming increasingly critical to creating a satisfying customer experience, according to Social Media Today. To cut through the clutter, customize your marketing efforts for your audience, and segment by their needs and place in the buyer’s journey.
Personalizing is more putting a name in an email. It’s crafting your message to address each stage of their journey. Attract their attention and engage them with relevant information. Keep them interested in you. This leads us to…
2. Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
As HubSpot explains, ABM is a strategy in which a company’s marketing and sales teams work together to develop a highly-targeted buying experience for accounts considered by both departments to be high-value. With ABM, whether you’re engaging in B2B marketing or B2C marketing, for that matter, you’re not spending your time chasing unqualified leads. Instead, you’re delivering your communications to specific accounts, which should strengthen client loyalty and improve your own company’s ROI.
If you combine ABM with inbound marketing, where you draw customers in by providing content they value, optimizing your content, and providing excellent customer service, chances are, you’ll attract new high-value clients.
3. Artificial Intelligence in B2B Marketing
AI isn’t just a staple of science-fiction movies anymore. This software carries out tasks previously requiring a human being. Forbes notes its purpose is to create an excellent customer experience and generate a higher ROI for your marketing efforts.
There are many ways to utilize AI. A company could use AI to ensure only relevant digital ads appear to their audiences. Another example is relatively well-known to many: chatbots. This handy-dandy technology can free up a company’s employees by answering questions frequently asked by customers.
4. Video Marketing
It’s no secret video was steadily growing as a marketing and advertising platform well before 2020. According to Chief Marketer, not all marketers use artificial intelligence to augment their video strategy..
How does AI work? Using data analytics, B2B marketing professionals can test videos on select audiences and tweak them before rolling them out widely. AI also removes the need for the typical, lengthy process of releasing a video, collecting viewer data and feedback, and making changes to the video resulting from the data/feedback. Finally, the analytics collected through AI can be used to build hyper-targeted content and ads.
5. B2B Marketing Automation
For 20 years, companies have used marketing automation to track customers’ interaction and prospects with their brand. It also successfully pulls data to tailor personalized content, and connect the outcomes to sales goals and ROI.
However, the American Marketing Association found that fewer than half of marketers are taking advantage of this software. Why is it trending now? Because companies are using AI with their marketing automation platform. AI helps manage functions like chatbots to free up staff for more complex tasks and gather valuable customer data marketers can use to further customize their messaging.
Learn more about marketing automation
It’s been an exciting year
No one could have foreseen the events that have made 2020 a year we’ll never forget. But it’s also been a year in which some B2B marketing tactics and tools – some older, some more recent – have emerged as ones to watch going forward.
