Let's Get Down To Business! B2B Marketing Trends You Can Expect This Year
We've already discussed some digital marketing trends we expect to see in 2021. This week, we want to focus specifically on what trends B2B companies might see! Here are five areas of digital marketing that we predict will dominate this year.
Content Marketing
The first trend we predict for 2021 B2B marketing is a larger focus on content marketing. What exactly is content marketing? Essentially, it's any consumable material made by a company that provides information to the target market. For B2B, this includes things like social media posts, blogs, white papers, articles, and presentations. Content marketing will answer questions your target audience has in an engaging way that helps to build trust in your brand. While you can put money behind content to expand its reach, true content marketing is organic. For B2B companies, content should be informative, engaging, and showcase your brand's knowledge of the subject. As with all B2B marketing efforts, you must remember that you are targeting other professionals. You should develop content that will appeal to that demographic. If you think it's appropriate, you can get away with using more statistics and industry jargon, under the assumption that other professionals will understand what you're telling them. Social media posts should showcase products and services without being too salesy. Rather than talk about the product at a base level, you should base your content around how your brand can help your target audience's businesses. You want your content to be on relevant topics, particularly for longer written pieces like blogs and white papers. With more businesses heading online than ever before, we've already been seeing a stark uptick in the popularity of content marketing, and we don't see it ending any time soon.
Focusing On Customer Retention
We are currently adapting our marketing efforts to accommodate the next trend of 2021; focusing on customer retention. Any digital marketing agency can help you with customer acquisition, but it takes a unique campaign to convince customers to repeatedly return to you. Competition is always increasing, and businesses are finding new ways to "poach" customers from their rivals. Companies have recently gotten much more serious about retaining the customer base they already have. According to several studies, on average, it costs roughly 5x more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain an existing customer. That being said, 44% of companies place more focus towards acquisition compared to just 18% whose main goal is retention (invesp). Over the past few years, more and more businesses are realizing that it's more profitable to retain customers than it is to get new ones. You want to create a loyal customer base that you can count on for repeat sales. Digital marketing agencies should anticipate this shift in focus during 2021. To succeed, agencies will need to build out more compelling and personalized ad and content campaigns. Loyalty programs are also very popular, as are discounts for returning customers. Marketing agencies must be able to integrate discount codes on any websites they develop, and they should find effective ways to highlight the benefits of purchasing from the client over and over again. Following last year, many businesses are struggling to stay afloat, especially those with physical locations. Retention marketing will be all the more crucial to them during this time when new customers aren't very willing to step outside of their comfort zone to try something new.
Interactive Content
B2B is a very dog-eat-dog world. The market is always very saturated, and each prospect will get offers from dozens of companies just like yours. How can you possibly stand out when prospects are being bombarded with information, flashy statistics, and more? The easiest way to get noticed is to offer something unique that the prospect will remember. Many B2B marketing agencies are helping their clients build out interactive creative and content. Every company posts images on Instagram, but they won't all have an interactive website! We aren't just talking about videos to play, buttons to click, and things to swipe. When we say interactive, we mean really interactive! Images that can be clicked on to open up a pop up filled with information. A timeline that you can truly navigate through with the tap of a finger. A gallery of before and afters that you can slide to unveil. Anything outside of the box that you won't find on your run-of-the-mill website. To keep up with this growing B2B marketing trend, digital marketing agencies are doubling down on web development. Teams are learning custom code and developing personalized widgets to meet the client's needs. By upgrading your website, you encourage people to click through to see what else it can do. As they peruse, they'll take in the information. The longer someone stays on your site the better, and the more unique your content the more likely a business owner will be to remember you specifically when looking for B2B services. You can also make things like interactive checklists or packages to provide a guesstimate price. Really, anything that offers prospects something unusal (and relevant) to do will be highly beneficial to your B2B marketing efforts.
Video Content
Attention all digital marketing agencies; if you're not well-versed in video creation and editing, now is the time to learn! Based on how 2020 went, it's very apparent that video content is going to run the digital marketing world this year. Videos in all forms have historically been the best-received media type online. Videos are engaging, they're dynamic, they tell a story. Short-form video has been steadily growing in the past years, and the pandemic seems to have spurred it on further. All major social media apps are coming out with their own short-form videos. Tik Toks can be up to one minute, Instagram stories are 15 seconds each, Twitter recently introduced Fleets, Facebook has stories, and so on and so forth. Consumers love video content. While B2B marketing is focused on connecting with companies, the company is still the consumer. For many B2B companies, video content is the best way to get your message across. You can showcase your products in action, or walk through the services you offer. If short-form isn't for you, you can always turn to YouTube, Facebook and Instagram videos, and live or prerecorded webinars. You can spread the word about why your company is great while also showing your team in action, giving the businesses voices and faces, and using dynamic visuals to attract prospects. Whenever possible, use content that has some moving element, be it a gif, a simple moving background on a webpage, or a full-fledged video. Digital marketing agencies should brush up on editing skills, and it may be beneficial to form a partnership or two with videographers in the area.
Conversational Marketing
Lastly, we want to mention that conversational marketing is here to stay. The trend got really popular over the past few years, even more so in 2020. The premise behind it is that any and all online conversation should still feel personal, relaxed, and conversational. This is simple to do when you're actually sitting down to type out a message, but what about automated messages, email campaigns, and drip marketing? Thanks to more advanced technology (particularly AI), chat bots and other automated message services are able to be programmed to sound more conversational. AI learns how a prospect is talking to it, and will respond with similar tones and formality. This is popping up on websites everywhere, making clients feel that they are talking to a real team member rather than an automated robot. The personal touch can help build trust and encourage people to continue the conversation. In terms of email campaigns and outreach marketing, there are software and sites that let you plan out the entire campaign in advance. You should make sure to include variables such as the prospect's name to make the message seem more warm, and your follow-ups should be focused on building trust before making sales. Some digital marketing agencies are even making their own software that integrates AI to achieve similar results to the newest chatbots. Yes, you are trying to sell something, but your best bet is to build trust and show that you are a human looking to make a genuine connection with your prospects. Conversational marketing is a wonderful way to accomplish this, and it's going to be everywhere in 2021, especially for B2B marketing!
As always, we can't know for certain that these trends will stick around during the year. Our team has been getting a lot of requests for these five things, so it certainly seems reasonable to expect. Digital marketing agencies across the US are adapting their services to meet the new needs that have come about thanks to the pandemic. If you're a B2B business in need of marketing help, call BusySeed! Our team offers personalized packages with all the services you need, and nothing you don't. We build websites, run social media accounts, create written content, edit videos, communicate with other professionals through various channels, and more! We've helped to grow over 300 clients, both B2B and B2C. We are confident that we will help you get the results you want. We can get you new customers and retain your old ones. Call us today at (888) 353-1484 to learn more and get started! We hope to hear from you soon!
