To stay competitive in an ever-expanding digital universe, brands need to be on top of the latest B2B marketing trends and look to find gaps and tools to use to their advantage. Consider that last year the majority of businesses planned to increase their investment in the already crowded digital marketing sphere. In the UK and North America, brands upped their marketing technology budgets by 44 per cent (£40bn), and it was forecast that by 2020 digital's share of total advertising spend would reach 50%.

It’s no surprise considering the growth of digital commerce. In the US alone, business-to-business (B2B) digital commerce is forecasted to hit $1.8 trillion (£1.4tn) by 2023. 

Here are seven key B2B marketing trends that we think B2B marketers need to know about going into 2020.

Personalisation — Information the Buyer Wants When They Want It

Business-to-customer (B2C) brands have made great strides into hyper-personalisation. Consider the following:

• 79% of buyers only consider brands they feel care about them.

• 70% of buying experiences are based on how customers feel they’re being understood.

• 77% of consumers have chosen or recommended a brand that provided a personalised service or experience — even if it cost more.

B2B companies need to follow some of these lessons and embrace a deeper level of personalised content. Ultimately, it isn’t a mindless user persona that hires your business — it’s a group of people. Take advantage of audience intel and data to improve content personalisation. Segment and tailor content throughout the B2B purchase journey to make sure that potential clients feel recognised, understood and appreciated.

As important as the quality of the content itself is the timing of its delivery and ease of accessibility. For instance, one B2B Buyer Survey Report found that 95% of buyers decided to hire vendors that provided ample content to help them navigate through the buying process. Relevant content at the right time can increase purchase ease (and decrease purchase regret) – particularly when it comes to more significant sales.

Marketing Automation and AI — Improve Performance with Machine Learning

On every level, parts of your B2B digital marketing processes can be automated or utilise machine learning to improve performance. Search engine keyword research, content distribution, chatbots and email marketing, scheduling social media marketing alongside publishing blog posts, real-time performance reports — marketing automation tools, plugins and platforms make managing digital marketing more accessible and cost-effective than ever.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) can help decipher structured data sets, augment account information, and pull out key insights. It can also do things like analyse website visitor data to present personalised content automatically. Combine the Agile approach with the power of automation and machine learning, and you can send your marketing efforts into overdrive. Your team can focus on strategy and relationship building, while automation and AI take care of the heavy lifting of executing routine processes.

At 1827 Marketing we also use artificial intelligence tools to make the production of video content and social content much more efficient, with machines getting us to first drafts of social posts and videos as well as assisting us with the scheduling.

Account-Based Marketing — Quality Over Quantity

Account-based marketing (ABM) means strategically targeting high-value prospects with personalised campaigns. Instead of focusing your marketing efforts over a broader set of accounts, ABM concentrates the majority of sales and marketing resources on a smaller number of high ROI potential accounts. It will continue to be one of the B2B marketing trends for 2020.

Currently, only about 20 per cent of B2B brands have dedicated account-based marketing (ABM) strategies — although 60 per cent are hoping to implement one soon. The rise of ABM is no surprise, considering that relative to other marketing activities, ABM reportedly delivers 97 per cent higher ROI. These results are just too good to ignore.

Customer Experience — Learning from B2C

According to a report by Dun & Bradstreet, nearly 90 per cent of B2B marketers think their organisations need to be as focused on customer experience (CX) as their B2C counterparts. For example, studies have found that 80 per cent of B2B buyers expect the same experience as B2C customers when it comes to companies responding and interacting with them in real-time. According to an article from Business 2 Community:

• Roughly 75 per cent of business buyers expect companies to send their organisation personalised offers.

• Nearly 65 per cent of business buyers are likely to look elsewhere if a vendor didn’t make an effort to personalise communications.

Positive, personalised, multi-channel CX means more sales, stronger customer loyalty, and greater long-term client value.

Podcasts — Cost-Effective Channel for Connecting on the Move

The digestible, on-demand nature of podcast makes them an accessible content format to consume in a variety of situations that aren’t ideal for visual media (such as while commuting, working on a project). They also allow you to connect with audiences for an extended period versus an ad. Trend data shows that the number of weekly podcast listeners in the UK has almost doubled in five years and makes up roughly 11 per cent of the adult population. This number is only continuing to climb.

A well-done podcast is a cost-effective way to position your company as an industry expert and help your business connect with audiences on the move. Podcasting enables you to build trust and credibility, connect with industry thought leaders, and strengthen relationships with strategic accounts by asking key clients to be guests on your show to jointly present a case study.

Agile Marketing — New Ways to Meet Marketing Needs More Effectively

Developing effective project management is key to building high-performing and sustainable marketing teams in an increasingly competitive market. The fact is, B2B marketers are being asked to do more with limited resources, respond faster than ever to change, and continuously develop new skill sets.

Based on the Agile Manifesto pioneered by software developers, Agile marketing encouraged experimentation and validated learning to help team members stay engaged, hit key deadlines and improve work quality. Agile involves rapidly iterating marketing strategies and tactics by continuously using data and analytics to uncover promising opportunities or solutions, running tests, evaluating results and implementing changes. Agile marketing requires support from departments such as legal, IT, and finance so that approvals, back-end support and spending allocations can be handled efficiently to prevent marketing efforts from getting stuck in approval limbo.

Voice Search — Get Ready for the Next Big Shift in Search

A significant and developing trend in digital marketing is the rising popularity of personal voice assistants like Siri, Amazon Alexa and Google Home. Instead of showing a list of relevant options, voice search algorithms try to provide a single, best answer. The system tells the customer the top pick and provides a way to contact that business immediately.

While the technology is still in its infancy, it’s anticipated that voice search will surpass screen-based search within the next couple of years. B2B marketers need to be ready to adjust their strategy for voice search and improve discoverability with conversational content formatted to be easily parsed by machines and understood by listeners. Here are some examples of how your business can integrate voice search into your digital presence:

• Zurich Ireland set up their site so that you can use voice search to find out how much you will need to save to send your children to school.

• PayPal users can make transactions via Siri in 30 countries around the world with voice.

• J.P. Morgan clients can access corporate and investment bank research via the J.P. Morgan skill on Alexa.

B2B Digital Marketing - An Ever Evolving Field

When considering these B2B marketing trends, while you shouldn’t blindly follow the “next big thing,” it’s essential to not fall too far behind the curve when it comes to adopting new practices or technologies. Carefully consider and test new developments to decide which ones make sense to adopt for your business.

1827 Marketing can help you build a modern, streamlined marketing strategy. Our platform, talent network and marketing expertise give you the tools to create easy to update campaigns that will keep delivering results.