Advertising is being shaped by the B2B push to improve the customer experience. In today’s on-demand, instant access world, poor customer experience is one of the biggest obstacles to conversions. With consumer trust in all industries declining across the board, brands need to ensure experience is at the top of their to-do list.

You need to think of advertising in this context as we head into 2021. Focus on using advertising to deliver - not extract - value from your audience.

If content provides the value, advertising is the efficient and effective delivery mechanism. While content can establish trust and credibility, educate B2B prospects, and enhance brand awareness, advertising is how you get it in front of the right eyes. Personalisation and relevancy are key here, although there’s an art to this so it doesn’t feel invasive. When done well, targeting elevates the customer experience and the customer feels seen and understood.  Retargeting can also be a powerful motivator for awareness and conversion.

This approach blurs the lines between PPC and other advertising, content marketing, social media, and other forms of B2B digital marketing. Marketers need to see the different aspects of marketing and communications as integrated and complementary disciplines rather than created in isolation. 

1 Brand Advertising

Direct to consumer ads can offer products and get conversions quickly in the B2C world. With B2B marketing, the customer journey is longer. They’re not ready to buy until they’ve convinced themselves they’ve found the right product.

The latest study from Gartner reveals that when B2B buyers are considering a purchase, they’ll spend only 17% of the customer journey connecting to potential suppliers.  They dedicate much of the rest of the time to independent research, including online.

The ability to target niche audiences accurately, and retarget interested parties, makes digital advertising a powerful means of reaching B2B buyers during this research phase. However, to succeed it needs to do more than just focus on increasing sales or move prospects through the sales process.

Brand advertising seeks to influence brand perceptions and build a deeper connection with buyers, both intellectually and emotionally. The aim of these adverts is to increase exposure, establish brand identity, and create a foundation of credibility and trust. From that platform, you can foster stronger, more resonant connections.

Integrated marketing, behavioural and intent data now give brands the ability to listen to their audiences and produce advertising that speaks directly to their expressed needs. Advanced segmentation and personalisation also work together to ensure the right advert meets the right audience for a more resonant, relevant experience.

The increasing importance of branding in delivering adverts as part of a holistic experience means that the automation of bidding and placement in programmatic advertising will need to be carefully controlled. You need to make sure that your adverts are being placed alongside the content you want your brand associated with both from a platform and a contextual standpoint.

2 Strategy + Creativity

The consumerisation of B2B buyers’ expectations has been a developing trend for a long time. As the lines between our personal and work lives continue to blur, expect this trend to accelerate.

Marketing teams will need to step up to the new creative mark in response. In an over-optimised, homogenised market where the consumers’ attention is at a premium, you need to think about how to connect with your audience on a deeper level. This means more than making use of the new ad formats, video formats, and targeting capabilities available.

In today’s data-intensive atmosphere, it’s easy to forget about the role of creativity in conveying your brand message. However, while a sound data-driven strategy will get your adverts in front of the right people, without the creative to connect and engage they still won’t convert.

Yes, advertising platforms are in an arms race to provide you with novel ways to reach and connect with audiences. Yes, your data combined with their targeting capabilities will help you reach the right people. What the platforms and data can’t provide is the ad creative. You need to invest in copy that hits exactly the right tone, a punchline that creates an emotional connection with a laugh, or attention grabbing images and video that can stop the right people from scrolling on by.

3 Ethics in Advertising

The passage and enforcement of privacy regulations, such as the GDPR, and ongoing social media data scandals are impacting online advertising. B2B marketers need to know keenly that things are developing quickly. Expect tightening regulation and be prepared to adapt to these changes before they happen.

In response to growing concerns, The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has launched the IAB Gold Standard to improve the digital advertising experience. The body is designed to address concerns around data processing and privacy, tackle ad fraud, and uphold brand safety.

It also encourages those signing up to take steps, such as removing nuisance advertising like pop ups and auto playing videos from their platforms and portfolios. For brands seeking to improve their customer experience or who are focusing on brand advertising, this will be a welcome development. Gold Standard verified platforms will provide an industry-standard and vetted experience they can trust.

4 Beyond Third-Party Cookies

A related trend that B2B marketers will need to be prepared for is the move away from third party tracking.

Apple is adding new privacy measures requiring users to grant permission for companies to gather data and track them across mobile apps and websites. Safari will block cross-site tracking. The world’s most popular browser, Chrome, is phasing out third-party cookies entirely. Many other browsers have already done so.

B2B marketers should start transitioning to online advertising practices that don’t rely on tracking codes, such as contextual targeting and audience-driven targeting using first-party data to reach B2B buyers during the customer journey.

First-Party Data

One of the most effective strategies is to use your own first-party data. Gaining the relevant permissions of the contacts you sign up to your database allows you to target and retarget consumers. Since you’ve asked for their explicit permission, there’s less likelihood of running foul of the GDPR.

You can use this data to target advertising and to create lookalike audiences to expand your brand reach past your existing leads. First-party data consistently shows a high return on investment (ROI). Our marketing automation platform integrates with Perfect Audience, allowing you to build precisely segmented lists and target audiences across channels.

Contextual Targeting

Contextual targeting is making a comeback. Improvements in data capture, automated segmentation, machine learning, and audience modelling make in-context ad copy effective and worth a deeper look.

Contextual targeting improves the relevance of your advertising by delivering targeted banner ads or other marketing messages to audience segments that are interested in the content. You can match display ads depending on keywords, taxonomy, location, browsing habits, and more. So if, for example, someone’s reading about productivity problems in manufacturing, you can create and display ads in that context highlighting your manufacturing automation software.

5 Programmatic Advertising

For paid advertising, such as pay per click (PPC), programmatic buying continues to be a faster and more efficient way to buy advertising audiences. Video programmatic has seen significant increases during 2020 with some programmatic marketplaces reporting as much as a 200% increase due to the increase in streaming and Connected TV (CTV).

As with any automated solution, this is not a ‘set it and forget it’ option. B2B brands keen to protect their brand integrity and customer experience will need to ensure they monitor their demand-side blacklist and update it regularly. Programmatic also needs the human touch to optimise your spend.

6 LinkedIn

Your B2B marketing strategies should include LinkedIn. LinkedIn boasts 766 million users worldwide. In 2020, engagement has increased by more than 30%. In the UK, 14% of all adults reported using LinkedIn daily and 30% once a week.

The professional social network has also been working hard to improve advertising options. Objective based advertising now allows you to create campaigns focused on marketing goals including brand awareness, conversions and lead generation, among others. They have also made improvements to InMail advertising, providing an opportunity for more targeted 1-to1 interaction and a better customer experience.

7 Generational Shift

With millennials moving up the corporate ladder and Gen Z also starting to take their place at the table, B2B marketing needs to address how to reach and engage with these generations. Forrester’s Global Marketing Content Credibility study noted that 33% of B2B buyers were now millennials, increasing to 44% by 2025. Arguably the recent focus on humanising B2B marketing and focusing on values and purpose is because of this generational shift.

As a result, B2B brands are becoming increasingly interested in how to use platforms they haven’t viewed as suitable for B2B in the past. In order to reach and engage a new generation of B2B buyers, they need to be where they are.

TikTok, for example, is the latest platform to burst onto the social media scene. 25% of UK residents are reported to be monthly TikTok users. Its popularity is in big part thanks to its short-form, highly creative video format that appeals to a younger demographic. Remember TikTok skews exceptionally young. A third of the audience is less than 19 years of age. 62% is younger than 30.

While you won’t find as many B2B decision makers in these demos, you could engage with potential B2B decision influencers and the future of B2B buying power.

But, the question remains: how can you use 15 second videos in a B2B context? Perhaps inspiration can be found in how B2C brands are advertising using the immensely popular Instagram Stories.

8 Video

Video content and video ads aren’t exactly new trends, but they continue to be powerfully efficient marketing strategies. Both streaming users and TV viewing represent a significant opportunity. UK residents spend 6+ hours a day watching TV or online video. Streaming has doubled in the past year with 12 million people in the UK gaining access to a streaming subscription in 2020 alone.

Look for Connected TV (CTV) to be one of 2021’s biggest advertising trends. Contextual predictive audiences will roll out shortly in the UK which can provide an alternative way to target audiences.

Get the Results You Need

The consumerisation of B2B buyers’ expectations combined with an omnichannel ecosystem and shifting technological landscape has made marketing to B2B buyers complex.

Marketing automation and AI enable campaign creation and delivery at scale. Coupled with our creative, data driven strategy, content creation and campaign management, 1827 Marketing can help you grow your business.  Contact 1827 Marketing today to learn more.