Over the past several weeks, we’ve been reading through the numerous marketing trends reports as they’ve been coming out. Here’s our round up of the main takeaways as we enter 2022.

Digital Transformation

The digitisation of customer experiences in both B2C and B2B spaces has been a dominant trend for a while. However, the goalposts have shifted in the past couple of years. The goal is no longer to just target efficiencies, improve the customer experience, or provide a point of differentiation anymore. 

Digital transformation is now the heart of driving business outcomes. It is mission critical for increased revenue, sales, volume, profit, new business acquisition, and customer retention, and you need to accelerate your digital maturity to keep up with the pace of change.

Company connections with their customers are increasingly digital. 58% of marketing budgets are now spent on digital marketing activities, according to The CMO Survey’s Highlights and Insights Report of August 2021.

The CMO Survey report states that: “Investment in all digital marketing activities increased since February 2021, with 77.4% of firms now investing in website optimization and 69.0% in digital media and search. These investments signal a further push towards internet sales and digital marketing channels.”

Also from The CMO Report, “Digital Marketing was identified as a primary responsibility for marketers at 94.2% of companies (100% of B2C Service companies), up from 86.0% in February 2020. This increase pushed Digital Marketing above Brand as the top responsibility for marketers in 2021.”

McKinsey’s research on B2B decision-makers confirms that omnichannel is not simply a trend, nor a pandemic workaround—rather, it is a critically important fixture for B2B sales globally. “B2B buyers aren’t just moving to omnichannel. They’ve arrived. Given the choice of in-person, remote, and e-commerce channels, purchasers have shown they want them all.”

They also noted that business buyers’ preference for self-serve digital purchasing has grown since August 2020, with businesses saying that omnichannel works, and even surpasses past approaches. In fact, “83 percent of B2B leaders believe that omnichannel selling is a more successful way to prospect and secure new business than traditional, “face-to-face only” sales approaches.”

As a result, the role of strategic marketing is evolving. The CMO Survey states that marketers are taking on more responsibilities than ever, including being invited to board meetings and getting involved in higher-level decision-making.

If digital transformation hasn’t been top of your priority list until now, 2022 is the year to make it happen. CMOs need to take their seat at the table and gain the support of the C-suite. No business can afford to have a half-hearted message on digital marketing in B2B from the director level when it has become such a vital part of doing business. Staff need to be fully engaged at every level and messaging from the top must reinforce this.

Creating Connection

McKinsey also noted that personalisation matters more than ever. Their Next in Personalization 2021 Report “reveals that companies who excel at demonstrating customer intimacy generate faster rates of revenue growth than their peers. And the closer organizations get to the consumer, the bigger the gains."

With the Funky Nut Company, for example, the customer experience is consistent throughout the buyer’s journey and perfectly suited to their brand. They draw people in with ads on Facebook, then when you’re on their mailing list, they send humourous emails with recipes, information about their company, offers, new product ideas, and current product information.

When you buy, they deliver quickly. A day or two after they’re sure your goods have arrived, you get a personalised email, telling you how thrilled they are that you’ve placed your first order. If you reply to that, you get a personal reply from the owner of the company. On your second order, there’s another equally engaging email, along with a request for feedback.

Of course, all of this is automated. And, of course they do this for everyone. But the experience feels personal. By asking for your opinion, it feels they really care about hearing it.

We could list so many more small B2C and D2C companies who are doing everything from email marketing to social media right to create connection with their marketing. Take Square Root Soda, who calls their customers Pop Pals, or Single Variety Co, who call them their Jam Fam. These businesses also pay attention to the issues that matter to their consumers and get involved. They use recyclable packaging and get involved in social projects, such as tree planting and local environmental work. Given that Google themselves highlights sustainability as a priority for consumers, this is something that business marketing companies would do well to emulate.

While these companies are B2C, B2B firms should learn from their example. How can you make your customers feel good about doing business with you? How can you be highly responsive and genuine? What personal touches can you add that creates a feeling for your customers of being part of something? How do you create a connection that will attract your audience and draw them through the buyer’s journey, potentially without ever meeting them?

If ever there was a lesson from B2C small businesses to B2B marketers of any size, it’s here. These businesses thoroughly understand their customers and the customer journey. They know who they are marketing to and what they want, and they deliver it with bags of personality.

While the cutesy or zany approach is unlikely to work if you’re a serious company selling to other equally serious companies, it’s worth considering personal options that will have the right impact on your target audience.

If you’re going to keep up in 2022, you too have to truly understand your customer and the customer journey. So do your market research, get marketing and sales' heads together, and do your marketing planning to create a great experience that removes any points of friction.

Conversational Content

Content is the foundation of this digital customer experience.

From the Content Marketing Institute’s B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends: Insights for 2022 report: “The key theme that emerged was this: The pandemic awoke a sleeping giant – content marketing, that is. Without in-person events and face-to-face selling, many who had previously paid little attention to content marketing suddenly became aware of its power. More content marketers got a seat at the table and helped keep many businesses on their audiences’ radar. Some discovered new audiences altogether.”

While marketers expect their content budgets to grow in the coming year, those funds will be ear-marked for campaign creative, and not additional personnel:  

“Two-thirds (67%) of marketers say their team was asked to do more with the same resources. Whether they were asked to do more or not, content marketing team sizes didn’t grow.”

With teams staying the same size and less investment in adding new staff, teams have been looking to external suppliers to keep up with demand:

“Half of all marketers say they outsource some content marketing – that’s on par with a year ago (49%), but we saw a marked difference at larger companies (1,000 or more employees). A year ago, 61% of these marketers at large companies outsourced content marketing. This year, that percentage has risen to 75%.”

Outsourcing offers a flexible way to increase your teams’ capabilities, allowing you to keep up with the demand for more and higher quality content. Another route to doing more with less is to focus on collaborations and influencer marketing campaigns that harness the talents of online creator communities. Both offer the ability to experiment creatively, with the latter offering the additional benefit of expanding your reach using key influencers and micro-influencers.

Marketers ranked virtual events, webinars, and online courses amongst the most effective tactics for the past year, with paid media also a top investment. Companies are clearly planning to do more of the same in 2022, with 69% of marketers investing more in video, 61% in events, and 55% in paid media.

Another way of doing more with less is to invest in marketing technology. There are a lot of relatively affordable solutions on the market. From AI content creation software to automated outreach bots, you can buy a lot of ‘quick wins’. While we are on record as being enthusiasts for the potential of automation and AI, we would also like to sound one note of caution. Standards cannot slip if you want to cut through in a noisy marketplace. While AI solutions for automatically created content are improving, and you can build great experiences using automation, there’s no substitute for human talent just yet. Especially not when the importance of the personal touch for consumers can’t be overstated.

With all of these changes to embrace, what practical steps can you take to ensure your content marketing strategy is successful and fully integrated with your overall digital marketing strategy?

Tactical changes we recommend: 

• Include more conversational forms of marketing and interactivity in your content planning.

• Look at where there are opportunities for community building and partnerships, not just with your existing customers, but also with other teams and other departments. Working together to co-create and deliver your digital marketing strategy is definitely the way of the future.

• Look at non-traditional B2B channels as boundaries continue to blur between B2B and B2C. Look at Adobe’s use of TikTok as part of the brand platform. Not only does Adobe have its own vibrant presence on TikTok with over 2 million likes, but they have also partnered with them to launch #LevelUpWithAdobe, helping TikTok users learn how to make better videos and edit them for better results. Imagine the sheer power of that partnership for Adobe’s bottom line and think about where and how you can form similar partnerships to great effect.

• Paid content needs to blend seamlessly into the customer experience. Marketers need to figure out how they can offer value instead of disrupting the users’ experience with promotional content. From Hootsuite’s Social Trends 2022 report, “these networks encourage advertisers to make content that fits organically into the platforms. TikTok’s whole brand-facing wing operates on the tagline “Don’t make ads. Make TikToks.” Pinterest’s call to action for advertisers is “Stop interrupting. Start inspiring.” And Snapchat encourages advertisers to “become a part of Snapchatters’ everyday conversations.”” The report also covers how marketers can use these platforms for building a community: “Instead of trying to build a community from the ground up, the smartest brands in 2022 will tap into creator communities to learn more about customers, simplify content creation, and build brand awareness and affinity.”

• Remember that everything online starts with a question. When planning your content marketing ask yourself what questions will your content be answering? Then figure out why your customers should care and what experiences you can create for them that sets you apart.

Employee Activation

To cut through and do more with less, you also need to get your entire workforce involved in the marketing mission and amplifying your efforts. As we’ve pointed out before, your customers don’t differentiate between different departments. To them, whoever they speak to represents your company and your brand. 

The message that the whole organisation needs to support marketing’s mission needs to come from the top in both word and deed. If every employee feels that top management is behind this initiative, they are much more likely to enthusiastically adopt it.

To assist employees with getting involved, including those at the top:

• Streamline internal processes so that customer-facing departments are working as one and providing a seamless customer experience.

• Help your teams to understand agile working. It’s important to commit to breaking down silos to work in cross-functional project teams to address marketing challenges and deliver on customer expectations.

• Help your people build their professional profiles, especially the leadership and those able to establish reputations as thought leaders or influencers. Look to leaders like Adam Mosseri at Instagram. Adam’s interactions with the community and announcements about Instagram developments increase transparency and engagement.

Measurement and Accountability

Marketing departments are under increasing pressure to prove the impact of marketing efforts. 58.75% of marketing leaders reported increased pressure from CEOs and 45.1% from CFOs in The CMO Survey we quoted above.

Difficulty in measuring and reporting on ROI comes out as a major issue across many industry studies, including one from Brandwatch, where 57% of respondents said it was a challenge for their team:

Measurement, attribution, and optimisation is not being helped by recent privacy updates. Apple now allows users to opt-out of tracking entirely, impacing tracking, email open rates and paid ad results. Advertising is also being challenged by the cloud of distrust around the quality of programmatic ad placement, clicks, and concerns around click fraud. 

With Google and other search engines aiming to phase out third-party cookies, no wonder marketers have concerns about tracking the impact of their marketing efforts. They recognise the importance of being able to establish exactly how much they've contributed to the bottom line. Proving marketing's value leads to increased involvement in decision making, larger budgets, or at least budgets that are easier to get without doubts being expressed from the C-suite, and more complete buy-in from all departments.

Our main recommendations for getting on top of attribution and accountability are:

• End-to-end measurement and marketing attribution is vital, especially considering C-Suite expectations. This is only possible with integrated marketing automation providing and tracking the customer journey.

• Marketers need to stay up to date with changing regulations and issues. They need to respect customers' data choices and deliver real value that makes customers want to interact, engage, and buy.

• Make experiences meaningful, use genuine empathy, and care about the customer relationship to incentivise the sharing of information.

• Focus on building up your company’s zero and first-party data sources as a matter of priority to ensure you can pinpoint your vital contribution to your company’s ROI.

Our Main Take-Away: Concentrate on Quality

From The CMO Report, “Marketers report that superior product quality (ranked as the top priority by 32.0% of companies), trusting relationships (18.1% of companies), and excellent service (13.5% of companies) will be their customers’ top priorities in the next year.”

We’d suggest that a focus on quality must also apply to your customer and internal relationships, innovation, and the data you use to make marketing decisions.

B2B buyers expect experiences on a par with those they receive as consumers. They want a personalised experience. They want to feel engaged and connected, just as much as they would during a B2C transaction. 

Look beyond the boundaries of your industry and B2B in general. 

Who is providing the best customer experience? 

Who is creating a community and connection around their brand that makes customers and employees want to be enthusiastic advocates?

Where can you find new inspiration and new partnerships to boost your digital marketing in 2022?

Whatever you sell, it’s time to focus on quality, both of the customer experience and of the relationships you build.