Navigating the B2B Marketing Storm: Your Mid-Year Survival Guide

In B2B marketing, the only constant is change. The first half of 2024 has only proved that rule. While major technological shifts are changing the playing field, marketers are still facing ‘classic’ challenges like tight budgets and limits on content production capacity.

It can feel overwhelming. But before you consider a career change, remember that great B2B marketers are adaptable. Instead of viewing these changes as barriers, we should plan strategically and seek out new opportunities.

So, consider this article your mid-year pit stop: a chance to catch your breath, regroup, and refocus while we break down 2024’s most impactful changes (so far) and arm you with ways you can turn these challenges into rocket fuel for your marketing endeavours.

Rise of AI and Automation

AI is not here to take our jobs. Its best use is as a force multiplier, helping us to handle routine and repetitive tasks. This way, marketers can spend more time adding value with their insights and experience. This approach also helps marketers reduce the risk of becoming over-reliant on AI’s abilities and removing the human from their customer relationships.

To get the most from AI, marketers will need to learn about AI-driven analytics, prompting, machine learning, and data interpretation. Companies should provide training both to upskill and reassure employees. Why train someone on AI if you plan to bin them in favour of the computer, anyway? Thoughtful communication around AI's purpose and benefits can ease concerns and encourage a culture of innovation and adaptability.

Some organisations may struggle to keep up with AI advances. Fortunately, the solution is simple: stay up to date with developments, identify which AI investments match your business goals, and focus on those. Adjust your budget and AI research as your needs change.

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Evolving SEO and Online Search

Google’s Helpful Content Update and the introduction of Gemini-powered search results are two significant developments reshaping the search landscape.

The Helpful Content update aims to prioritise valuable content in response to the deluge of AI-generated, keyword-stuffed pages that try to game the search engines. Meanwhile, Gemini-powered search results are set to undercut organic traffic by using generative AI to provide answers directly to users. This might be convenient for users but creates a headache for marketers, who now compete with both other search results and Gemini’s summary.

Marketers need to focus on creating top-quality content that meets Google’s EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) guidelines to attract clicks. They will also need to think about the factors answer engines use to identify authoritative sources to provide sources and footnotes.

In addition, marketers will need to think about diversifying their traffic sources by actively promoting their content across different channels.

Marketers may still struggle despite mastering the new rules of SEO, given the shifting preferences of Gen Z, Millennials, and even some Gen X’ers. This isn’t just a B2C issue: younger generations are coming into their own in corporate leadership roles - and bringing their product discovery preferences with them.
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Phasing Out of Third-Party Cookies

Although the deadline keeps shifting, third-party cookies are disappearing. Safari and Firefox block them by default, and Google started removing them from Chrome earlier this year. Without precise targeting, will B2B marketers end up paying high prices for poorly segmented ads?

Marketers should view this challenge as a chance to build stronger relationships with buyers through zero-party data—information customers provide willingly. This data helps create better profiles and personas.

By offering valuable content and experiences in exchange for customer data, you can turn privacy issues into a strategic advantage, positioning your brand as a trusted leader focused on its customers.

Contextual advertising offers another privacy-friendly way to reach audiences after cookies. It uses AI and machine learning to understand content and place matching ads. Advertisers can target site categories, specific domains, or page content using keywords, geolocation, and device type. This approach improves user engagement, brand recall, and brand safety by focusing on users' current intent.

Account-based marketing (ABM) offers another powerful approach. By targeting specific accounts with tailored content and solutions, ABM helps create personalised experiences for high-value prospects, fostering deeper engagement and building strong relationships with key decision-makers in your target audience.

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Content Quality Over Quantity

81% of potential clients do online research before contacting a business, often reading up to a dozen articles about a product. This makes every piece of content you create a chance to influence a buyer's decision. However, AI-generated content has increased the amount of similar content, and changes to search are making it harder for marketers to get their products and services in front of searchers.

Google’s EEAT principles provide a clear framework for marketers who want to counter the trend towards the commoditisation of content. By featuring insights and analyses from industry experts, as well as amplifying the voices of your brand’s own subject matter experts, your content will offer something of genuine interest and originality.

Creating high-quality content regularly will still help. It will provide the basis for multi-channel campaigns, build trust, and establish your brand's authority and expertise. A detailed content calendar ensures consistent output without losing quality.

Update and review your content often to keep it relevant, especially if your industry involves YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) topics, which Google closely monitors because of their impact on well-being and financial stability.

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Aligning Content with the Buyer’s Journey

Long B2B buying cycles require marketers to match target audiences consistently with the right message at the right time - and through the right channel. No wonder 61% of respondents in a 2023 Content Marketing Institute research report noted challenges with creating content tailored to different stages of the buyer’s journey.

Effective cross-team collaboration is key to finding the right approach for your business. Set up integrated planning sessions and shared success metrics for marketing, sales, and retention teams. This ensures cohesive content that resonates from awareness to decision.

Personalising content and ensuring its relevance to different audiences will enhance engagement and conversion rates. Create comprehensive profiles of your ideal customers using live data from your website, social media, and other channels. Identify the key questions, concerns, content preferences and information needs at each stage of the buyer's journey. Then double down on taking data-driven decisions on content creation and distribution strategies.

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Personalisation at Scale

Tailoring content to meet the specific needs and interests of different buyer personas at each stage - and doing so at scale - is a significant challenge, even with advanced data analytics and AI in play. To deliver a customised experience, marketers must use data and technology without sacrificing efficiency, scalability, or customer trust.

Brands need to integrate personalised content into every customer interaction, from emails and social media to websites and customer support. Although it's challenging, the benefits are clear. McKinsey reports that the fastest-growing companies drive 40% more revenue from personalisation compared to slower-growing counterparts.

AI can enable the creation of highly personalised content and experiences by analysing large datasets to identify consumer behaviour patterns and preferences.

Using anonymised data, AI tools like ChatGPT can quickly generate detailed buyer personas.

These personas can help marketers brainstorm and iterate on content ideas that meet the specific needs and interests of different segments at each stage of the buyer’s journey.

However, it's crucial to balance personalisation efforts with privacy concerns. Marketers should clearly communicate how they collect and use customer data, and offer customers control over their information. By doing so, brands can build trust while leveraging AI's power to create personalised experiences at scale.

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Shifting Audience Preferences

It can feel impossible to keep up with audiences’ changing preferences, but staying relevant requires tracking the latest trends. Use data from surveys, social listening tools, and engagement analytics to create and refine your content strategies.

User-generated content (UGC) and community-building efforts are becoming more important for reach, engagement and authenticity. Millennials and Gen Z trust reviews and testimonials from peers more than branded messages. Adding customer reviews, crowd-sourced FAQs, user-created how-to videos, and other social proof on your website can significantly boost trust and engagement with these buyers.

If appropriate for your business, you might also consider influencer marketing. Work with B2B micro influencers to expand your reach while maintaining authenticity.

Interactive and conversational marketing, such as calculators, quizzes, live chats and webinars, can also enhance the content experience. They answer the demands of consumer-driven content preferences and drive deeper connections with audiences.

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Incorporating Video and Interactive Content

We often talk about the deluge of content B2B customers are subject to, but let’s not forget that they’re attempting to drink from that firehose. A recent study found that people watch 17 hours of video content every week. With 91% of content marketers using video, the question isn’t whether but how you’ll incorporate the format in your content.

However, audiences want to engage with video differently on social media than on websites. This returns us once again to the question of production scalability. AI video tools offer a future in which production is easier and more accessible. Marketers need to explore how to take advantage of this developing technology as a relatively low-cost way to innovate, iterate, and expand their video content creativity.
Meanwhile, interactive content products like webinars and live Q&A sessions engage audiences and encourage active participation, making content more memorable and impactful. This is especially true as buyers progress through the customer journey, where just under half of buyers seek webinars.

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Making the Most of Owned Media Channels

Changing dynamics on social media platforms and increasingly unreliable third-party data are driving marketers to look inward to provide a more controlled, curated experience for potential customers. A full 87% of marketers rely on email marketing, while 86% leverage their organisation's website or blog posts as a primary content distribution channel.

Actively managing and optimising these channels can foster stronger customer relationships. For instance, well-curated email campaigns that address specific customer challenges can lead to higher engagement and loyalty. Similarly, blogs that provide valuable insights can position a brand as an industry leader, boosting credibility and trust.

In both cases, brands can leverage their owned channels to collect first-party data to inform future types of content marketing efforts.

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Budget and Resource Constraints

With Britain’s economy still taking its first, tentative steps out of recession, companies are hedging their bets. Marketing budgets are often among the first to feel the strain. But telling your marketers to keep a stiff upper lip and do more with less may not cut it anymore. 41% of respondents in a McKinsey survey said they don’t have enough resources to increase operational efficiency.

Empowering your marketing teams to decline frivolous meetings may offer a quick win here (and be a morale booster), but the real efficiency prize comes from leveraging automation.

As we mentioned earlier, automating routine tasks frees up marketers to focus on more strategic, value-added activities. Automation tools can also aid with data analysis, unlocking deeper insights into customer behaviour and enabling creators to remove friction by delivering more personalised, relevant content to audiences.

However, efficiently creating and distributing content is only half the battle. Marketers also need advanced analytics tools to track sales conversions alongside social shares and likes to assess the ROI of content marketing efforts. These insights are essential for prioritising high-impact content strategies and ensuring effective allocation of limited resources.

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The Next Six Months - and Beyond

Adapting to new challenges and finding opportunities to innovate are essential skills for marketers. The first half of 2024 has shown the importance of staying flexible, using new technology, and thinking strategically to turn problems into progress. The next six months promise to be tough, but marketers who take on these challenges will be rewarded.

Is keeping up with the pace of change pushing your resources to the breaking point? We’d love to chat about how the 1827 Marketing team can help you make sense of it all, augmenting your existing abilities and allowing you to focus your efforts where your team is already strongest.