Let’s kick off with a stat. Stats are a strong start, aren’t they?
Sixty-six percent of marketers predict their content marketing budgets will increase in 2022 over their previous year’s spend. But where is your marketing budget best placed for maximum ROI? Fear not. The answers lie within this article.
With a firm focus on 2022, read on to learn five B2B marketing trends to explore for your marketing budget this year. These trends have a firm focus on enhancing the experience of your clients, which in turn will increase your business’s revenue.
We’ll be looking at:
- Personalized customer experiences
- AR content
- Digital assistants
- Advanced CRMs
- Original content
New Year, new marketing trends it is.
Personalized Customer Experiences
Certainly not new to marketers, personalization is ramping up in 2022. Whereas marketing strategies surrounding personalization are well underway for the B2C market, B2B is lagging slightly behind. This is set to change in 2022 post-pandemic for Millenials, as expectations in the B2B sector are increasing and demand that personal touch.
And it pays off. A huge 93% of global businesses that personalize digital content believe that this strategy positively impacts their revenue growth and lead-generation metrics.
AI and machine learning are your best friends for personalizing content and client experiences with your brand. Instead of treating each client the same, focus on individual clients’ needs to personalize your interactions and marketing campaigns.
And we’re not just talking about customized mobile-friendly emails in your email marketing campaigns–rather an inherent understanding of how your clients interact with your brand. This is the first step to tailoring their experiences.
How to make this happen: if your business frequents LinkedIn, start to personalize your conversations for better business connections on this social media marketing platform. Check out your potential customers and tailor your content to pique their interest. Networking on LinkedIn can be a powerful tool in your business’s digital marketing toolkit when done right.
AR content
AR (augmented reality) content marketing is not just for B2C marketing. This method of digital marketing has the potential to explode in the B2B world. We can take inspiration from businesses that incorporate eCommerce personalization and AR to create digital personalized shopping experiences.
Take makeup giant L’Oréal as an example of AR in practice. Their mobile app enables consumers to upload an image of their face and try out different makeup styles. Customers can easily visualize their finished look and are easily persuaded to add products to their cart, as they are shopping with confidence.
The integration of AR technology in this real business example highlights the reduction of the digital shopping cart abandoned scenario eCommerce businesses is all too familiar with.
AR can be a game-changer with B2B companies, offering businesses the chance to generate increased sales while gaining valuable insights from consumers about how they navigate the specific AR content. As a business owner, this marketing tactic strives to enhance future marketing opportunities and increase brand awareness.
How to make this work for you: AR can enhance product descriptions and produce interactive assembly instructions and infographics. This additional product information, served in an immersive way, boosts descriptions for the client and makes their experience better.
Digital Assistants
The units of digital voice assistants in use globally are predicted to rise to 8.4 billion by 2024. With this in mind, the exponential climb of digital assistants has naturally penetrated the B2B sector. As we’ve mentioned, clients are increasingly demanding about what they expect in this digital era, and 24/7 communication is just part of it.
The ever-increasing demands of clients include clear, crisp communications with digital assistants. Gone are the days of terrible voice quality telecommunications, and say hello to saying “What is hd calling?” and “How can it help my business, please?”.
Digital assistants like chatbots are a great marketing tool and method of providing excellent customer service out of hours. Implemented correctly, digital assistants can increase overall client satisfaction rates, reinforcing relationships with your brand and driving B2B sales.
How to embrace this trend: decide where you want to install your chatbots – whether that be live web chat on your website, social media, text, or more. Key information clients want from your marketing agency’s chatbots are quick answers, resolving complaints, and getting a more detailed answer to a question. Begin your chatbot strategy by creating a content plan for the answers your chatbot will provide.
Advanced CRMs
Figuring out the most efficient ways how to manage a small business almost certainly involves your CRM system. Historically, CRM systems manage your clients’ details. But there’s potential for so much more in 2022. Cloud solutions that integrate with CRMs can turn your basic CRM into a lean, mean, lead-generating machine.
Don’t panic. You aren’t about to be tested on questions like “what is a hybrid cloud?” and the architecture thereof. We’re talking about utilizing the best technology to optimize your communications strategy with your clients to deliver exceptional experiences.
How to level up your CRM: integrate your tech solutions to tie in your CRM with your digital marketing strategies. Smart CRMs facilitate intuitive, tailored marketing messages delivered to prospects and clients at precisely the right point in time for maximum conversions. You’ll find that this tactic serves to create a fruitful customer loyalty strategy.
Original Content
We’ve heard it a million times before. But we won’t apologize for mentioning it again. Because high quality, original content has to be part of your marketing strategy. It’s a timeless trend, and it is so for a reason.
For new clients to find you and for existing clients to think you’re a successful business, you need to be pals with Google – good pals who refer one another. Google and other search engines will only do this if your digital presence is worthwhile and relevant to your target audience. And you do this through quality content. Brand differentiation and helpful, relevant content go hand in hand and ultimately serve to encourage brand loyalty.
Valuable content can meet numerous business goals, as demonstrated from the table below. So, if your business’s goals align with any (or all of) these, a strong content strategy is the way forward for your brand.
Of course, SEO (search engine optimization) is also important in your digital marketing efforts. But the user experience and what visitors find when great SEO leads them to your website has to be spot-on. Customer-focused content is what they need to find, and all your content should be created with your customer smack bang in the middle of it. When reviewing your digital content, consider:
- What value do your pieces of content bring to your prospective customers?
- Are you answering your website visitors’ questions and concerns?
- Why is your solution better than your competitors’?
- Is the customer experience you provide a positive one?
- Which marketing channels are your target audience prevalent on?
These questions are just the tip of the iceberg. But they suffice as a good start to addressing your content and ensuring it meets your customers’ demands.
How to make it your own: to go forth and build customer relationships through content that you deliver, create hyper-detailed client personas and delve deep into their questions and concerns to consider your solutions.
Hear From Industry Experts
Read the latest tips, research, best practices, and insights from our community of expert B2B service providers.
How to Use 2022 Marketing Trends to Boost Sales
An integral part of 2022 marketing trends is a shift in the marketing funnel. Instead of the traditional one-direction approach of Marketing–Sales–Customer, it looks a little like this:
Adapted by Hubspot, the flywheel marketing approach for strategists focuses on business growth by directing all marketing campaigns and efforts towards the customer. In doing so, energy and momentum are created, with the end goal of a never-ending wheel of customer attainment and retention.
The idea behind the flywheel marketing method is that when you apply speed to the flywheel (i.e., successful PPC ad campaigns and quality digital content), you drive more force through the wheel.
These successful marketing strategies give your business more power and leverage. You then need to think about maintaining the momentum and ensuring there’s no friction to slow it down. Friction can be poor visitor website journeys, complicated SaaS pricing tables, awful customer service, and so on.
Successful speed, force, and minimum friction allow the creation of advocates for your brand, and the cycle keeps spinning.
B2B Marketing Trends 2022 in a Nutshell
These marketing trends will set your digital marketing campaigns off on the right path for 2022. How you execute them is your call, of course. We’ve covered just five in this relatively short article. 2022 is likely to be the year of innovations like enhanced voice search, influencer marketing, more webinars, video content, TikTok social media, to name just a few.
The key takeaway from all of these trends is that every year that passes brings us closer to the ultimate personalized, meaningful user experiences and interactions with our audiences.
Whichever marketing strategies you embrace for 2022 must be done wholeheartedly and with your end consumer in mind. Prioritize your online marketing efforts for your B2B buyers, and you won’t go far wrong.