It’s been a busy few years for marketing professionals across industries. We’ve had our hands full shifting strategies and adjusting marketing tactics to match the changing customer expectations and behaviors brought on by the post-pandemic economy.

Experts are unsure of what to make of the economic mixed signals permeating the market. This certainly has business owners and decision makers taking long, hard looks at their goals and marketing strategies for the year ahead. 

We’ve gathered insight from some of our leading B2B service providers to find out where their focus will be in the coming year.

1. Many B2B Marketing Teams Are Shifting B2B Marketing Tactics To Engage With More Qualified Leads

Business owners and marketing professionals are realizing that consumers across this new and challenging economic landscape have very different expectations of the customer experience, and business as usual might not be sufficient to maintain revenue levels.

A significant number of our respondents are leveraging B2B marketing trends in their efforts to evolve the buyer’s journey and build stronger relationships in order to boost customer retention.

Some are accomplishing this through powerful customer relationship management (CRM) software platforms like HubSpot, while others are reaching out directly to influence customer purchasing decisions and increase conversion rates.

“We want to focus on transforming good customer relationships into guaranteed loyal fans. Word-of-mouth is still a powerful form of marketing, and as a B2B company, we would love nothing more than to create lifetime clients who in turn become an active lead generator. Our mantra for the year will be to take what we have and make it better!” —Anna Ritchie, Co-Founder, jo leigh marketing, LLC

“We have a number of goals we plan to address. 

1. Increased brand awareness: This is important for us because it allows our team to reach more consumers and create a larger pool of potential customers. 

2. Generating more leads: This is essential for our team because it allows them to convert prospects into paying customers. We’ve focused on generating leads through various marketing channels, such as online ads, email marketing, and social media. 

3. Higher customer retention rates: Like any business, we’re looking to maximize our customer retention rate, which will be beneficial as it allows us to build a base of repeat customers who are likely to purchase from us again in the future. 

4. Attracting more customers: We are focusing significant resources on attracting more customers in order to expand our customer base and increase revenue. In order to attract those new customers, we’re mostly focusing on online marketing methods incorporating SEO and social media marketing.” 

—Jose Gomez, CTO and Cofounder, Evinex

“One of my goals is to rework my messaging to reach more of my audience. You must speak directly to potential clients through all of your content channels, including your blog, social media, email, and anywhere else you might be active. I was recently forced to come out of my comfort zone and rework what I am saying to my potential clients, and I feel this was a great start to changing my approach and sales methods. I hope to use my new tactics to increase our company revenue.” —Tammy Durden, Founder & CEO, Fearless Business Boss

“We have grown a lot over this past year. We’re really focusing on our processes and the customer journey. We want to make sure that we can maintain the amount of attention clients got from us when we were smaller as we continue to scale.” —Jack Shepler, CEO, Ayokay

“Our goals include increasing our social media presence, adding long-form video, and increasing time spent on in-person networking.” —Emily J. Wiegert, Owner, The Back Pocket CMO

“We want to create a more systematic way of getting business, nailing down sales and outreach, and creating a more consistent workflow for our team. We want to bring a few more people onto our team to help with this.” —Natalie Hilscher, Co-Founder, Marketing Expert, De Lu Studios

“Acquire more consistent clients! Working on my own marketing and SEO will be key to gaining my own visibility and making more connections.” —Jade Pruett, Founder, HelloSEO

2. A potential recession has many owners exploring new ways to source leads.

Businesses understand the vital need to grow their customer base and evolve new methods for sourcing and converting leads in the event that there is a recession and revenues are negatively impacted.

“Our goals include growing our team and business by more than half. We have been aggressive in hiring new sales individuals and invested more money in our own marketing and advertising campaigns to generate more business. Our goal is to also increase our existing client revenue by a minimum of 20% to show that we are able to convert and expand, which means our clients are experiencing success as well!” —Robb Fahrion, Partner and Co-Founder, Flying V Group

“Our goal is to grow membership in my marketing program ten times over. We’ve spent the last year building up a model that benefits clients that includes lead generation, opt-ins, nurture for leads, and content creation for the current members. I want to reach more entrepreneurs who are parents. I’ve seen how beneficial it can be and want to show more business owners that they don’t have to choose between home life and work life, or home life and less revenue as long as they focus on the right marketing for their business.” —Channing Muller, Principal, DCM Communications

“We hope to grow the company in terms of clients and number of staff members.” —Christopher LCP Mendes, CEO, 2Leaf, Inc.

“A seasoned entrepreneur once told me that if you can increase your revenue 20% each year you’ll be in business forever. That’s our goal again this coming year along with a few extra action items, such as adding four new people and moving into a large office and studio space.” —Tyler Mose, Founder, Matchpoint

“We are locked into a business model that serves the convention market. We would like to expand this to the larger industries in the area.” —Richard J. DePaso, Managing Director, Aardvark Video and Media Productions, LLC

“With a potential recession in the forecast, budgets—especially advertising budgets—are already shrinking. Our goal is to increase our business-to-business professional relationships in closely related industries in an effort to gain more referral clients rather than slugging it out in the advertising wasteland over a smaller number of leads.” —Dan Johnson, Owner and Head of Digital Design, version2, LLC

“With all the uncertainty and talk of a recession looming over our heads, our largest goal is to understand our target audience. We want to clearly identify those whom we can help best and how best to reach them.” —Nicole Denson, Marketing Manager, Big Leap

3. Businesses Are Looking to Expand Their Bottom Line By Adding Value-Added Services

Marketing teams realize business owners are looking for more return on their investments, so their focus in the coming year is shifting to improving and expanding services in order to increase the types of marketing campaigns they can execute and the complexity of the marketing services they can provide.

“In the coming year, we are hoping to expand our business, primarily through SEO services, in order to increase the number of clients we have and expand on what types of businesses we can target. Throughout the past year, we have dedicated our time in setting up standard operating procedures, preparing and building a solid team, and establishing workflows. In the new year, we are hoping to make use of that stable foundation to evolve and expand our target customer base.” —Neil Fedillaga, SEO Department Manager, BrandLume

“Our agency’s business goals are to continue to support our expanding service offerings, including brand positioning and visual design, capabilities that we added in recent years and that fill out our range of branding capabilities.” —Mark Skoultchi, Partner, Catchword

“Our goal is simply to double our revenue and double the results we get for our clients. Additionally, implementing objectives and key results company-wide I feel is a huge step in the right direction, so we are prioritizing that as well.” —Wes Foster, Founder, WESFED.com

“To grow our customer base with our website development and hosting solutions. Although that has been the desire year after year, this coming year is a much greater need to do this.” —Robert Williams, Owner, Williams Web Solutions

4. Marketing Plans Are Prioritizing Improving Brand Authority Through Content Marketing And Social Media Platform Engagement

Some of our respondents realize the value of networking and helping other owners of B2B brands to improve their educational content and influencer marketing strategies.

When executed across social channels and content platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and TikTok, B2B content marketing and video marketing strategies can greatly improve a company’s brand authority and visibility. 

“I hope to network and share lessons on digital marketing with other business owners.” —Jesse Tutt, Founder and CEO, Guru SEO and Web Design Services

5. Businesses Are Eager To Return To Pre-Pandemic Marketing Strategies And Previously Abandoned Marketing Efforts

Perhaps the most relatable strategy for the coming year comes down to simply recovering on a business level from the pandemic and incorporating pre-pandemic marketing goals back into the strategic workflow.

“The main goal for us would be to grow our client base to what it was pre-COVID. The past two to three years have been incredibly challenging for all businesses and quite frankly, we are just thankful to still be around after all was said and done. We did lose quite a bit of revenue, though, and we had to cut costs to maintain and survive. Since then, things have started to come back around. Revenue has been good this year, as compared to the previous two, so our goal is to get back to normal. From there, we plan on expanding out, like we originally planned before the pandemic.” —Justin Rissmiller, Owner and Operator, T&R Recordings

Getting Back To Business Optimization

Regardless of what you think might happen in the new year or how the market might turn, it’s not too late to reevaluate your company’s goals and strategies for the coming year.

The consensus amongst our respondents seems to center around shoring up existing relationships, expanding services, and overall working to increase revenue streams in the short-term to insulate your brand in the long-term against any downturn that might actually materialize. 

Does your team have the experience and expertise to reimagine how best to navigate the complex challenges ahead? They can brush up on their marketing tactics exploring our extensive library of resources, or if they feel like they might need some backup, your team can explore our network of consultants and service providers who can offer advice on how to implement and execute any strategy your business might benefit from in the coming months.