B2B Digital Marketing Strategies Marketers Should Try
B2B marketing is always tough especially with more B2B-based customers demanding a customer-centric buying experience that is as human and concise as it is relevant and contextual. With vision casting and an annual planning meeting happening in the first few weeks of January, it is a good idea to consider some new approaches to B2B digital marketing.
If 2018 has taught us anything, it is that B2B digital marketing is quickly evolving thanks to the maturity of marketing technologies and a new era of buyers who know what they want and can quickly move through faux marketing techniques to get it.
We’ve compiled a list of 4 strategies that marketers should implement into their efforts. Utilizing these B2B digital marketing strategies throughout 2019 can give your company an edge on the competition and resonate with a whole new audience.
Marketing to the senses
In 2019, marketing that appeals to most of the five senses including sound, sight, and touch will open up a wider and more varied audience. With evolution in virtual reality technology, video-based content, and voice-focused assistants and devices, brands and marketers will likely need to allocate and aggressively implement strategies that appeal to the human senses.
When it comes to voice search in particular, according to comScore (via WordStream), by 2020, 50% of all online searches will be voice searches. This means, there will be a lot of people who could be searching for your content by voice. A new strategy could look like prioritizing “featured snippets” that appear higher in search results as well using long-tail keywords.
Without implementing voice-based search marketing along with other types of marketing that appeals to the human senses into your strategy, you could lose out on an entire audience.
The customer is still always right
The customer has always been right but customer preferences will continue to evolve and B2B marketers will find that most of the legwork can be done by adding real value to customers and boosting the customer voice with authenticity, not marketing jargon and buzzwords.
Marketing to the right customers in the way they want to be marketed to begins with clearly defining who your target audience is and then creating ideal customer profiles and buyer personals to ensure the right content gets the attention of the customers you want to reach. If it does, it is more likely to attract and convert into leads and then relationships that last for a long time.
Customers want to be heard in 2019 more than ever and will go to the brands who not only demand their attention but who listen well and take care of their needs.
Search engine optimization is no longer status quo
Five years ago, marketers churned content and marketing campaigns based solely on having a solid keyword strategy. SEO specialists worked for several hours a day to find the topmost keyword or key phrase, hand it off to a content writer, and then publish it to a website hoping to rank first on Google search results.
Only one thing remains the same from that scenario. According to B2X Partners, “89% of B2B researchers use the internet during the B2B research process.” Additionally, “73% of global traffic to B2B company sites originate from the search engines. Most will not go past the first page of Google.” This means that your content must be great to appear on the first page and/or at the top of search engine results and attract new prospects.
However, today, Google has evolved its algorithms so that marketers can focus on creating, not the most heavily keyworded content, but the most relevant and contextual content that is friendly to users. This type of content is winning the SEO game. Long-tail keywords, mobile-friendly websites, and latent semantic indexing keywords will be a key focus for marketers throughout 2019.
Artificial intelligence and marketing
The hype surrounding artificial intelligence in marketing is much more than just hype. With the continued evolution of AI, B2B marketers can look forward to creating deeply personalized touch points of interaction and engagement with customers as well as leverage customer data to optimize client experiences.
With big data insights, B2B digital marketers can boost the performance and ROI of campaigns aggregate large segments of data with minimal manual work, as well as identify trends to predict customer insights and reactions to understand the cause of repeat customer behavior.
As advanced technology only gets smarter, marketers will continue to turn to insightful analysis, smarter ad campaigns, and even a more refined content delivery strategy. We’ve all likely jumped off and back on the AI-bandwagon, but marketers should be looking out for these technology improvements.
Throughout 2019, B2B marketers will gain more experience in leveraging a wide range of marketing technologies to deliver an extremely personalized user experience that aims to add value to customers and build loyal and long-term relationships at scale.
