The Rapidly Evolving B2B Marketing Landscape
In the fast-paced world of B2B, simply relying on traditional marketing tactics is no longer enough to drive sustainable growth. As we head into 2024, business buyers are demanding more personalized, data-driven, and digitally-enriched experiences from brands.
According to Forrester, a staggering 73% of B2B buyers describe themselves as pursuing a modern, digital-first engagement model. If your marketing strategies aren’t evolving to meet heightened buyer expectations, you risk losing out to disruptive competitors.
To stay ahead of the curve, B2B organizations must adopt innovative approaches that foster personalized buyer journeys, leverage new channels and technologies, and above all – obsess over delivering exceptional experiences.
Let’s explore emerging B2B marketing strategies leading brands are using to gain an edge in 2024 and beyond.
Account-Based Marketing (ABM) Aligns Entire Revenue Teams
A hot B2B marketing trend that’s rapidly gaining steam is account-based marketing (ABM). Rather than the conventional lead-based model, ABM flips the script by treating individual high-value accounts as markets unto themselves.
This highly-focused approach aligns marketing, sales, and customer success teams around a unified revenue cycle for specific accounts. By concentrating time, budgets and personalized messaging on targeted accounts from the start, organizations can maximize opportunities with their most valuable prospects and customers.
At the core of ABM is an intent data strategy that identifies accounts showing active buying signals and peaks in research activity around your offerings. Real Purchase Intent data from sources like TrueInfluence and Priority Engine reveal which accounts are actively consuming relevant content, so you can time outreach and nurture accordingly.
Leveraging the Power of ABM: Life sciences firm IDBS saw incredible results within the first 12 months of rolling out ABM, including:
- 238% increase in influenced pipeline
- 112% growth in number of quality meetings booked
- 44% higher average deal size
B2B Influencer Marketing Builds Credibility & Trust
In the B2B realm, peer reviews, industry leader recommendations, and third-party validation hold monumental sway for buyers researching solutions. This is where tapping into influencer marketing can pay huge dividends for brands.
B2B influencers are typically subject matter experts, respected analysts, trusted consultants, and those with established authority and credibility within specific industries or disciplines. When influential voices amplify your brand messaging and advocate for your solutions, it lends crucial credibility throughout every stage of the buyer’s journey.
While influencer outreach has been common for B2C campaigns, now B2B companies are formalizing Influencer Relationship Management (IRM) programs that:
- Identify and nurture relationships with relevant industry voices
- Collaborate on co-creating content, product feedback, webinars, etc
- Generate authentic advocacy and testimonials at scale
“Influencer quotes and reviews provide an 11% lift in branded search interest for technology companies” – TapInfluence
Conversational & Intelligent Virtual Selling Gains Traction
Powered by advancements in natural language processing (NLP), artificial intelligence, and machine learning – conversational selling and virtual assistants are reshaping how B2B transactions occur. Especially for automating routine pre-sale inquiries and accelerating speed-to-lead.
More sophisticated B2B chatbots and virtual selling assistants can now handle complex requests like:
- Dynamically answering product questions
- Automatically recommending relevant solutions based on buyer needs
- Guiding customers through the purchase journey with a conversational flow
- Qualifying/scoring leads and routing to appropriate reps instantly
- Providing personalized pricing and proposal generation
The result is a frictionless experience where buyers get tailored assistance and seamlessly move from education to transaction, powered by AI and automation behind the scenes.
Organizations able to harness conversational selling will speed up cycles, meet buyer demands for self-service, and improve conversion rates while freeing reps to focus on higher-value interactions.
Digital-First Omnichannel Experiences Become Essential
In today’s digital-first climate, mapping out cohesive omnichannel B2B buying experiences is no longer optional – it’s a prerequisite for businesses to thrive. Disjointed, inconsistent journeys across different touchpoints (physical, digital, human, virtual) create frustration, distrust, and revenue leaks.
Now, instead of channel fragmentation, savvy B2B organizations are creating unified, seamless experiences woven across self-serve digital channels, human interactions, physical spaces, and more. This could include:
Digital Channels:
- Educational websites and resource hubs
- Personalized web experiences and self-serve portals
- Chat, voice, and digital sales channels
Physical/Human Touchpoints:
- Field sales, service technicians
- Contact centers, demos & trials
- Events, partner ecosystems, showrooms
Hybrid Digital + Physical Environments:
- IoT, Augmented & Virtual Reality product experiences
- Interactive video, animated demonstrations
- Mobile apps and contextual assistance
By integrating and harmonizing all digital + physical touchpoints around the buyer’s needs and preferences, businesses foster continuity and drive more loyalty.
Social Selling and Video Marketing Align With Buyer Habits
In the past, social media and video were often dismissed in the B2B marketing sphere. That’s rapidly changing as buyers are spending more of their research, decision-making, and purchase processes on social and consuming more video content than ever.
Forward-thinking B2B companies are meeting buyers where they are by incorporating social and video marketing into cohesive go-to-market strategies:
Social Selling Strategies:
- Employee advocacy campaigns on LinkedIn
- Leveraging Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for industry insights & relationship building
- Deploying paid social advertising and amplification
B2B Video Marketing Examples:
- Personalized sales videos for 1:1 video messaging and video proposals
- Website videos for product demos, testimonials, brand storytelling
- Livestream interviews, product launches, webinars
- How-to tutorials, behind the scenes content, industry discussions
Not only do videos boost engagement across channels, but they’re cost-effective assets to repurpose across a multitude of campaigns and platforms. B2B teams creating immersive, story-driven videos are better positioning themselves for success.
Data Platforms & Analytics Optimize Engagement
In the era of account-based, hyper-personalized B2B marketing – centralizing data to orchestrate relevant buyer experiences is mission-critical. Organizations are investing in best-in-class data platforms to consolidate customer intelligence and extract actionable insights that improve targeting, engagement, ROI.
Some core components of an insights-driven marketing stack include:
Customer Data Platforms (CDPs): CDPs unify data from multiple channels and tools like marketing automation, CRM, website, etc. to create persistent, accessible customer profiles for teams across the organization.
Data Clean Rooms: These secure environments allow companies to combine their first-party data with partners/publishers in a privacy-compliant way. Clean rooms help organizations securely enrich data and uncover new audience insights.
Marketing Intelligence & Analytics Tools: Solutions like Domo, Datorama, Tableau and more provide comprehensive reporting, data modeling, and dashboards to derive enhanced visibility into marketing/sales performance and ROI.
Data Management Platforms (DMPs): DMPs help organize and activate different data types for purposes like audience building, cross-channel targeting, and advertising insights.
The ultimate goal is equipping teams with rich, actionable customer intelligence so they can automate relevant engagement throughout the customer lifecycle. Sophisticated data strategies will separate marketing organizations on the path to predictive, AI-driven personalization at scale.
These are just some of the cutting-edge B2B marketing strategies brands must adopt to thrive in 2024 and beyond. Backed by innovative enabling technologies and creative approaches, the coming years will usher in a new era of customer obsession in B2B.
To stay ahead of accelerating buyer expectations and experiences delivered by competitors, forward-thinking leaders must continuously assess their marketing maturity and prioritize enhancements. Those willing to chart new paths and commit the investments will enjoy a true competitive advantage.
For a deeper dive on this topic, be sure to grab The 2024 B2B Marketing Trends & Priorities Report where we share more expert predictions and guidance.
