Another year comes to an end and next year’s marketing strategy is already underway. Everyone is just grabbing a map and marking the milestones and goals to reach by when and where. So many things to achieve and do, what strategy will keep the clients coming and the customers interested. Gets you ticking!
We thought that why not throw some light on the B2B marketing trends that we see are likely to stick in 2018 as well.
- Know your Customers the best possible way
This is the first step that will help you plan all kind of strategy that you are planning right now.
Why is it important? It is because knowing your customers and prospects help you create pitch and marketing strategy to target them, specifically. Knowing one’s customer only make syou know their needs and wants from a particular product.
Information about the customers can be easily available by having a networking event with them. One can try to have their Sales rep take feedback. Have an online survey or setup a customer complaint page on your website.
These usually involve, one of the bigger buzzwords and trend of the last few years, Big Data. Rather becomes part of it. Marketers are increasingly data-driven and data-focused.
- Customer-centric Marketing
This one idea – that the customer’s experience is the base of all the consideration for marketing strategy and tactics that serves their priorities- is the premise of most of the trends that we see now.
It is the age of Smartphones and now they are vital part of live. People use it more than desktops because it is convenient. Making your messages more mobile-friendly may reach your customer effectively. Also with this, the trend of personalisation is on the rise. Who doesn’t like to to be addressed specifically than be a part of a sheep’s herd!
Same goes for account-based marketing, just another word for customer first marketing.
Connecting with your customer in less professional and more of personal manner is what the new mantra is.
- Interactive Content
Content marketing has been trending more than ever now. It has only gained more importance with number of years. It wins most of the times but how does that happen? Ever heard of calls-to-action, that’s what gets the customer interested. To be directed towards next accion.
Also, making it interactive by introducing quizzes, feedback, and some survey.
Personalisation is an essential competitive edge. Customer-centric marketing is personalised marketing and so is interactive content. B2B companies have just joined the race of personalisation and isn’t perfect to the T. But they are getting to it and precision is almost there. The blending of automation and personalisation is here to stay, and 2018 will witness this.
- Go Mobile!
We all know how smartphones have crawled their way and replaced desktops for major of things. From mailing to creating presentations, everything can be done on a smartphone. So, while making a website, it is suggestible to make that website mobile-friendly too and not keep it on a backburner.
SImilarly, when you plan out big marketing strategies for large campaign or projects, you need to block out desktops and focus only on mobile phones. You see them holding a phone in their hands and you build for that.
- Video Marketing
We all are aware of the advertisement used in B2C and not many B2B contacts have seen using videos like advertisements for their business. But, this may change in the coming here. With mobiles and everyone in a hurry to reach, videos are something everyone watches. Videos are going to be integral part of content marketing in the next few years.
- Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing isn’t just a trend in B2C vertical or for marketers with large budgets. B2B marketers with ample budget have been able to reap results from influencer partnerships for years. All the influencer partnership has to do is mention the brand name or appear on a podcast. Sometimes be part of content co-creation too.
What seems to be getting results is partnering with micro-influencers – people with followers, but small following – belonging to a niche topic. This is better for marketers because these micro-influencers charge less, more available and flexible, and will always have relevant audience.
This becomes easy for marketing but only the search of a micro-influencer is tough.
Everything mentioned above is based on the year long observation of marketing techniques in B2B vertical and these trends have yielded better results than anything else. Making sure that they are bound to stick around the next year and probably become a permanent addition to marketing rulebook. All that remains is to observe, plan, and, execute the trends efficiently!
