Evolution of B2B Marketing Strategies

Marketing strategies are ever-evolving, year after year, with 2019 being no different. Trends like live videos and video ads will continue to grow strong because of the instant visual appeal to the audience and with more than 80% of the internet users who indulge in watching these videos. Similarly, chatbots continue to trend this year by becoming widespread and pretty ‘normal’ for brands. The novelty factor has reduced, and they have become quite common.

Here are some of the B2B strategies that aren’t new but continue to stay in the market:

Longtail SEO: In the B2B space, the only way to compete with the big players with deep pockets is not to outspend them but to outsmart them. Smaller players should take advantage of the longtail keywords in their industry that have lower search volumes but more qualified searchers. Fewer websites compete for longtail SEO keywords. Hence, it’s comparatively easier to rank for them.

Longform Content: We all know that the attention span of the consumer is very short. However, for B2B marketers, long-form content may just turn out to be more beneficial this year. The reason is that Google has started giving more weight to content that has authoritative information. It’s not just about keywords anymore.

Also, from a lead-generation point of view, the prospects who dig deeper during the Awareness stage, even if just a small number, are the most profitable leads to take to the consideration stage.

It’s clear that solid, detailed and in-depth information for the right leads at the right time improves the chances that the prospect will engage further and consider the brand.

Micro-influencers: We all know that having big industry influencers advocate for our brands can ensure a large exposure based on their social media reach and engagement. This, of course, would require you to spend a pretty penny. On the other hand, we have “micro-influencers” who are smaller players in the industry but may have a more engaging follower list.

The number of followers and, hence the social media reach, maybe smaller for the “micro-influencers”, but the engagement with the followers could be so much more powerful. It’s a new approach to not burn a hole in your pocket, but still, be able to reach out to your audiences effectively through an influencer. It’s just the right amount of smartly targeted PR within an optimal budget.

Account-based marketing (ABM): ABM is a B2B strategy that focuses on sales and marketing resources on target accounts within a specific market. It’s a strategy that aligns sales and marketing efforts and takes advantage of available data, analytics, and technology.

Though ABM has been growing through the years, personalizing the customer experience has started to catch on even faster than ever. With the help of CRM, marketing automation tools and digital marketing, marketers need to invest in a well chalked-out strategy that is going to support multimedia, multi-channel and multi-device targeting.

With the growing competition, B2B marketers with limited budgets need to get smarter and need to build strategies based on these old but evolving trends that are here to stay.

Sudipta Chakraborty

October 31, 2019

By Sudipta Chakraborty