Developments in digital marketing are mighty hard to keep track of. The internet and technology constantly evolve, which means your customers’ behaviour is also evolving. Keeping up with these changes requires businesses to adopt an agile mindset when it comes to deploying new marketing tactics. To make it that much easier to keep on top of the B2B marketing trends 2017 will usher in, we’ve compiled a list of what we think are the most important ones to adopt.
1) Marketing automation becomes mainstream
A B2B marketing trends 2017 blog post wouldn’t be complete without reference to marketing automation. It might have been around for a while, but marketing automation is going to become increasingly prominent in the integrated lead generation mix. Why? Marketing automation software does all kinds of things you weren’t able to do before. For example, it automates repetitive tasks, documents every interaction your leads have with your website, visualises customer buyer journeys based on persona and manages lead scoring. It also automates the sending of emails, triggers content based on a lead’s lifecycle, and follows up on leads to extend customer lifetime value – to name just a few.
2) Content marketing answers questions
Content marketing is one of the most important cornerstones of inbound marketing, where informative and valuable content is targeted at very specific audiences. This content helps establish the business as a trustworthy and authoritative source of information, attracts visitors to a website, and coaxes leads down the sales funnel. For a long time, the consensus has been that content (especially blogging) must be produced as frequently as possible. The snag with this is that quantity often happens at the expense of quality. In 2017, we predict that the focus will shift away from quantity and onto quality. Long-form content that offers much more detailed information and directly answers search engine queries will also play a part, especially given that Google’s algorithm now prioritises search results that best answers searched questions.
3) Video content
Human beings are visual beings – we process images far quicker and with more ease than other forms of media. If we didn’t, our species wouldn’t have survived evolution. No surprise then that video content – previously the domain of B2C marketing – is going to be a strong feature of the B2B digital marketing landscape in 2017. Not only can you convey a lot more information in a two-minute video clip than you could in a couple of paragraphs of text, but video content is more engaging. And the evidence is all around, with the use of Periscope, Facebook Live and YouTube booming.
4) Integrating Outbound and Inbound marketing
Since the advent of inbound marketing, many marketers have been torn between whether to use inbound or outbound tactics. But by combining the two and using multiple lead generation tactics – such as content marketing, B2B telemarketing, SEO and email marketing – under a single campaign, you can have a far greater positive impact on the efficacy and ROI of marketing campaigns than if you’d executed multiple campaigns for every channel. 2017 will certainly see more businesses using both inbound and outbound marketing tactics in a streamlined and integrated lead generation campaign.
5) Social media becomes more B2B
Social media might not be anything new to the B2C sphere, but it’s taken the B2B sector longer to realise that there’s huge potential in using social media as part of their lead generation strategy. Social media lets you reach out to leads in a targeted and personalised way, helps you tap into the social networks of your target audience, and promote content. Ads on LinkedIn and FaceFbook are another application of social media that hold huge potential for B2B businesses. The cost of this advertising is also set to rise, as targeting becomes ever more precise. It’s important to identify the social networks your audience is on and invest in them, rather than being a jack of all trades and trying to maintain top performing social media accounts on every platform.
6) Website personalisation
Whichever of the B2B marketing trends 2017 ushers in, personalisation is the theme that’ll run through them all – from account-based marketing, to website personalisation. Thanks to web personalisation technology, it’s possible to adjust your website for each visitor based on how they’ve interacted with it in the past. You can introduce smart calls-to-action depending on whether a visitor has downloaded a specific content offer, and even customise the content of emails. With marketing becoming more targeted and personalised, businesses who don’t offer leads a bespoke experience will lose out to those who do.
Another one of the B2B marketing trends 2017 will see more of is the alignment between sales and marketing teams. For a look at how this works and why it’s so beneficial for your marketing campaigns to be more successful, download the guide:
