The unprecedented events in 2020 due to pandemic has abruptly changed the trend of content consumption. Due to the state of lockdown across the globe, consumers have become more inclined towards digital content. As a result, B2B companies are shifting their concentration towards digital content strategies, search engine marketing (SEM), and search engine optimization (SEO) instead of only focusing on sales and cold calling.
Besides, technological advancements have been building for the past decade. And considering the growing competition and mounting demand from the consumer end, adaptation of such technologies and new B2B trends has become a necessity for B2B marketers. Incorporation of technology, and technical tools into B2B marketing are some of the basic driving factors to keep the B2B companies ahead in the growth curve.
There is a list of factors that are likely to shape the B2B marketing trends in 2021. In this blog, we have articulated some of the significant B2B marketing trends that would help gain customer attention, boost the quality lead generation, and enhance the overall customer experience.
- Email Marketing- Despite the advent of various social media platforms to attract the prospect’s attention, marketers are sticking to email marketing. 86% of professionals prefer using email for communicating business ideas. Further, 59% of B2B marketers are inclined towards email for revenue generation. In fact, various reports point towards that every $1 spent on email marketing produces an ROI of $38.
Talking of B2B trends, email marketing is likely to remain in top of the list of B2B marketing trends in 2021.
To build trust with prospects and keep them engaged, email is preferably the best medium. However, email marketing requires a strong strategy to reach and connect the prospects in a personalized way.
In addition, email can be used at every stage of the marketing. Be it introduction or collecting customer feedback. Also, almost 91% of consumers in the B2B industry (as per Hubspot survey) use emails. This is one of the prominent reasons to stick around email marketing in 2021, no matter how traditional the methods get.
Know more about personalized email marketing.
- Content Marketing- Be it any domain, content is the king. And during the pandemic period, when the entire world was in lockdown, the consumption of content has increased exponentially. However, entire credit cannot be awarded to just pandemic; curiosity and awareness of the consumers are also some vital factors boosting the demand for content lately.
The audience wants to know A to Z about the product before making a purchase decision, be it a mobile phone consumer or a FinTech company looking for certain invoice management solutions. This change in consumer habit is shaping B2B marketing trends in 2021.
Having said that, content marketing would help you to achieve the desired result only if the
content marketing funnels are designed appropriately as per business requirements. The entire content marketing funnel is categorized into-
- Awareness
- Interest
- Evaluation
- Commitment
- Sale
To spread awareness and boost interest, marketers tend to publish SEO blogs, e-books, introduction e-mails and engage the prospects through relevant yet interesting social media posts.
For evaluation purposes, marketers distribute whitepapers, case studies, newsletters through various mediums.
The final category includes demonstrations and sales to show demonstrations and trials to show commitment and boost sales.
- Chatbot- As per record of previous year, 67% of customers have reported to use chatbot as a support system. Considering the growing traffic and mounting demand from customers for quick replies, chatbot is becoming an essential factor of a website in coming year.
Talking of B2B marketing trends in 2021, chatbot is likely to become an integral component of the website. Primarily, the chatbot AI (artificial intelligence) that is programmed with certain responses based on consumer’s query.
B2B marketers are capitalizing on AI marketing strategy boosting sales by automating basic processes such as answering commonly asked questions or making sales.
Moreover, the application of chatbot as lead nurturing device is the latest marketing trend in 2021. The messages programmed in the chatbot intend to nurture the leads.
However, it is advisable to ensure human touch in the delivery of the messages. Spamming prospects with lots of messages can lead to a low conversion rate.
- Infographics- It is a scientific fact that human brains are wired to prefer visual cues when compared to reading a text. And that is why we tend to spend 10% more time watching visual information relative to reading texts. Considering these facts and statistics, B2B marketers are integrating texts with visual images. Again, when a piece of information is paired with images, the reader is likely to remember 65% of the information for the next 3 days.
As a result, B2B marketers are trying and spicing up the blogs with attractive and interactive images to boost engagement. These infographics are also found to be useful in communicating a brand story. Besides the blog, the infographic is also being used on various social media platforms in the form of snippets to gain maximum attention at a minimum time interval.
- Voice Search Marketing– Advent of the smart speaker and smartphone assistants-Apple’s Siri, Google Home Assistant, and Amazon’s Alexa- have altogether resulted at the beginning of the voice search era. Going by the statistics, 20% of all mobile searches are done using voice. Moreover, half of these searches are performed in 2020.
Rapid adaption of these voice search assistants is providing significant bandwidth for
voice search marketing. This B2B marketing trend is gaining momentum due to its ability to bring organic traffic from the search. The voice search is usually conversational providing space to accommodate more keywords in a sentence. This opportunity could be leveraged, with proper planning and strategy to reach the target audience and build brand value.
Conclusion:
These are likely to be some of the key B2B marketing trends in 2021 that you should consider while planning your next marketing strategy. The changes are based on the consumer behavior and the latest technological innovations. These changes are likely to shape the B2B marketing graph in year the year 2021 and moving forward.
In order to stay ahead in the competition, it is necessary to move ahead with time, technology, and trend. Be it email marketing, voice search marketing, chatbot integration, or content marketing; the aim is to build trust with the prospects, nurture the leads, and enhance the conversion rate.
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Valasys Media, are experts in shaping perennially healthy sales pipelines for our customers. Our services includ
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