2020 and 2021 were critical review seasons for every organization, in which B2B leaders fueled their investments in marketing technology, cybersecurity, and digital transformation to keep up with the competition and thrive during the pandemic. The learning curve was tough for many B2B enterprises as they face several challenges when it comes to adopting and implementing their newly invested technologies in marketing their solutions to a covid driven marketplace.
Sustaining effective marketing strategies due to a lack of internal expertise has been the biggest challenge for B2B in 2022. But what are this year’s highlights that all B2B marketers must know to help prepare more powerful marketing strategies in 2023?
Here’s a quick recap of the key marketing highlights for B2B in 2022:
Implementing a more humanized approach to marketing with gamification
Ever since “inbound marketing” has made its way into key priorities and consideration for marketing leadership, there has been a heavier reliance on content consumption within an owned internet site to using relevant content that is provided to consumers through each stage of the buying process. As powerful as the methodology sound, in theory, it still fails to address the other more important mechanics of the marketers’ execution strategies.
Common issues faced by B2B tech marketers
- Improve target audience engagement
- Better education on products & solutions
- Reinforce value proposition
- Automate lead-collection process
- Gather more relevant feedback
B2C Gamification has clearly shown the effect of positive empowerment to gear potential buyers closer to their spending habits. To the uninitiated, gamification is when techniques and concepts from games to your marketing strategy. It is happening all around us (e.g., McDonald’s, Shopee etc.).
The core idea is that marketing content that mirrors games are more “interactive,” “engaging,” and “rewarding,” and these three keywords are the essential formula for a successful marketing campaign via gamification. Find out more here on how you can implement gamification into your marketing strategies today.
Technology Humanises Buyer Interactions
The findings of the State of Sales APAC survey of LinkedIn show that the best-performing sellers utilize technology to connect with buyers and humanise their interactions. Marketing and sales teams can handle multichannel campaigns and make more informed decisions using the same set of data in a centralised platform. Using such technology can help marketers and sales understand their common audience and objective.
In addition, marketers can learn many lessons from sales trends to B2B brands. Because B2B buyers rely less on sales reps and prefer to research before making purchase decisions, marketers must use technology to find the perfect balance with hybrid selling. For instance, sales and marketing teams can use sales intelligence platforms and customer relationship management (CRM) to gain valuable insights, such as buying patterns and intent.
Agile Marketing Empowers B2B Businesses
Agile marketing enables B2B marketing teams to understand their target audience and find and experiment with more effective and efficient ways to promote their brand. The most successful B2B companies embrace the agile marketing approach to generate, scale and integrate data by using relevant tech solutions.
Omnichannel Event Strategy for B2B
Omnichannel event marketing is a critical B2B marketing highlight in 2022. Many APAC companies have planned and implemented a combination of physical and virtual events to stay updated and connected in the first year after the COVID-19 pandemic or the post-pandemic.
In a MartechAsia interview, Veemal Gungadin, the CEO and founder of Gevme, defines an omnichannel event strategy as meeting audiences where they are across different channels. An omnichannel event strategy involves complementing a physical event with digital events, such as on-demand content, pre-event seminars, curated micro-event, and online community platforms for event participants to connect and discuss.
Key Pointers To Remember
Regardless of strategies undertaken, there is now a heavy onus on marketers to produce quicker, stronger ROIs with the least amount of marketing spent per quarter in the midst of an ongoing recession and war recovery.
It is imperative that marketers ensure these key pointers are met to generate a higher level of ROIs for their organizations.
- Prioritize Sales and Marketing Alignment
Sales and marketing alignment have to be much more aligned than before. The line between each role is getting thinner by each passing day as the impact of branding culture has changed dramatically with the entry of the internet. Everyone in an organization holds the biggest identity responsibility of how they represent their brand and is expected to act in equal.
Marketers must rely more on marketing data to carefully advise their sales teams on how to engage effectively and purposefully, while the sales team must be more mindful of the customer journey to truly set up the right conversation to prospect each lead effectively.
- Media Plays A Vital Role In B2B marketing
If we were to consider the customer journey model of Hubspot, especially at the awareness stage, then media plays a very important role (pre-awareness) in the corporate identity of an organization, but yet it is often the misunderstood element in a marketing plan.
One of the key areas of marketing outreach is to ensure that there is a good relationship built with media publishers or research houses to share key insights and findings at an industry level and thought leadership at the executive level.
These materials are usually conducted in an interview style, easier to produce and able to be reproduced on multiple news outlets easily for visibility. It is often much more effective in attracting masses in the marketing funnel before using whitepaper or case studies to “trim down the herd” for effective lead generation.
Disclaimer note:
The opinions expressed in this post are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of Thinklogic Media Group and its associates.
