5 things B2B marketers should do in a post-2020 world

Welcome to the new year.

The zombie minks are behind us. Satan’s courtship with 2020 is over. And the light at the end of the tunnel lies ahead. 

But don’t mistake the light at the end of the tunnel for a heaven-sent message to “go back to normal.” Because 2020 changed things. And those changes are going to impact how we all do business going forward.

So, what’s a marketer to do? Here are five things we all need to understand and prioritize: 

Revisit your audience profiles

The changes coming in 2021 aren’t happening overnight.

Many countries will take more than six months (or even more than a year) to vaccinate their populations. 73% of expert forecasters say the global recession won’t right itself until late in the year. And it’s no secret that people—especially everyday Americans—are hurting. They’re paying rent on their credit cards, applying for unemployment in huge numbers, and reporting symptoms of anxiety and depression at higher rates.

So, what does this mean for marketers?

It means your audience isn’t the same as it was six months ago, a year ago, five years ago. So, it’s time to dust off any audience profiles, research, or content strategies and revisit them. Because how we talk to people, what they care about, and what they need have changed and are changing. And that means the way we communicate with those people and, in some cases, the way we solve their problems needs to change too. 

And yes, that advice is for B2B marketers. At first blush, it seems like this would impact B2C more than B2B. After all, even if individual households are credit-carding their rent, businesses still need CRMs and HR services, right?

But the idea that B2B buyers are less impacted or emotional in the aftermath of a trash-fire year is just wishful thinking. Because the truth is that B2B buyers are more emotionally connected to the brands they buy from than B2C buyers. Even if someone’s job is to purchase HR software or hire a recruiting firm, they still need to feel like you see them. You see the new challenges of a job that might have less budget. You see the challenges of a world where they’re trying to make the right choice about their CMS while also worrying about their sibling’s new chronic health issues. You aren’t talking to them, marketing to them, selling to them as if nothing has changed.

As Philip Oldham of Lenovo UK said on Marketing Week’s recent “Inside B2B” podcast:

“There’s a choice you’ve got about how you go about…the pivots everyone talks about. You can put the words ‘unprecedented’ and ‘we’re here for you now more than ever’ in front and move on, or you can really do the work to get under the skin of the customer’s need and work out what you can really do now…not just say, to help them.”

Get cozy with sales

?We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: Sales and marketing teams that work together achieve better results.

Now, the good news is that 2020 already brought many marketing and sales teams together. But if you’re not among them, 2021 is your year. With budgets tight and customer attention tighter, there’s no more room for sales and marketing working in silos or—worse—feuding.

Prioritize your digital transformation

If there’s anything covid taught us, it’s that everything can change in an instant—and businesses need to be ready. Ready for their workforce to go remote. Ready to support distributed teams. Ready to change the ways we communicate, do business, serve customer needs, and reach people.

And the answers to all those changes are digital.

This is why, according to McKinsey, companies are moving to cloud computing services at a rate 24 times faster than before the pandemic. It’s also why survey respondents are three times more likely to say 80% or more of their customer interactions are digital post-covid.

The world was already going digital, and now it’s going digital faster.

Invest strategically in marketing

It’s always been important to be strategic about your investments, but with the economy decidedly depressed at the moment, it’s more important than ever.

Now, this doesn’t mean cutting your marketing budgets to the bone (in fact, companies that do that are unlikely to survive a recession, according to Harvard), but it does mean slowing down and taking the time to be strategic about where you spend your money and time. The more limited your resources, the more every single hour and dollar matter. The more going viral can move the needle. The more important it is to look to and imitate top performers.

Take a look at current—and future—demand

Has demand for your products changed? Will it change again as the world shifts?

For many industries, the answers are yes and yes.

Anything related to the travel industry (including B2B tech serving travel companies) has taken a big hit. But widespread vaccination is going to change all that as borders reopen and isolation measures loosen and disappear. Bread maker sales might level out. Companies like Zoom and Slack probably won’t drop back to their pre-covid levels, but they may need to plan for a drop in use as some conferences, team meetings, writing groups, and knitting circles return to their in-person forms.

The question is: What does this look like in your industry? For your clients? For your company? How can you plan not only for your current demand, but also the uptick or downtick that might be coming?

And if you’re saying “holy hell, Robin, this feels like a lot of extra work,” well, our team is always standing by to help. We love a good strategic marketing challenge and we’d love to help you look damn good even while weathering a recession.