B2B Marketing Trends For 2022
Susana Marambio
Marketing Director | Fractional CMO | B2B Marketing | Marketing and Business Growth Strategist | Digital Transformation Expert | Mentor | Speaker
The pandemic has changed the world as we knew it. It changed the way we buy, how we interact with people, how we do business,?how we work (automation, WFH), how we learn (online classes), our priorities (Great Resignation) even what we care about (buy local, the environment).?
So, considering all those changes and the impact on your business,?what should you be focusing on, to break into key accounts, to fill your sales pipeline and excite key decision-makers in 2022?
ReachDesk asked to its LinkedIn Community, which were the key B2B Marketing Trends that were more likely to impact customer acquisition & retention in 2022. These are some of the results:
As business owner you probably feel overwhelmed by all these buzz words and can't understand what it means for your business and it's easier to ignore them and continue doing what you are doing. However, wearing your CEO hat, you need to know how to adapt your business strategy to introduce these trends without losing momentum.
So, in light of these findings, let's explore which B2B marketing trends you, as business owner, should pay attention to:
1. Back to Basics:
Account Based Experience (ABX)?is a holistic approach that requires collaboration and alignment between sales, marketing, and customer teams. The benefits are clear: higher close rates, more wins in higher-value accounts, and exceptional, human customer experience; and a customer-focused approach is key here.?
So, what you need to do to embrace this:?
2. Content Marketing
This means creating, publishing, and distributing content (blogs, social media posts, emails, etc.) for your targeted audience. It's not a new trend, but it's important because it goes hand in hand with ABX and the advantages of creating a robust content strategy that supports your other marketing activities?is vital to make your marketing successful.
"Crafting the right content, drives traffic to your website, educates prospects, and helps to position your brand as a thought leader (go-to-person) within your industry.
To help you to create meaningful content that helps solve customer pain points, for example: your articles should be keyword optimised and shouldn’t be too long - articles that are between 1,500 and 3,000 words get 3x more traffic, 4x more shares, and 3.5x more backlinks than shorter articles.
It should also contain a mix of content that caters to each stage of the buyer's journey. Think about the questions your prospects have at the different stages, objections or concerns they might have and answer them quickly, without jargon or complicated words.
"The role of genius is not to complicate the simple, but to simplify the complicated." –?
Criss Jam
3. Customer Marketing
Most business owners spend time acquiring new business before thinking about selling more to their existing accounts. There is a real merit in nurturing and maximising the value of the customers you already have.?
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So, in 2022, it’s time to refocus your attention towards a?customer marketing approach.?Adopting a customer-first strategy helps to increase the longevity of customer relationships by ensuring they get the best out of your product or service.
Over time, this will not only reduce churn and increase customer loyalty and retention, but it’ll improve customer relationships, too
It’s all about educating your customers from the very start of the relationship on how to best use your product or service, and for you, to learn how to engage and communicate with them to understand their pain points.?
Make sure to celebrate your customers’ successes by spotlighting them using case studies or social media posts And, once you’ve created brand advocates out of your loyal customers, reach out and ask them to leave you a positive online review.
Remember that the success of your customer marketing approach depends on how well your business can align the marketing, sales, and customer success teams. So, start mapping out your plan for the full customer lifecycle
4. Adopt a Mobile-First Strategy
The B2B customer journey can be complex, so it’s more important than ever to create a user-friendly, mobile-focused experience for prospects.
The fact is,?80% of shoppers?have used a mobile phone to look up product reviews, or compare prices, meaning that mobile is a key component in the buying process.
In 2021,?digital advertising accounted for 64.4%?of total global advertising revenue, so logic predicts that this shift towards online and therefore mobile-first marketing strategies will continue in 2022.
How do your website & emails look on a smartphone or tablet??
5. Adopt Technology
“Are you still managing all your customer communications by email” as opposed to “on your email”???Does your sales process include a nurturing campaign for prospects? After the purchase, how do you keep in contact with your customers?
With the help of Technology, you can learn more about your customers and create more personalised messaging and marketing offerings throughout the customer lifecycle, through channels such as email and social media.
If social media is a large focus of your strategy, consider paying for a social media scheduling tool to take the manual work out of posting to your channels.?
Likewise, if email is a big prospecting channel for your business, an email marketing platform could be worth investing in.?
Emails communication should be part of your strategy, as email typically produces better results than social media
It’s all about making automation tools work for you and speeding up your productivity and workflow.?There are so many free tools you can start with, so start by finding out which is the area of your business you spend more time and it's not either your core activity, neither it generates more customers or more sales immediately.?
If would you like to understand how to adapt your business strategy to introduce these trends without losing your mind or simply you want a roadmap to identify the areas, you need to prioritise this year.?Drop me a message.
As a thank you for reading this article in full, I'll provide you with a two hours consultation for FREE. Just ask me what my running target for 2022 is, in your message. :)
Checking how your emails look on different devices is a good tip.