THESE ARE THE TOP B2B MARKETING CHALLENGES FOR 2022

We’re inching further into the twenties. We know how to manage COVID, how to work from home productively, and how to successfully bring back our favorite flare jeans.

What the rest of this decade has in store is anybody’s guess (and we’ll all be proven wrong if we dared an attempt).

But what we?do?know is what we?don’t?know.

As marketers, we?don’t?know how to hire great talent amidst this insane labor shortage. We don’t exactly know how to implement artificial intelligence (AI). We don’t know how to beat our competitors at?account-based marketing (ABM).

The bottom line??53% of marketing leaders?say that generating pipeline is their top priority for next year.

That means overcoming our weaknesses is a must for marketing teams that want measurable revenue attribution.

Here are the top challenges we’ll be battling in 2022.

HIRING MARKETING TALENT

In Drift’s 2021 Marketing Leadership Benchmark Report,?60% of marketing leaders?said that a lack of talent bandwidth is their top marketing challenge. This makes it difficult to execute just about any objective. Without the right people (and enough of them), you’re going to be behind on your goals.

In previous years, a lack of hiring budget may have been the top issue when it came to talent. But in 2022, it’ll be a lack of candidates saying yes to your job offers.

For many workers in tech and other in-demand industries,?the Great Resignation is more of a “Great Reconsideration,”?with employees choosing workplaces that prioritize their wellbeing and pay well for their skills. Here’s what one CMO had to say about it:

CREATING TRULY GREAT CONTENT THAT DRIVES PIPELINE

In?Drift’s Marketing Leadership Benchmark Report, content marketing won big. Here are some stats to prove that marketing leaders have their eyes on content:

• Content marketing is the most common in-house marketing function, with 86% of marketing leaders saying so.
• 53% said content marketing will be the most important specialization to their team’s success over the next five years.
• From 2020 to 2021, content marketing software shot up from seventh to first in mission-critical martech for driving pipeline.

Hundreds of B2B companies have seen standout return on investment (ROI) from their content marketing, but there are still thousands more who have not. For them, creating content seems like a necessary evil — something they have to do in order to stay relevant, even though they’re not producing measurable results.

There are all sorts of reasons why generating marketing qualified leads (MQLs) with content is still challenging:

• Highly competitive niches and topics, especially for search engine optimization (SEO)
• Difficult to attribute leads to content (i.e. content might be delivering more than you think)
• Difficult to promote content
• Difficult to convert traffic from content into leads
• Disagreement and confusion over content strategy

B2B businesses want to get to the promised land where content marketing delivers more leads at a cheaper price than direct marketing or?paid advertising. But to do so, they have to identify why they’re not getting leads from current content efforts and come up with solutions.

And even then, some marketers may still struggle to get buy-in for the resources they need to create truly great content.

CONTINUING TO DIGITIZE THE B2B BUYING PROCESS

B2B buying is more digital than ever. For the last several years, the consumerization of business software has led to a bottom-up approach (meaning someone at a company can sign up for Slack, causing IT to go ahead and pay for it). But what’s happening now is different. More and more decision-makers are turning to digital methods to help them choose the right solutions.

Today’s B2B buyer is active. She’s pursuing multiple options, collecting requests for proposal (RFPs), comparing requirements, and reading reviews. She’s self-directed and doesn’t waste time. When a company takes too long to get back to her, there are two problems:

1. She views it as a red flag that the company’s operations aren’t up to par and assumes support won’t be either.
2. She moves on and engages with competitors who are faster to respond.

All B2B companies will face competition of some sort. With the consumerization of enterprise solutions, buyers expect to make purchases in a frictionless way. That’s why speed and ease matter.

But B2B marketers aren’t quite keeping up with this digitization. In fact, overall frustration with the B2B digital experience is on the rise. Drift’s recently released?2021 State of Conversational Marketing Report?shows that frustration with accessing basic business information has grown 20% in one year, while frustration with website navigation grew 25% and frustration with old school forms grew by 27%.

Because so many B2B interactions have moved online, we need to rethink every touchpoint that our buyers and customers go through.

INTEGRATING AND ANALYZING DATA SOURCES

Miranda Lambert’s song “It Takes All Kinds of Kinds” is very true in marketing. And in marketing, the kind of person we don’t have enough of is the kind who can aggregate and understand all customer and marketing data. As one marketing leader from the Marketing Leadership Benchmark Report commented about their martech:

In 2022, more marketers will seek to bring data analytics on board and upskill their current team. Because, if we fail, we won’t be able to make good on our revenue goals. But take that advice from one of the marketing leaders Drift surveyed:

USING AI FOR REPETITIVE TASKS (NOT CREATIVE ONES)

AI is on the brink of transforming the marketing landscape — but it hasn’t happened yet. As of now,?77% of marketers?have less than a quarter of all marketing tasks intelligently automated to some degree. Though interestingly,?80%?believe that more than a quarter of their marketing tasks will be intelligently automated in five years.

The challenge lies in determining which tasks should use AI and how.?There’s a major initial resource investment, so you have to choose wisely. That means knowing what tasks?shouldn’t?be left to AI.

The team at Drift is a big believer in?creative intelligence, a combination of five types of intelligence that enables people to become better problem-solvers, empathizers, and flexible workers.

Creative intelligence is something that AI just can’t do.

When it comes to language generators like?GPT-3, the writing just isn’t good yet. To put your AI to the best possible use, focus on?streamlining your engagement?with potential buyers. For example, you can use?Drift Automation?to answer questions and automatically qualify leads — without taking up any of your sales reps’ time.

A lot of the hype around AI is going in the?wrong direction. AI is an extremely powerful tool for automatic tasks, like driving conversations, fueling engagement, and nurturing leads. But, when it comes to creativity, it just can’t beat humans. So, focus your AI on repetitive tasks and allow your marketers to spend more time working their creative intelligence.

PARTNERSHIP IN GO-TO-MARKET TEAMS

For a long time now, marketers have understood the importance of collaborating with sales. But now, marketing and sales aren’t the only teams involved.

Revenue Acceleration?isn’t possible without close collaboration between all go-to-market (GTM) teams, including sales, marketing, product management, operations, and customer success.

One of the best ways to align GTM teams is to get them working in the same place. Marketers can use Drift to scale conversations with customers, gain insights into site visitors, customize messaging, and design better?ABM campaigns. Sales can use Drift for live data enrichment, lead activity notifications, and sales conversations. And customer experience teams can use Drift for connecting with and understanding accounts.

The magic really happens when you not only align, but also?action?your GTM teams around the customer.

On a foundational level, everyone needs to be working towards a common goal. A?chief revenue officer can define the metrics?that the teams will track together. This ensures that your GTM teams have an overarching goal and a shared language — instead of staying in their wheelhouses and tracking micro metrics (like conversion rates or show-up rates). It’s important to track the big metrics together (like revenue and win rate) and then figure out which micro metrics affect them.

With the right metrics in place — and a CRO or GTM executive leading the interdepartmental partnership — GTM teams can tackle the right initiatives to move the revenue needle.

HOSTING VIRTUAL AND HYBRID EVENTS THAT YOUR AUDIENCE WILL LOVE

Virtual events?aren’t going anywhere. That level of convenience is sticky.

At the same time, many of us are craving in-person experiences, particularly?Gen Z employees,?extroverts, and those who have?benefited from IRL connections in the past?and want more. In 2022, you can expect to see more companies opting for hybrid events, particularly companies that want to solidify their local presence in important geographical markets.

But in-person events are costly, which is why most companies will continue to opt for virtual. Unfortunately, some marketers are still struggling to get results from their virtual events.

Whether you’re going for virtual or hybrid,?content is king. When running virtual events, the marketing team at Drift found that high-impact content was the most important tool for?increasing sign-ups and show-up rates. One landing page saw a 86% conversion rate by focusing on an expert topic rather than beginner content:

With enticing content at the forefront, the next step is finding ways to engage attendees. Here are some of the most effective strategies I witnessed while attending?Impacting Millions Live?recently:

• Truly live: There were no recordings or replays, and the event was intended to be truly live. While this was challenging for some based on time differences, it also ensured maximum attendance and created a truly live experience that I’ve never experienced at a virtual event. Around 500 people had registered, and any given session had around 350 participants in the Zoom. You can imagine the live attendance level would have dropped had there been replays, and the event’s vibe would have changed.
• Prizes: At the end of every session, there was a random prize drawing from all of the attendees. You had to be live on the Zoom to claim your prize or someone else would get it. Since there were great prizes (like a MacBook Air), this also increased attendance and made the experience fun.
• Stage hype: The conference was run like a live event. There was break time music and when someone was going to “come on stage,” the music would change before the energetic host introduced the speaker. An intro reel for each speaker, showing them in photos and videos on real stages, was played before their session.
• Breakout sessions: The event also made use of Zoom’s breakout room feature, splitting attendees into a small room of people for a short period of time (typically 10–15 minutes), so everyone could talk about what they had learned. People were also encouraged to connect with their breakout partners in the pop-up Facebook group.

When using these tips, keep in mind that your event doesn’t have to be two days. It doesn’t even have to be one full day. It can be an hour-long?webinar, and you’ll still see results.

UNDERSTANDING THE INDIVIDUAL CUSTOMER JOURNEY

41% of marketing leaders?chose lack of insight into the customer journey as the second greatest challenge for their marketing teams.

Understanding the customer journey?as a whole can help marketing teams make better decisions and find out what parts may be lacking meaningful content or optimized touchpoints.

But even with the most accurate map of the customer journey, you’ll still need to be able to track individual buyers as they go through the journey and communicate with them accordingly.

Implementing tools like SnapApp, OneSpot, Evergage, and GoSquared can help collect website user data and automate personalized campaigns. But selecting the right tool is only half the battle. Because individualizing your marketing efforts is typically time-intensive, you’ll need to prioritize opportunities and ideas, group individuals into smarter customer flows, and create new key performance indicators (KPIs) to help you measure your success.

WINNING WITH WHITE-GLOVE ABM

Account-based marketing (ABM)?is a brilliant way to secure your biggest deals — but many companies don’t treat their top accounts with as much care as they should. Instead, they serve these accounts using the same nurturing materials that their inbound leads receive.

When you take a white-glove approach to ABM, you increase your chances of booking calls with decision-makers at your top accounts. A true white-glove experience should include the following:

• The right campaigns: Create events and marketing campaigns that match the ABM strategy for that account (i.e. one-to-one, one-to-few, or one-to-many).

• Live insights: Use Drift to?deliver notifications to the dedicated account owner?when someone from the target account is visiting your website. This way, the account manager can reach out to them in real-time via?live chat.
• Digital experience personalization: Create personalized digital experiences using a tool like?Optimizely?that caters landing page content to decision-makers.
• The right team: White-glove ABM requires input from lots of sources, such as content managers, digital marketers, sales reps, business development reps (BDRs), marketing operations, and field marketers. Pool together the talent you already have in the marketing and sales departments to start targeting specific accounts, instead of just specific audiences.