By Lane Ellis

With hybrid and remote work here to stay and digital-first marketing on the rise, how can B2B marketers make the most of these important shifts?

Although I’ve written about remote work before, in pieces including “Remote Communication Opportunities For B2B Marketers,” “Day 4,777: Remote Work Tips From 13+ Years As A Distance Marketer,” and “Hybrid & Remote Work Trends That Will Alter The Future Of B2B Marketing,” the permanent changes to where and how we work have significant implications that will affect B2B marketers forever, so it’s time to reassess.

Let’s take a close look at five ways B2B marketers can make the most from remote and hybrid work and digital-first brand interactions, from the perspective of someone who’s been working entirely remotely for 15 years, and from several top voices on the future of work.

1 — Adjust To The Permanent Shift In How We Work

As I enter my thirty-eighth year working online, I’ve worked remotely for 5,409 days, and spent close to 40 percent of my career as a remote worker.

What’s changed for us all since the pandemic has reminded me of the shifts in how we communicate that I saw when I first began operating a computer bulletin board system (BBS) on a Commodore 64 computer and a 300-baud modem.

Back in 1984, relatively few people owned a home computer — and even fewer also knew what a modem or online communications were. The personal computer revolution that began in the 1970s took off like wildfire in the 1980s. Online communication was a bit slower to evolve into the mainstream, however it surely did, especially once Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented and activated his World Wide Web technology, as I explored in “Classic Marketing Insights to Celebrate the Internet’s 50th Birthday.”

Just as there was frustration, backlash, and confusion back then adjusting to interacting online, so too has the pandemic’s forced shift to remote and hybrid work caused global upheaval and uncertainty.

2 — Make Digital-First The New Norm

Remote and hybrid workers have not only had to adjust to the significant changes in where they work, but they’re also facing the fact of ever-more digital interactions when it comes to B2B marketing.

For better or worse, the world has become a digital-first environment for most of us, which means that B2B marketers are looking to make the most of every social media, email, and mobile messaging interaction with their audiences.

Each generation of B2B marketers, as well as their clients and the customers of their brands, will have had the advantage of coming of age with greater technological opportunities and ever-greater digital immersion. Our own senior content marketing manager Joshua Nite recently took a look at “Who Is the New B2B Buyer and How Do You Connect with Them?” — an article that offers five helpful ways to better understand and connect …read more

Source:: Top Rank Blog

Author: Aaron