Three of the Biggest Opportunities to Elevate B2B Marketing in 2022

Even if 2020 and 2021 didn’t throw buckets of uncertainty, accelerated digital transformation and massively shifting buyer behaviors and expectations on marketers in the business to business world, B2B marketing is not without challenges.

From “boring to boring” to woefully behind B2C, there’s more than enough opportunity for us in the B2B marketing world to raise the bar.

For example, 90% of B2B companies feel their customers completely believe in and rely upon their commitments, but in the professional services industry only 67% believe that. It’s even lower in the financial services industry at 57%. Forrester

I think you’ll agree that what we have in 2022 is a distinct opportunity to elevate B2B marketing, especially by connecting with customers on a more human level authentically and inclusively.

Each year at TopRank Marketing our B2B content marketing agency focuses on a specific theme. In 2022 I’m sure you’ve guessed it: Elevate.

Making a dent in the way an entire industry does what it does is an ambitious goal to say the least. But as Steve Jobs has said,

The ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones who do. – Steve Jobs

For our part, we’re committed in 2022 to advancing the meaningfulness, the purpose and impact of B2B marketing in three ways:

Elevate B2B Marketing Experiences

B2B marketers are creating more digital content than ever with expectations of performance in the spotlight of every executive pulling the tigger on rising digital budgets. But what good is that “great content” if it isn’t meeting the expectations of buyers? I mean, there’s a lot of thought going into creating highly relevant, useful content but expectations have changed. What B2B marketers are delivering from a marketing experience standpoint isn’t meeting the needs of today’s digital first buyer.

75% of personalized engagement strategies will not meet ROI goals – Forrester

Customer engagement is a big part of the marketing experience brands create for customers. As referenced in the Forrester article. 70% of marketers are adopting an always-on digital engagement strategy in 2022 and lack of buyer insight is a key reason why those engagement and experience efforts will fall short. Part of the solution is a smarter marketing technology, but also soft skills like empathy and the follow through of customer insight in the form of relevant topics, questions answered in content, digital content formats and signals of credibility. Our research on B2B influencer marketing found that 74% of marketers believe influencer marketing improves customer experience.

With the vast majority of B2B buyers now digital first in their preferences for content discovery, consumption and engagement, we’re leveraging customer insight to better inform content formats with episodic content for B2B brands as podcasts and livestream video shows as well as blog, social, interactive and thought leadership content that pairs brand executives with industry experts. Of course optimizing all of this content for search also …read more

Source:: Top Rank Blog