The Biggest B2B Marketing Trends of 2022
Estimated Read Time: 5 minutes
Intended Audience: B2B Business Owners, Chief Marketing Officers, Business Strategists
2022 is upon us already! As the world of remote/hybrid digital workplaces expanded, the world of digital marketing / online marketing has also greatly evolved. This presents a unique opportunity for you to capitalize on this growth to apply to your business. Let us guide you to how proper preparation for B2B marketing in 2022 can put you light-years ahead of your competitors.
We all recognize the major changes organizations have made to adapt to the remote/hybrid work, and we aren’t seeing these digital transformations wane for the foreseeable future. We know the spending shift to a mobile-first strategy was among the most significant transformations in 2021, along with the switch in lead-generation channels. Looking ahead, we want to prepare you for 2022 so that there are no surprises for when you kick-start marketing efforts in the new year.
How B2B Marketing will Take Shape in 2022
Enhanced Short-Form Video Content
Among the most effective trends, one can leverage, short-form content like mini videos and clips are great at grabbing the attention of customers. Getting to the point with short videos can be highly beneficial for B2B marketers. Being able to explain or showcase use cases for your tech services/products, quickly is very effective as it aligns with the fast-paced attention spans of the online audience. In addition, short-form videos are significantly more popular on social media channels as they catch the attention of the audience and encourage them to take the next step.
Content is King but SEO Holds the Key to the Kingdom
The Google algorithm, Bing algorithm, and others continue to refine and evolve day after day. For best performance on search engines, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is not something you want to cut back on in 2022. In fact, 61% of digital marketers believe that improving SEO is key to improving your online organic search results.
SEO impacts both short-term and long-term website traffic, which is what makes it such a critical tool for your website’s performance and lead generation. It’s time to go beyond answering basic search queries and start investing in multi-media optimization such as content, video, images, long-form articles, and more.
Inbound B2B Marketing Continues to Trump Outbound B2B Marketing
As work environments have evolved from in-person to remote to hybrid, outbound marketing is becoming less effective. It is time to get creative with ways in which you can attract leads. Target your buyer personas and produce quality content that is most relevant to your audience. The new inbound marketing approach is transitioning from Funnel marketing to the Flywheel, which puts your audience at the center of it all. It is all about meeting your audience where they are at by creating personalized content.
Transform Employee Engagement to Employee Advocacy
Being able to associate a company and brand with its people is key to building a connection, and it’s bound to work for both customer engagement and partner channel marketing. 2022 is the year to humanize your brand by transforming basic employee engagement actions into activation and advocacy. Involving your team helps boost brand recognition and visibility while also increasing trustworthiness. Start your 2022, by putting together an employee advocacy program with social media guidelines that will help them participate easily without taking up too much of their time.
Artificial Intelligence Enabled B2B Marketing
The time has come to improve and expand your ability to respond to your prospects and consumers in real-time. AI (Artificial Intelligence) will help you make data-driven decisions with predictive analytics. Take 2022 by storm by utilizing AI insights to create content and run personalized ad campaigns. Not only will this allow you to have a deeper knowledge of your audience, but also give you a competitive edge in the sameness of B2B marketing. AI is nudging companies to embrace chatbots and virtual assistants to optimize support services and engage website visitors by giving them a one-on-one experience.
Personalized Engagement Marketing
Personalization has long been part of marketing strategies, but doing it intently and thoughtfully is what will drive marketing ROI in 2022. Although an always-on engagement strategy is critical to maintaining the connection with your audience, you must be mindful of your buyer market to make any headway. Adequate insight into your target market and being observant of their behavior will set you apart when it comes to fruitful engagement.
Fractional Marketing Partnership
There has been much change in the workplace landscape over the last two years; employee upheaval has become a constant. A fractional marketing partnership is going to be the go-to method in 2022 for business to keep their brand standards and marketing performance from dropping. Involving a marketing agency as a part-time CMO and/or external marketing powerhouse to support your internal efforts, will allow you to maintain that grip target market without compromising on your high standards. Changes in the employee structure will no longer impact your B2B marketing strategy if you find the right fit for this fractional marketing partnership.
Maven Collective Marketing provides fractional CMO and full-service marketing to empower you with knowledgeable marketing strategists that take your B2B marketing to the next level. We have the ability to quickly step into the role, identify the missing pieces, and curate the strategy that will drive business success. One of the ways we support Microsoft Partners is by creating captivating B2B award entries, along with supplemental marketing services, such as virtual events & digital performance audits, that showcase their incredible work outside of award submissions. If you are rethinking your organizational strategy, then the Maven Collective Marketing team is here to help you achieve operational efficiency with our marketing expertise.
Building a More Powerful MarTech Stack
2022 is the year for smarter and more streamlined marketing technology. Simplify your processes and enhance the experience for both the marketer and target audience by introducing flexible systems to your marketing stack. Make sure that you are equipped with tools that play nicely together and give your marketing strategy a boost. For example, an advanced CRM platform such as Salesforce or HubSpot on your side has the ability to support B2B lead generation with automation and personalization while tying in seamlessly with Pardot or Hubspot Marketing.
If you are wondering how to choose the right tools for your MarTech stack, start by defining your goals and marketing strategy. This will help you identify the capability gaps and choose technology based on that. If you are unsure of what technology to incorporate, check out our most recommended tools.
How to Steer Clear From Common Marketing Mishaps in 2022
Now that you have a list of must-haves for the New Year, it’s time you familiarize yourself with what not to do so that your B2B marketing strategy is truly successful.
- Email Marketing Spamming: You need to be mindful of how many emails you send out and the types of content you are sharing. If you find yourself emailing your audience every week, you are most likely overdoing it. B2B email marketing needs to be handled a lot more delicately and with a strategy that ensures well-planned approach to nurturing your curated audience.
- Social Push Without Engagement: Just posting content constantly is not enough to get your audience engaged. You will only drive them away by overpopulating their timeline with an overwhelming amount of information. Ensure you post at intervals and take the time to interact with them to make them feel heard and garner real interest.
- Self-Promotional Content: Always talking shop can be off-putting for customers. There is so much more to your B2B organization than just your services and products. Instead, transform your experience and expertise into educational content and teach your audience the need for your product with insightful details on how your offerings overcome their challenges. Make your marketing about them, not you!
- Uninformed Website Redesigns: Revamping your website without any research or data can damage user experience. You need to take the time to study website visitors and how they interact with your webpages to get a clear understanding of what design elements will boost website leads. Utilizing tools like Microsoft Clarity will help you understand user behavior that you can then take to your website designer. Here are some critical factors to consider before taking on a redesign project.
- Status Quo Microsoft Messaging/Positioning: pushing the same message and tagline as Microsoft keeps you a small fish in a vast ocean of sameness. Without defining your unique value and approach to customers and prospective clients, you are painted with the same brush as all the other Microsoft software resellers and service providers. You must truly understand your value to clients in order to break free from the sameness and stand as category of one.
- Boring Virtual Events: Virtual events have become the new norm since 2020, but webinar-fatigue is also becoming increasingly common nowadays. Make your virtual events engaging and successful by reevaluating how you conduct your sessions. It is a necessity to make them highly engaging with information that keeps your audience hooked till the final minute. There are two key ingredients to a successful virtual event, a presentation that is visually appealing and a speaker that knows how to communicate effectively with large audiences. Take a look at how you can schedule and run a successful virtual event with our insights.
Tap into Marketing Success in 2022 with the Mavens
Let’s help you start the New Year on the right note, with the right kind of marketing support. Our penchant for measurable results is what drives us to deliver marketing success for your business. We will customize our services to best suit your needs and in a manner which resonates well with your audience. The Mavens come equipped with a variety of experiences and a myriad of marketing tactics, giving you a holistic B2B digital marketing strategy.
Reach out to the Maven Collective team for all your B2B marketing needs and we will dedicate ourselves to defining, building and growing your business.
