10 B2B Marketing Trends to Watch in 2022

B2B Marketing Trends

B2B marketing has evolved in leaps and bounds with new B2B marketing trends appearing almost daily. Creative social media marketing, inventive content marketing, and influencer marketing are just a few of the trends the B2B marketing industry has experienced of late.

As an industrial marketer, it’s important to keep up with the latest B2B marketing trends to continue staying relevant and grow your business. As the B2B marketing landscape continues to evolve, many new trends are expected to come up.

In this article, you’re going to discover 10 B2B marketing trends to watch for in 2022.

Let’s get started.

1. Innovative Video Marketing

Capturing customers’ attention continues to be a challenge due to the decreased attention span. As marketers continue to push out mountains of content, getting people to visit your website continues to get harder.

Therefore, it’s important for marketers to embrace innovative video marketing.

In 2022, video accounts for 82% of online traffic. Additionally, 82% of online consumers say they are encouraged to buy a product or service after watching.

For instance, B2B marketers can use an innovative video platform like TikTok to connect emotionally with their target audience. This rapid-growing social media platform allows you to share short videos, such as behind-the-scenes videos or short explainer videos showcasing a new product, with its millions of users.

2. Customer-Centered Content Marketing

In 2022, content is still king. However, content marketing has changed. Unlike in the past, when the focus was on creating search engine-friendly content, these days, B2B marketers really need to focus on creating content that addresses their target customers’ needs and wants.

To keep up with this demand, B2B marketers need to adhere to the following marketing guidelines:

  • Create audience-specific content – Identify your target customers through rigorous market research and then create pieces of content that address their exact needs and wants.
  • Optimize content with trending keywords to improve SEO rankings – SEO has been a great discipline for B2B marketing for many years and there are no signs of it fading away anytime soon. Use available keyword research tools such as Semrush, Ahrefs, and others to discover trending keywords and optimize your content appropriately.

3. Referral Marketing

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, a new B2B marketing trend has resurfaced. It’s called referral marketing. Since one-on-one marketing wasn’t possible, businesses relied on digital platforms to reach their target audiences.

This trend is here to stay and has blown up tremendously, given that 91% of B2B customers say that they’d love to continue relying on the digital self-service model. Besides, 92% of online consumers trust recommendations from close friends and family more than any other form of advertising.

The greatest thing about referral marketing is that it increases conversion and improves retention rates. Besides, it’s cost-effective.

4. Intent Monitoring

For B2B marketers, understanding the reason why someone would buy your products or service is vital. For intent monitoring, you need to rely on intent data.

According to Strategic IBM, intent data helps to decode online consumers’ purchase intent. Monitoring buyer intent can help you know when prospects are considering or yarning to buy your products or services.

But intent monitoring isn’t easy, especially in today’s digital marketing world filled with so much noise. Many B2B customers may drop out of the purchasing cycle before they convert. Overcoming this hurdle requires gathering deeper data to fill in your picture of your buyer’s journey.

5. Neuromarketing

To get customers to purchase your products or solutions, you need to find out what makes them click the Buy button. This process involves watching how their brains work.

Neuromarketing, also known as consumer neuroscience, is the study of the way the brain responds to branding and advertising. The process relies on insights from other fields including social psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral economics.

Neuromarketing can help B2B marketers execute marketing campaigns based on scientific evidence, allowing you to create catchy ads that go to the heart of the customer decision-making process.

6. Retention Marketing

Acquiring customers is one thing; keeping them interested in buying your products or solutions is another. While getting a new customer can cost five times the amount of money you could use to retain an existing one, increasing customer retention by just 5% can grow your profit from 25% to 95%. This is because repeat customers are likely to recommend your business to others.

To retain more customers, make them feel appreciated by offering them personalized deals or exclusive offers, offer them unmatched customer support, and reward referrals by offering incentives.

7. Mobile-First Marketing

In 2022, approximately 6.64 billion people own smartphones. It’s safe to say that humans can’t survive without smartphones. That’s why 70% of B2B decision-makers rely on remote or digital interactions to prospect for B2B products and services.

Aside from Google favoring mobile-friendly websites, advertisers are spending more on mobile ads. By 2023, mobile ad spend is projected to double to $7.43 billion.

To optimize B2B marketing for mobile users, you need to create a website that displays on all mobile devices, increase your website’s loading speed, and create visible CTAs.

8. Hybrid Experiences

When the COVID-19 pandemic came, B2B marketers learned the importance of embracing digital marketing as more and more people were directed to observe social distancing, temporarily nullifying the impact of trade shows and other in-person events. While these restrictions have been lifted in many parts of the world, but hybrid experiences continue to be the norm.

Of course, there are good sides to both in-person and digital marketing. However, a hybrid approach allows people to personalize their experiences.

9. Channel-Specific Content Marketing

Personalization is here to stay. As a B2B marketer, you need to connect with your prospects where they are spending most of their time, especially on social media platforms, then move them through the buying process.

As algorithms continue to bury content that tends to take users away from the platform, it’s important to keep customers engaged within their preferred platforms by creating channel-specific content.

10. Micro-Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing has existed since the 1930s but was introduced into the digital landscape when Murphy created PayPerPost, a marketplace for paying bloggers to create content for businesses.

Fast forward to 2022 and influencer marketing is still a hot B2B marketing trend. This trend is evolving, though. Instead of using million-follower influencers, marketers are opting for micro-influencers due to their engagement rates and the loyal following they command.

Are You Ready for the Next Wave of B2B Marketing Trends?

New B2B marketing trends surface every year. Some trends have been there for a long time, but have evolved. As a B2B marketer, you need to be prepared and ready to adapt to new changes in the industry. Hopefully this post has helped you get up to speed!



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