As 2017 nearly comes to an end, marketers involved in the B2B sector are drawing the line to see which of the used techniques have had the greatest uplift for businesses.
Realizing the importance of new technologies, digital marketers let their creativity bloom, bringing future into the present. Video was crowned the new king of the B2B sector, so let’s take a closer look at each of the main trends and see how they’ve influenced the sales funnel to develop more quality leads.
According to this infographic created by Bubblegum Search, 84% of millennial B2B buyers considered their mobile device was essential to work. Over half of emails were opened on a mobile device, and for some leaders, mobile drove more than 40% of their revenue, revealed BSC research. It goes without saying that mobile-friendly content was and remains a must-have, since it speeded up the purchasing process by 20%.
The new generation of B2B customers also expected to have the same digital experience as in brick-and-mortar stores, and to interact with a salesperson only at the end of the process.
The integration of different channels was one of the most important trends of 2017 since social media marketing was in top 3 channels for generating leads, along with email marketing and content marketing.
LinkedIn kept its title as the most effective social media platform when it came to generating leads. New options to target within the LinkedIn programmatic service were made available. Also, Facebook and Twitter have improved their retargeting options, but none worked alone as well as they did together.
Instagram was another platform that made a difference. Data showed that it had the highest engagement rate, but only 33% of B2B brands used it. Instagram reached 300 million daily users with 80% of them under 35 years old.
A survey summary report provided by Ascend2 showed that message personalization was the most effective email marketing practice, used by 50% of the marketers. This was followed by meaningful calls-to-action and list data segmentation.
The outbound messages that were personalized based on the target’s gender or geographic location seemed more relevant, and open rates increased by 26%. Dynamic content was also popular and generated more leads than messages without it. The most powerful messages were those that included the recipient’s name and that addressed his/her needs as a client.
Visual content, especially video content (including 360-degree) became more engaging and shareable, as well as easier to consume, and it was crowned the new king of the B2B sector. As an infographic by Red Web Design outlined, videos up to 2 minutes long got the most engagement, and Facebook was the most impactful social channel for video.
Regarding ROI, 76.5% of marketers were able to see results with video marketing. By 2020 online videos will be accountable for more than 80% of all consumer internet traffic, according to the infographic, so video will continue to expand its kingdom.
Since 85% of videos are watched without sound, you should consider embracing soundless videos as part of your social media strategy.
By learning from data through cognitive interfaces, marketers had access to precious information about the customer’s behavior. They knew what his needs were even before he knew it, and this drove to faster business decisions. Since machine learning was all about predicting the future, B2B marketers spent fewer hours trying to figure out how to convert leads, choosing personalized approaches.
The importance of such insights has been highlighted by Forrester in a report showing that businesses using AI and IoT will divert $1,2 trillion per annum from their less informed peers by 2020.
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