New Year, New You, right? Well, in this case, the “new you” is your business, and 2020 is a year poised for change in the digital and B2B marketing landscape. With that in mind, what do you need to know to maintain traction with your customers and improve your B2B marketing strategy for the new decade ahead?

B2B Marketing Trends for 2020

It’s not just the turn of another year, but the turn of a decade. The “new year new you” slogan is not only applicable personally, but also to your business and to your sales and marketing strategy as we continue to move forward in such a time of technology and innovation.

Digital trend evolution can happen so quickly that you can be easily lost in the fray if you’re not keeping up. From our research and experience, we think that the biggest B2B changes over the coming year will be centered around personalization, high-quality digital experiences, and artificial intelligence. Here are some B2B marketing tips and advice we’d like to offer as you progress into this decade of change.

Personalize, personalize, personalize

The Salesforce State of the Connected Customer report found that a whopping 72% of business buyers expect vendors to personalize engagement to their needs, and 82% want the same experience as if they were buying for themselves, personally.  Customers will quickly move to a competing vendor if they don’t think you’re meeting their needs. 

Buyer personas will help you to better understand your target market, and you can use this information to tailor all of your communications to each individual buyer and their preferences. There are many marketing automation tools, such as HubSpot, that can help you manage this.

Content for User Intent

We’ve previously discussed semantic search, or marketing based on identifying a user’s intent, in multiple blog posts. In the simplest terms, semantic search is an SEO strategy used to improve search engine accuracy by understanding the “semantics” or meaning of what a user is searching for. Rather than just ranking websites based on a few keyword matches, search engines are improving their search accuracy by trying to understand intent and contextual meaning behind the words users are inputting in their search bars. Thus, semantic search is a way for Google and other search engines to provide better and more relevant results for their users.

In addition, a recent Google Study has determined that 1 in 5 searches are being done through Google Voice Search. Siri, Google Home, Amazon Alexa, and other virtual assistants now allow users to search for what they want online using spoken word vs. typed. However, most people speak differently than they type, which means slang and even dialect need to be taken into account in semantic search results.

Incorporating semantic search into all aspects of your content strategy means that you will more accurately be able to answer questions that match the intent of your searchers — meaning your website will be found at the top of the search engine results pages, which translates into increased site traffic and increased opportunities for lead generation. 

Check out some of our recent blog posts on semantic search to find out how to update your website and your content for user intent. 

Explore AI

The customer experience is relying more and more on technology, and artificial intelligence is a big part of that. In fact, it’s been reported that 80% of businesses will invest in chatbots by the end of this year. 

In addition to allowing for a wider, 24/7 customer service and support reach, custom chatbots can also help B2B businesses generate new lead opportunities by allowing buyers to ask questions, offer business information, book demos, and redirect inquiries to a live sales rep through sidebar chats or Facebook messenger. 

Consolidate MarTech Investments

With so many MarTech options available, businesses may find that they need to flip between multiple systems to manage content, run campaigns, post to social media accounts, and access reports and analytics. This can really overcomplicate things, making marketing processes inefficient, ineffective and expensive. 

If you find yourself nodding along to my last sentence, then it’s clear this issue resonates with you and 2020 might be the year for you to take a look into a single, consolidated solution that will manage all of your MarTech at once. It might not only save you time and money, but when you have clean data coming from one source, it will be much easier to manage campaigns and accurately see campaign results. 

Revive Email Marketing

HubSpot’s annual State of Inbound report reports that email is still one of the top preferred channels to connect with a prospect. 

For example, MarTech and AI tools can help you process historical email marketing campaign data to capture which content each of your customers prefers to receive in their inbox, and when, based on their email activity. In addition to content delivery recommendations, AI can also help tailor content to personal preferences for each customer, create efficiencies by writing email subject lines, inform keyword research, and segment customers to help you find the most receptive audiences for each specific campaign you run.

B2B marketers can also use AI to scan their website and content library to categorize content and make sure the right content (offers, emails, social media posts, landing pages) are personalized and delivered to the right customers during the right interaction. This gives marketers the freedom to continue focusing on creating unique and relevant content, while leaving the targeted delivery workflows to AI.

For other B2B marketing and lead generation tips, as well as information about inbound marketing in general,  please check out some of our other recent blog posts. For more tips about inbound and B2B marketing, subscribe to our monthly digital marketing postcard.

Image Credit: Hello I’m Nik from Unsplash