Proceeding the momentum of past years, 2023 will see the advancement of numerous trends in B2B marketing and the expanding impact of B2C marketing. So which areas are likely to have the greatest effect on companies this year?
Undoubtedly, there are numerous B2B marketing patterns that will gain force in 2023. We bring you a list of 7 B2B marketing trends to keep an eye on in 2023.
Strategic focus and lean marketing
Key center and incline marketing Over the past years, B2B marketing has seen a lot of changes, driven in huge portions by changing client needs. Combined with a lot of unused strategies, instruments, channels, and innovations, this has created the proverbial “child in the sweet store” situation in B2B marketing. In this way, numerous marketers experienced challenges and this contributed to the randomness of attempting to do something. After calming down, B2B marketers start to put on the brakes and assess their marketing efforts, attempting to figure out where to focus their time, vitality, and resources.
In 2023, B2B marketers will stop considering all they can do and begin considering what they should/shouldn’t do.
Ultimately, this will diminish the breadth of marketing practices, focusing on what is most likely to lead to the bottom line – sales. This implies that B2B marketers will be more inquisitive about bottom lines and less fascinated by conventional metrics.
Customer experience is the key to competitive advantage
If there’s a commerce concept that penetrates essentially each industry, B2B and B2C alike, it is customer experience.
The customer experience has ended up the key to making differentiation and economical competitive advantage within the “age of the customer”. The concept of “age of the customer” clarifies that now clients have more alternatives than ever, since they can get data about your products on the Web in real-time. Whereas numerous of our B2C colleagues figured this out a long time ago, B2B companies presently understand that it takes a genuinely customer-centric approach to win in business. It is vital to understand that making an unrivaled customer experience does not happen in a data vacuum!
In fact, companies are starting to realize that the other experiences — employee experience and brand experience — are all part of the customer experience equation.
These three functions must work together in order to truly create an honest company brand. You cannot provide a unique Customer Experience without highly skilled, customer-focused Digital Marketing Agency employees.
In 2023, more organizations will begin to consider experience across all aspects of their business, taking a more holistic view of experience in terms of aligning people, processes, programs, and their touchpoints. Creating a customer, staff, and brand experience is essential for sustainable competitive advantage.
Full acceptance of Account-based marketing
In the past few years, account-based marketing (ABM) has been one of the hot topics in B2B marketing, and it has gained momentum in 2019. Research shows that 92% of companies recognize the value of ABM, even calling it a “must have” for B2B marketing. For B2B companies with long sales cycles and high bills that often involve multiple decision makers, ABM is a more effective way to acquire new customers than just relying on inbound lead generation.
In 2023, B2B companies will strive to fully incorporate the concept of ABM into their philosophy and practice, and therefore will move to the ABM model to increase the likelihood of success in marketing, sales, and customer relationships.
Machine learning and artificial intelligence
Whereas B2C marketing pros have been utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning for some time now, its use in B2B companies has been essentially slower to gain force in this direction. According to Salesforce research, B2B marketers list AI as the innovation they are most likely to embrace in 2023. After all, the wide extent of benefits of AI empowers point by point analysis, identification of potential clients, ultra-precise targeting, personalization of content and increasing speed of tasks. As modern B2B-focused apps develop, search for AI innovations to assist you with your marketing strategies.
For example, 6sense platforms, Mintigo and Infer, use AI to analyze vast amounts of predictive analytics data, intelligent lead scoring and campaign optimization. The Chorus information platform uses AI to analyze potential sales and provide insights on how to close more deals. And Otter.ai is an AI-based assistant that transcribes and generates most of the notes of meetings, interviews, lectures, and other important conversations, speeding up daily tasks, which in turn will help you set aside several hours for important strategic tasks.
While these are just a few examples of how AI and machine learning can benefit B2B marketers, look for opportunities to explore and implement these tools more widely in 2023.
Interactive, visual and video content dominates
Content marketing has been the main work of B2B marketing for over a decade — and rightfully so. B2B marketers are increasingly turning to interactive, visual and video content to better engage their target audience.
The Demand Gen Report study shows that 91% of B2B customers prefer interactive and visual content over content based on statistics. And video content currently makes up the bulk of internet traffic and is projected to increase to 82% by 2023, according to the Visual Network Index (VNI).
Interactivity, visualization and video provide a huge opportunity to combine content, design and technology in a way that is both fun and effective. While this content is already popular among B2B marketers, aim for it to dominate in 2023 as more companies double down on their investment in interactivity.
Special attention to the site and its optimization
By focusing on the latest trends like content marketing, customer experience, and personal marketing, many B2B companies are unintentionally downplaying their most valuable marketing asset—their website.
But times have changed, and today’s B2B sites must serve as a platform for expert leadership, business development, and, of course, great user experience. To better capture growth opportunities, websites will experience a renaissance of sorts in 2022, becoming more and more central to a marketing strategy.
What will this renaissance look like?
First, many companies will approach website redesigns and updates differently than in the past – planning, design will be based on the buyer, and not based around company info. This mindset will influence everything from content strategy to site architecture and user interface design. Other site optimization efforts will include lead generation, search engine and page speed optimization, mobile design, security hardening, compliance with data privacy laws. This re-evaluation of the B2B site and the push for a more sophisticated overall site will increase budgets and resources for enhancements in 2022.
Reputation management online
With the rise of the Internet, online reviews have become a vital issue for B2C businesses. For years, B2B companies may have ignored this trend, but things have changed. Reviews are now having an increasing impact on decision makers and the overall impression of a brand. Whether it’s reviews on Google or the growing number of industry review sites, B2B companies are beginning to prioritize online reputation management, and this trend will increase in 2023.
There is a need to pay attention to regular monitoring of reviews, ratings and mentions, as well as “listening” to Internet chatter about the company on websites, forums and social networks.
This can be done by various platforms, bots and online reputation management tools that allow you to track and manage reviews from different sites.
To overcome negative search results, B2B marketers will be retooling their content and SEO strategy so that fresh and relevant content overshadows everything negative. While businesses cannot control what people say online, they can actively manage their online reputation, so it’s important for B2B marketers to focus on this in their work.
