The turbulent BtoB marketing. What will the trends be in 2020?
In this article, we will introduce 5 trends you should pay attention to when it comes to B2B marketing.
1. Deepening content marketing
Content marketing has already become essential in BtoB marketing.
According to a survey by the Content Marketing Institute in the United States, 90% of B2B companies in the United States are actually using content marketing or are considering using it.
It is said that buyers in B2B companies complete most of the decision-making process before contacting sales personnel.
The traditional style of sales staff working around the company to learn about customer issues and propose solutions is becoming a thing of the past.
As a trend in BtoB content marketing, “buyer persona” and “buyer journey” are said to be important.
Buyer personas and buyer journeys are different from “personas” and “customer journeys” in BtoC marketing.
What is a buyer persona?
In general, a persona is a model of a customer based on attributes such as age, gender, place of residence, and preferences such as hobbies and how to spend leisure time.
However, in BtoB marketing, it is not possible to determine how buyers make decisions within a company based on their attributes and preferences.
Therefore, in BtoB marketing, it is said that it is important to set the following buyer personas.
- What do you prioritize about the products and services you purchase and the companies you purchase from?
- When you compare your products with those of your competitors, what do you think the competitors are better at?
- What makes you feel uneasy about your company’s products? What kind of information is needed to eliminate anxiety?
What is the buyer journey?
A buyer journey is a model of the process a buyer takes to make a purchasing decision.
There are said to be four phases:
1. When and how did you realize the need for the product/service?
2. How did you compare the products?
3. From what perspective did you evaluate the compared products?
4. How did you obtain internal approval for purchasing?
There is a rapidly growing recognition that the key to B2B content marketing is to model the decision-making process of corporate buyers, not just the average individual.
Based on this recognition, BtoB content marketing will become more sophisticated.
2. Utilize videos
5G services are scheduled to start in Japan from 2020, and the importance of video is increasing.
According to a study by BuzzSumo, the type of Facebook post that garners the most engagement from users is video, with images or links to web pages receiving less than half the engagement of videos.
The importance of using video in BtoB marketing will continue to grow.
The use of video is also considered effective in BtoB marketing for the following three reasons.
1. Promote product value in an easy-to-understand manner
Videos have a high power of conveying information.
In general, it is often difficult to convey the value of BtoB products, such as intangible products such as software, distribution, consulting, or complex precision equipment.
With videos, you can clearly promote the value of these products.
2. Buyers are increasingly watching videos
In recent years, an increasing number of corporate buyers are “millennials” in their 20s to 35 years old who are familiar with digital devices.
Millennials have the habit of searching and watching videos on a daily basis, so they often watch videos when researching purchases.
Videos are said to have a high SEO effect.
In cases such as content marketing where the first contact with users is organic search, using videos can also have the effect of increasing exposure.
3. Smoother approval process for purchases
Using video can also help smooth out the approval process for purchases.
When giving a presentation to get approval from a payer, such as a boss or management team, showing a product explanation video will make it easier for buyers to understand the appeal of the product than if they had to explain it themselves.
In BtoB marketing, videos can be effectively used in the following situations.
- Website or landing page
- exhibition
- Business negotiation
- Seminar
- email to lead
- advertisement
3. Spread of AI
Some people may have the impression that AI is something of the near future.
But that’s not the case.
AI has already reached the level of practical application in various fields, and it can be said that it is now entering a phase where it will become even more widespread.
AI is certainly not suitable for fields that require ideas, such as planning and creative fields.
However, it can be said that the time has come to consider introducing the following areas of BtoB marketing.
Advertising operation
Many AI tools have emerged to manage advertising.
The advertising operation tool aggregates and analyzes past advertising operation data and specifies the optimal operational improvement measures.
In cases where multiple advertisements are being operated, the burden on the operations staff can be greatly reduced.
Web customer service tools
Web customer service tools such as chatbots are often installed on the websites of BtoB companies.
Many of you probably know that AI can be used to provide fixed answers to standard questions.
Nowadays, not only that,
- Analyze user behavior information on the website and introduce the most suitable products at the most suitable time.
- By linking purchase history not only on the website but also in real stores, we introduce the most suitable products based on the purchasing trends of similar users.
Web customer service tools with functions such as these have also appeared.
Incorporate it into marketing automation to discover quality prospects
Marketing automation (MA) is increasingly used in BtoB.
By equipping MA tools with AI, the AI will analyze visit history, frequency, behavior history, etc., and help discover high-quality prospects.
4. Utilize intent data
Literally translated, intent data is “data that indicates the interests and concerns of customers.”
In general, customer interests are important factors in personalizing marketing efforts and prioritizing approaches.
Vendors are now beginning to sell intent data that indicates the interests of specific companies.
You will get a list of companies that are interested in a specific keyword.
Until now, the only way to know what kind of interests a company had was to infer from the pages viewed and downloaded content of users who visited the company’s website.
However, with a system that identifies company information from the global IP of the access source, it is now possible to find out what kind of web pages a company is viewing, even on external websites other than its own. .
By combining this intent data with your own data, you can use it in the following ways.
- If a company that is listed in intent data with keywords related to your company has contact with your company’s sales staff, you can provide the keywords to your sales staff to trigger business negotiations. can
- Even if your company’s MA score is low, if the score for related keywords in the intent data is high, it will be treated as a good prospect and sales will follow up.
- Even though intent data shows that there is interest in your company’s products and services, if you have not yet had contact with your company, create contact with your company by running an advertisement specified by the company.
As mentioned above, by combining intent data and in-house data, you can expect to expand the variety of marketing measures and improve accuracy.
It is safe to say that we should keep an eye on trends regarding intent data.
5. Popularization of account-based marketing (ABM)
Account-based marketing (ABM) is marketing on an account (company) basis.
It has the same meaning as traditional “corporate sales” and is not a new concept.
In recent years, ABM has received renewed attention because of advances in technology.
Marketing automation (MA), which has traditionally been used in digital marketing, handles customer information on a per-buyer basis when accessing your company’s website.
This is because handling company-level information with MA required a huge number of steps to select companies and implement measures.
However, with the development of SFA (Sales Support System) and CMR (Customer Relationship Management) tools along with MA, it is possible to understand customers on a company-by-company basis, analyze multiple accesses from specific companies to your company, and strategically It is now possible to implement marketing measures.
By utilizing ABM, you can pick up multiple visits from companies with high customer lifetime value as quality prospects.
BtoB sales teams often conduct sales activities on a company-by-company basis.
To this end, you can expect to be able to better coordinate marketing and sales.
2020 Marketing Trends Summary
◆ Content marketing will become more suitable for BtoB ◆ Video will become increasingly important in BtoB marketing ◆ Now is the time to specifically consider introducing AI tools ◆ Keep an eye on trends in intent data ◆ ABM allows each company to implement marketing measures