2011 B2B Marketing Trends -- The Tactical Perspective

The second most high profile source of business marketing trends (in North America at least) is BtoB Magazine’s annual “Outlook 2011 – Marketing Priorities and Plans.”

According to B2B Magazine:

The magazine concludes that two overall trends will set the pace—the changing role of B2B and social optimization (still not sure what that means).

The Tactical Perspective on B2B Trends

These trends reflect mostly what industry thought leaders have observed in their day-to-day practices:

#1Trend – budgets shift more heavily to online – a trend driven by: cost efficiencies; the need for more accountability; improvements in online technologies.

#2 Trend – the changing nature of B2B – this trend is based on the emergence of new digital technologies and new opportunities for marketers to engage with their customers. What is less evident is the specific impact of these digital technologies: some see huge opportunities; others (like Rick Segal) have stated that B2B marketing has no future (and, is in fact, obsolete).

#3 Trend – more emotional, personal communications – it is thought that as digital technologies becomes more prevalent and marketers have access to business executives “anywhere” this will somehow change their perspective on ...what exactly? Their business interests? Their decision-making? Marketers will have to rev up the sizzle - with more emotional appeals.“The distinction between b-to-b and b-to-c companies artificial - at the end of the day it’s all about business-to-people” is one conclusion.

#4 Trend – database-driven marketing – some think that “it’s all about the data”. The focus is on mining customer data and making this the focal point of communications. To mine the data and increase our ability to have “conversations and interactions and insights about our customers. “Marketing itself is becoming so data-driven and empirical”.

#5 Trend – new customer intelligence metrics – clearly related to trend #4. The key here is the availability of new metrics and analytics across multiple platforms – bringing in performance metrics from touch points such as call centres and post direct response data.

#6 Trend – optimizing social media – the new buzzword is social media optimization (CMO). Social media has become an integral part of marketing for B2B companies and making it a mainstream part of B2B marketing programs.

#7 Trend –feeding the content machine – as the number of marketing channels increases B2B marketers must increase the content for blogs, websites, thought leadership events. According to one recent study 51% of B2B marketers said they will increase their content marketing with this aspect expected to account for 25% of marketing budgets.

#8 Trend – expanded partnerships with media – again this is part of a thrust to access more content (linked to Trend #7).

#9 Trend – growth of mobile apps -- the launch of the iPad (both versions) is credited with heating up the demand for mobile applications. Mobile ad spending along is expected to increase by 48% .

#10 Trend – immediacy of search results – last year Google rolled out Google Instant which uses predictive technology to make more frequent targeted content updates to display search results. BtoB Magazine and Business.com report survey results indicate that 57% of B2B marketers said improving search results is a key goal of their social media efforts. This trend also reflects the increased emphasis on the need to “develop, distribute, track and optimize the huge amount of content going out across multiple channels”.

Tags: B2B