The approach to a company’s marketing depends on a wide variety of factors, including the niche the company works in. However, marketing is an incredibly dynamic field across all industries. There are constantly new tools and techniques appearing on the horizon—particularly when it comes to digital marketing. With that in mind, we’ll take a look at some of the B2B marketing strategies businesses should have in mind in 2020.
Better websites
Traditionally, B2B marketing strategies were not so digital-centric. It was only a couple of years ago that B2C digital marketing had already become a science unto itself. Before that, B2B marketers relied most heavily on trade shows and personal connections. Face-to-face networking was still the norm.
While that is still true to a certain extent, the Internet has become a far more important avenue for B2B marketing in the past few years. The World Wide Web has become ubiquitous with communication and information. Some countries even recognize Internet access as a basic human right.
With that in mind, one thing is clear: If your company does not exist online, it might as well not exist at all. And sure, creating a Google My Business page is not that difficult. Every fast food joint has a Google Maps listing, after all. However, if you want your business to emanate a feeling of utmost professionalism, you need a website of your own.
And we’re not talking about the 90s-esque clunky websites that just scream “I’m older than Windows XP.” Your website needs to contain all of the aesthetic and functional elements found on a contemporary website.
Of course, there are plenty of different themes you can choose from if you want to build a quick-and-easy website. Content management systems akin to WordPress are user-friendly. You can have a basic website up and running in the matter of hours.
Our recommendation is not doing it in-house, however. Unless you’re a company whose staff is knowledgeable about web design from a professional standpoint, hiring a B2B marketing agency to handle this for you is a far better idea. After all, no generic WordPress theme will allow your brand to stand out as well as a custom-made website could.
A personal touch
Having a distinct online presence is not the be-all and end-all of useful B2B marketing strategies in 2020. As we’ve mentioned above, personal communications were always the pinnacle of B2B. That trend that continues even today.
This goes beyond a get-together during a trade conference, though. If you want to achieve success in B2B marketing, you need to adopt a more personalized approach to your client communication. Plenty of client reports suggest that more than 70 percent of all business buyers want to feel like the communication they receive is specifically tailored to them and their needs.
All-encompassing tech solutions
The advent of the Internet and digital marketing has ushered in an age of marketing that’s more dependent on technologies than ever before. In the past decade, “martech”—or marketing tech—has become an incredibly valuable niche in and of itself. It is composed of thousands of companies that provide software solutions to ease the process of data analytics and other tasks in marketing.
However, there is a flip side to this. The increasing number of martech companies has resulted in a more complex and potentially tedious process when it comes to campaign management. If you need to use a bunch of mutually incompatible tools to manage your marketing campaign, this presents a workflow problem.
With this in mind, one of the most effective B2B marketing strategies in 2020 is finding an all-encompassing marketing platform. You need one that can handle everything from lead generation to email marketing automation. Luckily, there are more than a few such solutions already on the market.
Using chatbots
Every industry needs its customer service representatives. They are on the front lines in the battle for customer retention and satisfaction. And dealing with disgruntled customers is no easy job. Unfortunately, even in a B2B environment, the number of complaints can be just too much for a mid-sized customer support team to handle effectively.
At the end of the day, a single representative can only take so many calls in a single day. This is another problem that cutting-edge tech has helped us solve, or at least alleviate. We’re talking about AI-powered chatbots that function on the basic principles of machine learning.
These chatbots are not true AI, obviously. They cannot help customers deal with every single problem. However, fortunately for the chatbot initiative, a large majority of the problems dealt with by customer service representatives are quite formulaic and menial. The most oft-posed questions can be recognized by chatbots that have the answers programmed into their code. The adaptation to specific situations is done via machine learning algorithms.
Apart from aiding B2B clients with basic issues, they can also present information regarding your business, or reroute a customer to a human customer service agent who can solve more complex issues.
As you can imagine, chatbots cut down on problem resolution times with incredible speed. This results in increased customer satisfaction and less expenses for the maintenance of a customer support team.
Conclusion
Embracing new technologies in the most efficient way seems to be the order of the day when it comes to B2B marketing strategies in 2020. However, that doesn’t mean nurturing old principles like personalization isn’t necessary as well.
