Focusing on the Customer Experience:
Years ago,
B2C marketers started to focus on the customer experience (CX). Successful B2C
companies were able to engage customers by reducing friction and providing positive
customer experience. B2B markets will need to take a customer-centric approach
to differentiate and build a competitive advantage.
Content Marketing: Content marketing will continue to be the cornerstone of B2B
marketing efforts in 2019. According to the Content Marketing Institute (CMI),
content marketing is a strategic approach focused on creating and distributing
valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly
defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action. CMI
recently reported that 80 percent of B2B firms are focused on building a
content marketing strategy.
Integrated Marketing Communications:
The concept of “integrated marketing
communications” (IMC) is a systematic way to coordinate their efforts across
all possible channels. While IMC is not a new concept, the application of IMC
has fresh relevancy as new channels emerge. IMC is a strategic approach
designed to harness advertising, direct marketing, public relations, sales
promotion, digital marketing, content marketing, and other programs to work in
coordination as a unified force. This approach enables the consistent delivery
of coherent brand positioning through all media. An integrated effort consists
of planning, coordinating, and controlling the communications process with the
result being a synergistic, seamless, customer-focused marketing program.
Retargeting/SEM/SEO: Retargeting, Search Engine Marketing (SEM), and Search Engine
Optimization (SEO) will continue to be critical to a firm’s marketing success.
Over the past few years, considerable attention has been paid to managing title
tags, headers, and meta descriptions while posting content online. And these
strategies remain as important as ever — after all, what good is it to create
great content if no one can find it? Web searches drive most traffic to B2B
online content, therefore higher SEO rankings typically result in higher
traffic and more customer conversions. Algorithms will continue to change in
2018, so marketers will have to remain vigilant in their response to those
changes. Targeting— Without diving into the nuances of differences between
search, behavioral, and contextual marketing strategies, targeting will
continue to emerge as a key tactic for marketers. Targeting involves processes
by which visitors see specific and relevant advertisements based on their
browsing history, content engagement, or other online behaviors. Targeting is a
powerful way to remind past visitors to re-engage. It is driven by the insights
and analytics provided by big data. Fortunately, setting up and managing a
targeting program has become very easy. Marketers will seize on this effective
approach to focus on relevancy, connect and engage with viewers, and convert
them to customers.
Big Data/IOT Marketing Applications:
In many
industries, business rely on big data
provides actionable insights and predictive analytics. The internet of things
(IoT) is a network of physical devices, wearables, and other items that are
embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and actuators. With network
connectivity, these objects can exchange data, and this interconnectivity
provides opportunities for marketers to listen to their clients and more
effectively respond to their needs. Firms who leverage the IoT and Big Data
will focus more on buyer personas and the customer’s journey, thereby
increasing engagement.
The above tactics tie into one of the most touted terms in the business world: ROI. Increasingly, marketers — like other business professionals — are focusing on tracking the return on their investments. Factoring marketing into a firm’s overall ROI tracking can help guide strategies and improve results. By quantifying the achievement of specific goals and targets, ROI helps ensure that campaigns are effective … because what can be measured can be managed.