Despite the economic downturn and heartbreaking losses spurred by Covid-19, the pandemic caused a mind-shift in the digital market space.
Ideas that previously seemed far-fetched and futuristic are now scalable.
They present exciting opportunities for B2B digital marketers to obtain leads and conversions. Let’s explore five B2B digital marketing trends that will work in 2021 and well into the future.
Augmented Reality
Augmented reality (AR) is a game-changer in the B2B digital marketing space allowing prospective customers to engage virtually with products.
Compared to static images or lengthy instruction manuals, AR gives the audience a realistic experience with your products or services.
This cutting-edge technology is easy to use and can be applied by businesses of all sizes.
Benefits of AR technology include:
- Makes presentations more dynamic by switching the strategy from telling to showing
- Ideal for companies with multiple decision-makers. Each decision-maker can interact with the solution from the high-level overview to the minute inspection of individual components.
- Exposes your company to millennial decision-makers who are interested in tech-savvy and forward-thinking brands.
- Allows marketers to personalize offerings to suit a specific prospect’s needs. The prospect can see how the solutions tie to their needs.
Where can you use augmented reality tech?
- In business presentations and other educational content.
- For 3D modeling of products to give audiences precise views.
- On banner ads by incorporating AR videos, or branded photo filters.
- On product pages and other marketing campaigns to highlight your products/services’ best features.
Omni-channel Marketing
The Omni-channel marketing approach ensures customers enjoy a consistent experience on all channels – online and offline.
It achieves this by integrating all channels used by customers to provide a seamless user experience informed by prior encounters.
A B2B prospect may download information from your site, their associate requests a demo, and another staff members ask for certain information on your social platform.
The Omni-channel strategy compiles this disjointed data into one to help the marketers have a better understanding of the prospect’s needs.
Benefits of Omni-channel marketing include:
- Improving individual user experience which ultimately leads to increased sales and better customer retention.
- Allowing companies to build a unified and identifiable image and tone.
- Providing diverse engagement possibilities since customers can engage with you across multiple touchpoints.
- Helping you read data more accurately. You’ll better understand which channels your customers prefer or which campaigns generated the most value and refine your technique for better targeting.
How do you build an Omni-channel strategy?
- Start by identifying your prospects and their preferred online and offline channels. By interconnecting data from different channels, you’ll identify, target, and engage prospects.
- Get your team to segment companies depending on their geography, size, industry, value, and the stage they are at in the pipeline. Look up the JD, seniority, and role in the purchase process of the people who have contacted your company.
- Choose messages that will resonate with the prospects and optimize them across all platforms used by the prospects.
- Monitor the campaigns. The responses you receive through your engagement will help you hone your strategy for future campaigns.
Video Content Marketing
Video marketing is an effective strategy for reaching and converting customers.
Combining moving images with sound and dialogue makes the experience more immersive and keeps the audience engaged.
According to HubSpot, up to 85% of viewers are likely to buy from you after watching a video.
Why?
Video is a highly compelling channel that showcases your brand’s authenticity. It also makes it easy for the viewer to digest various components of the product or service.
There are all kinds of videos you can create, from how-to videos to case study videos, company stories, and blog summaries or teasers.
Here are video marketing best practices to consider:
- Create content that targets the audience’s pain points. Cat videos are cute, but they won’t generate leads or encourage conversions. Ask yourself if the problem you’re trying to solve matters to your audience.
- Gather topic ideas. Think about the common queries your teams (and competitors) receive to help you know where prospects are getting stuck. Match topic ideas to the customer journey and determine the content that will best answer the audiences’ questions.
- Optimize your video’s visibility by performing keyword research. Select keywords that are relevant to what you sell and to the content in your video. Irrelevant keywords attract the wrong crowd which won’t do much for your lead generation or conversion goals.
- Produce high-quality content. Write or hire someone to write a script that is relatable, educational, and engaging. Use a high-quality camera, consider lighting and ambient noises. These are factors that affect the quality of your video.
Cold Calling
Cold calling is not about badgering prospects until they buy from you or hang up (and block you). No, that kind of cold calling is dead.
Today’s cold calling is all about building lasting relationships through conversation.
The strategy focuses on providing prospective customers with enough valuable information to pique their interest so that they agree to a follow-up call. Here are tips to help you get the most out of this strategy:
- Know your stuff: Understanding the ins and outs of your products makes you a better salesperson. You’ll answer questions more confidently and easily highlight the value your solutions can add to the prospect’s business.
- Know your prospect. You’re likely to receive a positive response from the prospect if you understand the challenges they are facing. Look up information about the company, contact person, and pain points.
- Minimize distractions. Silence social notifications and turn off your phone. Focus on the task at hand which is calling a certain number of prospects.
- Where possible, invest in a sales dialer software for calling, keeping track of calls, and scheduling emails.
- Prepare a call guide that includes answers to possible questions, open-ended questions, and useful statistics.
- open-ended questions, answers to possible questions, and useful statistics.
- Accept rejection. We all strive for the “yes” but “nos” will come too. Don’t take it personally. Focus on the prize.
End your call with the next step in mind.
Move responsive prospects to the next stage of your sales process. If you catch them at an inconvenient time, ask to reschedule the call or offer a different form of communication.
Always try to move things to the next step.
Chatbot Marketing
It’s amazing how technology is changing science fiction (in this case Chatbots) into reality.
Apart from answering customer care queries, chatbots are proving invaluable to B2B marketing initiatives.
Here’s why chatbots fit in your digital marketing strategies:
- They offer personalized experiences. Chatbots answer queries accurately and by gathering data about the customer’s preferences and purchase history, they can offer personalized shopping advice.
- Chatbots have a larger engagement capacity. They learn from the interactions they have with your audience and send them relevant information about your products or services.
- Chatbots reach wider audiences since they are typically found on social platforms. You can integrate them across multiple messaging applications increasing accessibility to your brand.
- Chatbots naturally introduce questions in conversations with audiences gathering feedback. Combined with machine learning tools, the chatbot can analyze data to give you better insight into customer needs. You can use the information to refine your marketing strategy.
- They welcome visitors to your website and let the users know they are available to help them. This helps increase interactions and keeps your presence fresh.
Are you wondering where to find a chatbot?
You can build one – chatbot-building platforms such as ChattyPeople and Meokay can help you create one in minutes.
You can also buy a ready-built one from Google Dialogflow, Amazon Lex, and Facebook’s Wit.ai.
