In 2024, success in B2B marketing relies on adaptability. The key is to empower organizations with insights, ensuring that strategies align and stay responsive in the face of changing dynamics. Businesses are now in a race against time and trends.
The integration of impactful video content is no longer a luxury but a necessity to capture audience attention. Meanwhile, AI-driven personalization and advanced analytics are changing how marketers engage with prospects. The data-driven insights from these technologies provide guidelines for marketing communications that resonate on a personal level.
Strategically using social media in B2B goes beyond maintaining an online presence; it’s about crafting a narrative that speaks to humans and builds deeper connections. A piece of content isn’t just a message but should be seen as a strategic move that complements nurturing efforts. It’s not just about keeping up with change but leading the charge, transforming challenges into opportunities and uncertainties into strategies.
So what can marketers do to plan for B2B marketing in 2024?
How AI Is Shaping the Next Era?
In recent years, AI’s impact on marketing has been no secret; for instance, content creation tools or virtual assistants have been in the market for so long, helping companies to understand customers better. More marketers are integrating it into their processes to leverage its benefits. Looking ahead to the next year, there are key trends that will shape the landscape.
One trend is the exponential growth of Machine Learning tech in marketing technology. It analyzes real-time and historical data, identifying patterns to better segment audiences. AI tools predict leads likely to convert, allowing sales teams to prioritize and engage with genuinely interested prospects. This approach enhances effective communication and quick decision-making. Zoom Info, for instance, is an AI data-driven tool that has the ability to analyze vast amounts of data, and help marketers to have targeted lead generation.
AI-driven analytics is another significant trend for 2024. Rapid data processing lets marketers allocate more time to strategic tasks. With AI, data handling becomes easier, providing more accurate insights for a holistic customer view. Hyper-personalization is crucial as prospects expect tailored services. Chatbots play a vital role in real-time conversations and guiding prospects in the buyer process. Drift is one of these conversational software that support sales teams to have a better approach for qualified leads process and scheduling.
Generative AI content is a recent development offering automation opportunities. It aids in summarization and draft creation, allowing customization to align with a brand’s unique voice. While offering possibilities for B2B companies, it’s crucial to adapt the generated content to specific strategies and target audiences. This customization prevents generic content misalignment across channels and customer journeys. Copy creation is a tough task that usually gets underestimated in Marketing; however AI can support the process by generating ideas, creating creative suggestions, or even crafting email content and social media posts.
The Social Media Shift
Social media remains a crucial part of marketing, and it will continue to be a key tool in 2024. According to Sprout Social’s 2023 State of Social Media report, over 90% of business leaders rely on social media for information. People, including consumers and prospects, use these platforms to stay informed, learn about products or services, and seek support during decision-making.
LinkedIn is the primary social media tool for B2B marketers, and overall, social media is the fastest way to connect with a brand. Despite LinkedIn’s dominance, there’s a need for more engaging and personalized content. In 2024, other platforms like X and TikTok might see increased B2B marketing interactions, especially with added features for social e-commerce.
While social media is essential, companies should also explore other trending tools. Augmented and Virtual Reality are making their way into B2B, offering unique and immersive experiences for customer interaction. Product testing or online stores are examples of the use of AR and VR in marketing. Cisco launched a virtual trade show to showcase their interactive product catalog, giving users a specific concept of the product’s appearance. It also allows users the privilege of a “virtual walk around.”
Another growing trend in 2024 is the power of influencers. While traditionally used in B2C marketing, B2B companies can leverage influencers to increase brand awareness, promote products and services, and engage in genuine conversations within their industry. According to a LinkedIn article, when covid started, companies faced uncertainty especially with the majority of employees starting to work remotely; Monday.com engaged with influencers like Shama Hyder (founder of Zen Media and a LinkedIn top voice) to collaborate on educational content related to working with remote teams.
The Power of Making Data-Driven Decisions
B2B marketing analytics is evolving with the integration of AI technology. Marketers are encouraged to stay up-to-date and to increase their ability to make data-driven decisions. Outdated data processes such as those pesky end of the month manual reporting drives, and stitching together numerous excel sheets, exported from a number of tools, are becoming obsolete, making room for apps that keep marketers efficient and able to pivot quickly. Technology that leverages machine learning improves internal processes, analyzes vast data, and predicts future trends. They also aid personalization through segmentation based on patterns, behaviors, and forecasts for more effective campaigns and insight into the next best action in their journey with your brand.
Sales and marketing teams benefit from focusing on understanding customer journeys. Tools such as Customer Data Platforms offer a comprehensive view of your customer, and all of their personas, improving the understanding of customer preferences, behaviors, and needs. Some of these CDPs provide these profile updates in real-time so you can make decisions and automate the journey as they are engaging with you. This type of visibility, along with AI functionality to clean and analyze the profile data, gets you to a point where you can make highly-accurate, hyper-personalized, and automated decisions for customers in their journey with you.
Predictive analytics can impact the efficiency of connecting with your high-quality leads. Through advanced data analysis, marketers can identify engagement and buying patterns, enabling the anticipation of customer behavior for targeted outreach. This increases efficiency, and maximizes ROI as teams concentrate on leads more likely to convert, with a winning formula fueled by AI.
Predictive analytics is also crucial for customer retention/success. Leveraging AI functionality, with its algorithms and the scale of analysis, it can review your historical data and provide views estimated churn rates, allowing proactive identification of at-risk customers. This enables you to react with personalized campaigns, or a human touch, addressing concerns in advance, preserving satisfaction and loyalty, throughout the client journey.
The Rising Popularity of Video Content
B2B Marketing used to be seen as dull and uninspiring, but it’s time to change that in 2024. Customers are getting good at spotting content they can easily skip, leading them to delete unimportant emails or ignore spam phone calls. To re-engage these key customers, we need something new, and video content is proving to be one of the solutions.
In the coming years, short, digestible content—whether in video, audio, or written form—will take center stage. As attention spans shrink, creating concise and interesting content becomes crucial. Video, with its success in engaging audiences and delivering key information, offers a fresh perspective compared to repetitive messaging.
Video content adds an element of fun, and creativity through various editing styles and brand identity. It taps into emotional values by addressing audience interests, attitudes, and pain points. HubSpot mentions emotional branding and its importance in one of their INBOUND sessions in 2023: B2B marketing to reintroduce the “human touch” which discusses the importance of including emotion in your marketing to capture attention.
Video content can serve multiple purposes, such as sharing customer stories, showcasing company values, and highlighting exciting releases. It provides measurable metrics, such as engagement rates (likes, dislikes, and comments) serving as a means to analyze feelings toward content. Additionally, social shares widen the audience and increase brand awareness. This helps marketers analyze and adjust their strategies. With the increase in AI-content generation, we must remember that video still needs human authenticity. B2B marketers should use video content to convey genuine language and bring back the human touch in 2024. It’s new and refreshing in the B2B world, and statistics show that 89% of marketers plan to include video in their marketing strategies, and in terms of production 48% state that they will be creating brand videos this upcoming year.
Boosting Engagement with Interactive Content Strategies
In 2024, focusing on interactive content, including user-generated content, polls, and customer journeys, will be crucial. Similar to storytelling in marketing videos, this approach is going to be more and more effective next year.
To keep audiences engaged, especially with the current emphasis on customer success, it’s challenging to rely on lengthy articles or blog posts to spur engagement.
Customer success is all the rage right now and keeping audiences engaged with long-form articles or lengthy blog posts have proven to be challenging.
Infographics, GIFs, videos, clickable maps, charts, and other visual aids should be integrated throughout content to offer a fresh perspective and maintain attention. User-generated content through polls can guide customers to relevant content, making them feel involved in the decisions shaping their journey.
Interactive content serves as a valuable tool for tracking marketing initiatives, providing instant feedback and flagging customer interests. It can significantly boost conversion rates and overall engagement by offering unique experiences that make audiences feel more connected to and involved with your company.
According to Forrester’s prediction for 2024, 75% of buying teams will comprise individuals aged 25 to 44. Recognizing the interests of this younger demographic and meeting their need for personalization and human touch is going to be crucial. Interactive content ensures they receive the right content at the right time by allowing them to influence the content they consume.
Key Strategies in Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
Account-Based Marketing (ABM) has proven successful in boosting conversion rates for B2B marketers. According to a study by RollWorks, 61% of companies highlight the key benefit of ABM as an increase in pipeline opportunities and quality.
- The Power of Intent Data:
ABM is all about targeting specific accounts, but it’s crucial to identify the right ones, with a mix of forward-thinking sales logic, and marketing intelligence. Utilizing intent data helps narrow down engaged accounts by detecting digital body language across online sources. This allows us to focus on accounts actively seeking product information or pricing pages, increasing the likelihood of conversion when beginning outreach. Intent data also helps monitor the satisfaction of current clients and identifies the risk for attrition, aiding in flagging customer churn.
- Keep Up Hyper-Personalization:
Beyond standard personalization, ABM takes it a step further. Understanding an account’s goals, and pain points, will enable you to deliver business-relevant content at the right time. Bringing back the human touch involves knowing your audience thoroughly to provide accurate, relevant and timely information.
- AI Integration:
AI functionality can support ABM efforts by analyzing extensive data sets, providing actionable insights or recommendations, and optimizing resource allocation. AI also enhances conversational marketing, integrating with chatbots and virtual assistants for instant, and detailed responses, ensuring a smoother, more personalized customer journey at scale.
- Merge Sales and Marketing Efforts:
Alignment between marketing and sales is vital to a successful business. The higher level of personalization that buyers in 2024 are looking for requires Sales and Marketing to work in lockstep. Cross-departmental meetings that hold both teams accountable from the same dashboard will be increasingly important to maintain alignment. This fosters better understanding of each team’s impact on goals and facilitates shared ownership, since both teams have visibility on all areas of customer engagementThis alignment and removal of internal barriers to the customer journey and experience is sure to contribute to revenue growth and success. Remember, “ABM is about the overlap, not the handoff”, says Senior Director of SDR from Rollworks.
The B2B marketing trends for 2024 offer exciting opportunities for engagement and growth. Click here to connect with us and ensure you stay ahead in this competitive market today. If you missed Part 1 and Part 2, don’t forget to check out those blogs for further insights.
