The latest developments in B2B technology marketing
B2B organizations form a part of the industry where the marketing and sales cycle is a complex one. There are many decision-makers who come into play while making the final decision. So, as a B2B technology marketer, you should aim to fulfill the requirements of various sections of people. This can be highly challenging as aligning your content with the needs of different stakeholders in a B2B organization is similar to walking on a tight rope.
In a survey, almost 68 percent of the respondents stated that creating content for different roles is a challenging one.
As a B2B marketer, you have to meet the needs of all these individuals who make the purchase on behalf of their organization. There are many takeaways from 2019, which you, as a technology marketer should consider to increase the outreach, find out the essential ones:
1. Increase in content marketing budget:
From the above image, one can see that almost half of the B2B marketers expect their content marketing budget to increase in 2019. As quoted by a millennial keynote speaker, Brian Fanzo:
“Content is not king, great content is king.”
So, if one starts investing in developing better content, then they are likely to gain much better business results.
2. Email newsletter content:
83 percent of the B2B companies use the email newsletter content as part of their marketing program, with 40% of them saying that these newsletters are critical for the success of their content marketing.
Emails has been one of the best channels for communicating with a customer. As per a statistical report, 92% of the tech marketers use email as the top approach for nurturing their customers, with 79% using educational content.
3. Taking a new approach to cold email: Trying out new methods in sending cold emails is one of the major takeaways from 2019. As a B2B technology marketer, you would be tempted to target a specific audience who are more likely to purchase your service or product, but trying out new approaches while sending cold emails can also work wonders for your organization.
The above cold email template was successful with:
- 21 percent response rate
- 57 percent open rate
- Result: 16 new customers
The email worked because of its:
- Exciting subject line” 10 … traction in 10 minutes”
- Enticing offer “triple their monthly run rate”
- Less aggressive tone “ I have an idea”
- Social proof “SaaS company/competitor”
4. Social media:
27 percent of the tech buyers use digital channels for making their initial purchase.
Social media is increasingly becoming integrated with the content strategy. As per the CMI report, tech marketers are becoming more social than ever. They are integrating social channels into a greater vision of content marketing.
Social Media Examiner even found that B2B marketing are expanding beyond LinkedIn:
- 89 percent of B2B marketers have been using LinkedIn
- 83 percent use Twitter
- 55 percent use YouTube
- 26 percent use Instagram
- 61 percent use Google+
- 88 percent use Facebook
- 39 percent use Pinterest
As a marketer, you should be active on all the social media channels, which could be beneficial for your organization.
- Splitting old white papers into blogs:
Whitepapers are many times considered lengthy and tiring to read by many of the readers. In such a scenario, when you split up the whitepaper into various short blogs, then buyers might find it interesting to read. You can even revamp the content with recent news, facts, and figures, images to make the content relevant and enticing for the audience.
- Having a passion for social media marketing: As a B2B technology marketer, you would be having good knowledge of various ways of promoting the technology products, but sometimes you might need the help of passionate social media marketers to reach a wider range of audience.
A passionate social media marketer would be knowing complete ins and outs of the organization and would find out different ways of promoting the product or service.
Conclusion:
B2B tech marketing is challenging, as no particular size fits for all. You have to develop content that provides a 360-degree view to hold the interest of different people in an organization. Understanding the challenges, resolving it with innovative ways, and finding trends are some of the learnings for a B2B technology marketer in 2019.
Written by: Robert Jordan
Robert Jordan, a seasoned marketing professional with over 10 years of experience, currently working as Media Relations Manager at InfoClutch Inc, which is a leading supplier of most sought after technology database including SAP customers list, Salesforce CRM customers list & many more technologies. Have expertise in setting up the lead flow for budding startups and takes it to the next level. Have a deep interest in SEO, SEM & Social Media related discussions. Always open for new ideas & discussions.
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