Digital B2B Marketing Ideas For a Post Pandemic Landscape

By Stephen Phanco

So, your business has hit a plateau, growth seems to have stalled or maybe it’s hard to get noticed. The questions swirling around us feel daunting: Will my sales funnel suddenly go empty? How do I budget or forecast for the new uncertainties? What are my competitors doing? What is the most effective strategy for impact? How does my company breakthrough all the noise and clutter? These questions seem endless, but don’t need to create uncertainty.

What has changed? Unless you have been in outer space, everything has changed. How do B2B businesses make headway in this new age of remote selling and client management? For most companies, online channels are now the only way to reach customers. Delivering a streamlined, well executed and personalized customer experience is more important than ever. While everything has slowed down and opportunities are fewer I think we marketers and communicators should be asking probing questions of themselves, their customers, their market insights and be proactive in doing the research necessary to fuel an effective post-pandemic strategy.

So, I come back to the central question that I always ask myself, what else can I do? Here are some thoughts as you prepare your company to grow and prosper in uncertain times.

Four Trends Influencing Marketing Practices for the Remainder of 2020.

1. Marketing leaders need to connect customer experience and growth.

What do I mean by that? Marketers face the very real challenge of driving return on investment (ROI) without significant increases to budget or people. We need to be smarter as it relates to customer experience and marketing performance data while balancing the customer and messaging strategy. Leveraging data to understand changing customer objectives that inform a messaging campaign over the next 8-12 months may determine success or mediocrity. By measuring customer experience against business outcomes will lead to personalized engagement strategies that deliver a heightened experience and drive better sales growth. This can only be achieved by putting customer and marketing performance data at the center to drive smarter decision-making about the future state of products/services that ultimately drive customer satisfaction.

2. B2B marketing and B2C marketing tactics will align and blur their differences.

I have heard “consumerization” of B2B for many years, but it will be even more so in a post coronavirus world. There will be differences of course, B2B has a much lengthier sales cycle as compared to consumer models and B2B marketing requires company insights as well as the individual. However, marketers will need to master the full set of marketing skills to influence decision makers at an individual level. Account based marketing (ABM) already is part of the modern B2B marketing toolkit and this will need to be prioritized even higher to use technology and personalization to effectively move individuals through the buyer journey.

3. Artificial Intelligence (AI) will need to be incorporated to solve data challenges.

According to a Gartner survey, data harmonization is the biggest challenge marketing analysts spend the majority of their time. In the future, we will need to employ effective AI tools to automate the process of collecting and unifying customer and marketing data so more time can be focused on strategy, creative, personalization and analytics. Personalization is the Rosetta Stone for a great customer experience. Predictive modeling and automation are needed to determine timing, content, offers and design to specific users in near real time. In order to optimize campaigns and move at the speed of customers we will need to deploy AI solutions to see across different channels and make adjustments and gain insight for customer journeys.

4. CRM systems will be vital to achieve a single source of truth.

In most organization data flows through multiple departments and channels of communication. Its not just sales and marketing who feed the CRM monster but operations, call centers, help lines and finance all relate together and can either create a seamless client experience or a frustrating one. A critical component to an effective CRM is to create a unifying view from different sources of customer data. Having a single source of truth makes it possible to segment, communicate, measure and refine marketing and sales activity to deliver against customer experience and ultimately growth.

Six Tactics That You Should Be Doing Now to Kickstart Your Growth Cycle

Besides doing the clear functions marketing has always done: planning, media mix modeling, competitive research and message testing, what else can I do?

1. Talk to your customers

Being a good marketer is being a good listener. The best feedback for your company comes from the actual people who pay to use your product or service. What do they say? I mean really say. Asking obvious questions is easy for every organization to absorb but try to look at it from their perspective. Am I solving their problems? Are they not only satisfied but are there areas to improve? This feedback loop will be critical to customer satisfaction and ultimately feeding your growth. The ways to ask for feedback range from the easy and inexpensive to more formal and costly: surveys, follow-up emails, social media and formal research. You will hear from your customer one way or the other. It is a healthy and necessary component of every marketing plan and one that will guide your decisions and drive your company’s growth.

2. Involve customers in your marketing plan.

The customer journey should lead to happy customers. There is no amount of marketing spend that compares to a testimonial or recommendation. Reach out and talk to clients and customers and solicit feedback, ask them if they would be willing to do a video testimonial. Build trust and credibility by utilizing an asset that is already there.

3. Test a few tactics or events every cycle to keep things fresh

Growing and generating revenue will usually depend on 3-4 tactics that work. However, if you were gaining most of your sales leads through tradeshows or events last year and now the coronavirus pandemic has changed that reality, what do you do? How about a webinar or virtual meeting? Try a new account base marketing technique and localize a PTC ad campaign. Always be looking for new tactics and new delivery systems that fit your strategy and budget.

4. Review and manage your data often.

There is no substitute for a good data collection system! It should be the guiding light for your organization. How your customer interacts with your website, how did they get there, which ads are working will all feed into your CRM and ultimately your sales funnel. It guides your decisions around spend, mix, medium etc. I cannot stress this enough; data is the life blood for your business. So, if it’s that important, make sure your data hygiene and collection methods keep pace with your marketing strategies. Incorporate productivity and optimization tools such as AI to keep everything harmonized and useful.

5. Utilize video in your communication.

If you are not utilizing video or animation in your business content, then you are not fully realizing your potential. In 2020, 92% of marketers say that video is an important part of their marketing strategy. This has grown from 78% in 2015. In the digital age video works! People interact with video, make purchase decisions off of them and share them with co-workers and friends. While we deal with remote selling and less contact, video will carry your message and communicate effectively.

6. Monitor your competition.

I am not suggesting that you become obsessed with what your competition is doing but keeping an interest in their business is prudent. Besides the formal competitive tracking, positioning and brand space models that normally occur. Look at their offers, how much traffic are they getting to their website, how does their SEO compare to yours. Go ahead and browse their social media and sign-up for their new white paper. If they are any good, they are looking and consuming yours as well!

Finally, be in a constant state of review in how you are gaining leads and ensure your goals reflect this. After all, there’s little point in investing most of your budget in event marketing if digital marketing has delivered the most qualified leads in the past – or vice versa. Use your data and benchmarks to refresh your documented marketing plan and never stop asking yourself, what else can I do!