If there’s anything consistent about the digital marketing sphere, it’s change. The industry is constantly evolving, and you as a B2B business need to keep up with what’s happening to maintain a competitive edge. B2B digital marketing isn’t a simple pursuit, but by keeping a finger on the pulse of the ever-emerging trends, you stand a better chance against the competition.

In this article, we’re highlighting not just some of the latest B2B digital marketing trends, but how best you as a B2B company can utilise them. Read on to find out more.

The trend: Intent monitoring

What is it?

Intent monitoring is what it says on the tin. Through the use of data, businesses can measure particular behaviours that indicate the intent of website visitors.

When people visit your website, their activity can be monitored, and they are assigned scores based on the ‘signals’ they are giving off. These scores can depend on a variety of factors including:

• Job title
• Time on page
• Viewing of bottom-funnel content
• Website visits
• Any downloads and registrations

Who’s it for

Intent monitoring can work for any business that is trying to better manage and respond to their audience and web visitor behaviour.

How to utilise it

Using intent marketing tools or B2B intent data providers can help you effectively tailor your marketing efforts. This will help you to get the most out of your resource and enhance the experience of your target audience.

Intent marketing is especially effective for B2B content marketing. Content is one of the most powerful, but often time consuming, tools that your business has. Having the data to inform what you should be producing, and who for, will enable you to better connect with prospects and allow you to put your time where it’s most needed.

This will ultimately help you to solve the pain points of your audience, offering them a useful solution, and boosting the success of your business.

The trend: Increase in case study content

What is it?

More B2B marketers, around 42% according to HubSpot, are attempting to increase their case study content in 2022. Case studies are an effective form of social proof and are valuable in showing audiences how exactly a business has helped its customers.

Who’s it for

Case studies are beneficial for most B2B organisations, providing a rich overview of a business’s products or services and use cases.

Most all B2Bs can benefit from a case study. However, it is best suited to those whose work spreads across a period of time – a few months to a year, for example. They’re also more beneficial for businesses whose work is particularly elaborate or sensitive.

How to utilise it

A successful case study requires a considerate process to execute. It’s a useful part of any content marketing effort, but is a unique kind of content – so must be approached with care.

After conducting an interview, your case study should be written in an unbiased and honest way – depicting both parties accurately and documenting the genuine work that has taken place.

Once your case study has been written, this can be published on your website and can best work as part of a digital campaign. This is something a B2B marketing agency can help with, ensuring your case study reaches the right people, showing you and your partner in the best light possible.

The trend: Influencer marketing

What is it?

This is digital marketing through niche, well-known and influential content creators. Brands often collaborate with influencers in order to help drive brand awareness, increase reach, and drive traffic.

Who’s it for

There are different kinds of influencers from social media influencers to celebrity influencers to key industry leaders. If you want to harness influencer marketing, you’ll need to think of the kind of influencer that will best leverage your brand. Influencer marketing works best when the influencer can accurately portray a B2B brand’s products or services in a way that makes it appeal to audiences.

How to utilise it

One of the best ways to utilise this trend is through social media marketing. Social proof plays a big part here. Lots of people are heavily influenced by what others are saying, be that their friends, family, people they look up to, or even just a majority of people.

Reaching out to an appropriate influencer is a good start. But, don’t just pounce on them asking for favours. Do your research, get to know them and build a rapport. It’s best to ask an influencer who you know or at least suspect will be interested in your offering. Not only does this make it more likely they’ll accept the offer, but it makes the partnership more authentic, too.

Your collaboration can be used across all of your marketing channels, using blog posts, pictures, and videos of the influencer promoting your product or service, and even landing pages. A digital campaign is also an effective way to leverage influencer marketing.

The trend: Using AI to enhance B2B buyer experience

What is it?

Artificial Intelligence isn‘t a new concept, but it is more widely and more rapidly being adopted by digital marketers to save time and improve results. AI digital marketing tools are helping marketers to gain key insights, engage in deep data analysis, and can support decision-making processes.

Who’s it for

Artificial Intelligence for B2B digital marketing works for any business who wants more data-driven results and insights. If you’re a company that already spends a lot of time working with data, AI tools may also help you save time and resource.

How to utilise it

Artificial Intelligence is especially useful within content marketing and email marketing. This kind of marketing can be difficult because it’s not always easy to know where your efforts are working best. AI provides insights into the behaviour of the targeted audiences to understand what content gets results. AI-powered tools can then even help you to improve your copywriting. Although, personally, we quite like the human touch.

Again, customer relationship management (CRM) isn’t a new concept for digital marketers. However, when combined with AI, they maximise the collection of user information across various platforms which enables more accurate insights. It also helps marketers to better see users’ needs, so the most useful marketing strategy can be adopted.

Because of this emphasis on audience-centred insights, AI applications help greatly with lead generation, customer acquisition, and other improvements across the customer journey.

The trend: A human approach

Who’s it for?

Any B2B business!

What is it?

People want to feel valued through all aspects of their life, including work. Work is more about the value our employers can bring to our lives – other than a paycheque.

The point is, it seems there’s an increasing need to see B2B marketing as human-to-human marketing – according to Forbes. It’s people selling to people, and digital marketing efforts need to reflect that.

How to utilise it

It sounds a bit vague and intangible, but trust us, there’s ways to implement this trend to get the best results for your business.

You can start by making time for your prospects. Take the time to thoroughly answer any emails. You might even want to directly approach someone who has shown an interest (whether this be through social media or a simple website visit) and ask them about their wants and needs.

Establishing strong relationships, whether new or old, is the key to customer satisfaction.

Evolve your B2B digital marketing strategy

Above are just some of the emerging B2B digital marketing trends of 2022. Following these are a good start to keep yourself ahead of the game and make your brand stand out.

At EV, we know juggling your digital marketing efforts can feel like a whole new job. That’s why we can do it for you. We have a whole team of creatives, strategists, digital experts and social media-savvy executives, that collaborate to deliver your digital marketing, seamlessly.

Get in touch with us today with any questions you have, or for a chat on how we can elevate your business.