B2B marketing - three major trends
Christmas trees are slowly ceasing to light up our homes and streets. So it's time to shed some light on the marketing trends of 2017. Which sectors should you, as a company, focus your attention on? What's on your customers' wish list this year? And how to attract more potential business partners? We present three interesting ideas.
Customer experience and clientocentrism
We live in the age of the customer. Сustomer experience (CX) will be the deciding factor for brands in 2017, not price or even the product itself. Customers want communication aimed directly at them that satisfies their personal desires as well as their requirements. This influences how a company advertises, sells and delivers services and products. Often too much emphasis is placed on what we deliver instead of focusing on how we deliver, for it is the customer who should be at the center of all communication. This approach is called clientocentrism. What is the added value of your products and services to customers? Why are you promoting exactly that? Where, when and through what channels would customers prefer to receive this information? I also relate this to the B2B market, where customer-centric marketing is increasingly important: a specific campaign for a single customer. In 2017, persona and customer journeys should be the foundation of your marketing plan.
Content, content, content!
Consumers are thirsty for high-quality content, such as user-generated-content (UGC), or user-generated content that tells authentic, credible and compelling stories. People are far more likely to buy a product after reading a flattering blog post about it, and they value other customers' opinions more highly than advertising. Almost as important as content is basic information: what works, what doesn't and how you communicate it. Base your marketing on analytics and the systematic generation of quality leads. This trend is becoming increasingly popular in the B2B environment as well. Video and visual storytelling - from short corporate videos to testimonials and vlogs to documentaries, virtual reality and live streaming - are replacing bland corporate presentations and providing a valuable parameter for assessing the value of your website. Short video messages are also increasingly being uploaded to channels such as LinkedIn.
Silos are disappearing from the scene
This trend is growing slowly but decisively: islands are disappearing from companies, where everyone handles their own business. Thanks to increasing digitalization, individual departments need to collaborate with each other and share data and platforms. Getting sales, marketing, IT, HR, customer service and other departments to really work together, however, requires a clear vision and a concrete plan from management - and this is where the buried dog usually lies. The guidance? Have marketing professionals attend sales meetings with customers, have Sales and Marketing sit at the same table and exchange all the information about their customers. The closer they are to each other, the better the results will be. Focus everything on the customer and the circle will close.
Only three trends? Yes. Because the problem with trends is that everyone sets them and shares them, but only a few do anything about them. So let your New Year's resolution for 2017 be: stick to these three ideas. And while you're at it, check out some more of these texts:
