B2B Marketing Trends to Help Your Business Grow In 2021

B2B marketing has undergone tremendous change over the last couple of years. Marketers have gone past cold calling and sales to content marketing, search engine optimization, and email marketing. Digital marketing is now the prime weaponry in a business’s marketing arsenal. This makes it crucial for B2B marketers to understand the trends that could be explored in 2021. Some b2b marketing trends to help your business grow in 2021 are as follows:

Retention Marketing – It is well-known in the marketing world that retaining a customer is more cost-effective than earning a new one. Retention marketing is the process of maintaining customer relationships by offering products at lower costs. This essentially should result in higher marketing Return on Investment (ROI).

The benefits of retention marketing are twofold; a customer spends more time and money purchasing from your business. Secondly, the type of marketing is way cheaper than marketing strategies that focus on acquiring new customers. Although acquiring customers shouldn’t be ignored, retention marketing may be more beneficial for your business. Some ways to retain customers are as follows:

  1. Offers & discounts
  2. Customer training
  3. Flawless customer support
  4. Surveys
  5. Customer appreciation

Marketing ListsThis list contains potential or existing customers to increase sales or brand awareness. An accurate B2B marketing list can be a goldmine for businesses. An accurate B2B marketing list can be a goldmine for businesses. They can provide sales leads, focus group participants, customers to provide feedback, etc. However, it is crucial to constantly update your marketing lists to keep them as effective as possible.

Interactive content – Businesses are making their digital content more and more interactive. This allows for increased customer engagement and interaction. In 2021, we can expect to see many more quizzes, videos, and infographics.

Studies have shown that the average attention span of a human has dipped to 8 seconds. Interactive content can help hold their attention for longer. Storytelling, therefore, becomes an integral part of a business’ content strategy.

Chatbots – Web designers are now integrating chatbots as a norm. This trend is expected to carry forward into 2021. Customers are expecting quick replies to their queries. This can be rather difficult to deal with without the help of chatbots.

Many companies are automating chatbots to address their customer’s concerns and help navigate them through the website. This can help improve customer experience, and as a result, companies witness increased customer engagements.

Nostalgia marketing – This is a type of marketing where businesses take advantage of cultural trends and reintroducing a product or service that may have been discontinued.

As we experience these unpredictable times, nostalgia marketing may be a valuable tool to bring back familiarity and comfort.

Voice search marketing – Voice search utilization is picking up so rapidly that by 2021, the numbers are expected to reach 5 billion. By 2022, People using voice utilization is expected to rise to 6.4 billion.

B2B marketers should also be looking forward to utilizing this feature as it gives them more details about customer behavior and requirements. Google and Alexa have seen an increase in their voice search usage. 2021 expects to see companies use this technology to leverage the growing usage of voice search.

Virtual events – COVID-19 was responsible for shutting down nearly every conference and tradeshows of 2020. To improvise, businesses began using virtual events. Regardless of the fate of the pandemic, virtual events are here to stay.

There are both micro and macro B2B marketing trends likely to pick up in 2021. While this list may be far from a comprehensive one, it is something for marketers to consider and capitalize on these trends.