5 B2B Marketing Trends to Follow (or Avoid) in 2021 & 2022

With the number of people using the internet to find their desired products and services at an all-time high, it’s important to be cognizant of your digital marketing tactics. 

Part of this is keeping up with B2B digital marketing trends and including them in your marketing efforts -- or learning from the mistakes of your peers. In doing so, you’ll align yourself and your business for success and will even create new ways of generating leads along the way.

5 B2B Marketing Trends to Follow In 2021

Inbound marketing trends are always changing, so it’s best to try and keep up with them at least yearly. Below are five B2B marketing trends to follow this year:

• Personalization
• Video marketing
• Content marketing
• Customer experience
• ABM
  
  

B2B Personalization

With how competitive the digital marketing sphere is, it’s imperative to add personalization to your strategy. Marketing personalization is a great tool for building your brand and closing sales.

This is achieved through the use of digital data collection, which happens through:

• Social media use
• Blog activity
• Searches
• General website usage
• And more 

This allows you to analyze your prospect’s preferences and other vital details. 

To personalize your marketing, you need to know your audience’s interests and pain points. By taking what you learn through digital data collection, you can personalize the content you produce for certain audiences in different stages of the buyer’s journey.

B2B Video Marketing

Using videos in your marketing is a great way to capture your audience’s attention. And the best part is that videos are versatile, and can be used in email marketing, content marketing, social media marketing, and more.

Video marketing has been one of the biggest online marketing trends in recent years, and 84% of people now say they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video.

Similar to content marketing. you can use video to appeal to your prospects in any stage of the buyer’s journey. Don’t miss out on your opportunity to thrive this year by ignoring the relevance and effectiveness of video marketing. Trust us -- it’s not as expensive as you think.

B2B Content Marketing

Content is king. It’s one of the most effective, budget-friendly methods to increase your web traffic and convert more leads. 

There are many free and paid platforms out there that assist with keyword research and long-term strategizing. Thanks to them, even small businesses can compete with the “big fish” out in the ocean.

Content marketing is all about creating and posting valuable, relevant, and consistent content that’s geared for a specific audience. It’s a great way to both be discovered and improve the return rate of previous readers.

Customer Experience

Today’s consumers expect easy access to the information they need online. There’s no wiggle room for you to create any extra hurdles your prospects have to go through to get what they want.

In other words: Provide your visitors with a great customer experience, or another company will.

The use of chatbots has become increasingly popular, and helps give your website a 24/7 helpline that providers visitors with a human-like experience.

ABM

Account-based marketing, also known as ABM, is one of the most popular and effective marketing trends that exists. It’s the key to adding extreme personalization to your efforts, and allows you to target demographics within your own target audience. 

ABM allows sales and marketing teams to work together to identify what the “best-fitting” accounts are for certain marketing efforts. Identifying these accounts becomes easier when you rely on digital data collection. 

This allows you to segment your contacts and market accordingly. For example, you may create a marketing email that you only want to send to contacts whose job title you know. Through the use of ABM this is not only possible, but also easier than ever before.

2 B2B Marketing Trends to Avoid

Now that you know about some good online marketing trends to follow, there are two trends that you should avoid at all costs:

• Using “the new normal”
• LinkedIn spamming
  
  

Using “The New Normal”

We get it. Everybody is sick of COVID and the social restrictions that come with it. And while it never hurts to use data from the pandemic to convey or stress the importance of a product or new service, you should refrain from referring to these times as “the new normal.”

People are sick of this phrase, and it gives them a negative association with a brand that they believe is using the pandemic to make sales. Not only that, but it makes you seem like a Debbie Downer that believes the world is “doomed.”

Stop using this phrase, and stop being a Debbie Downer.

LinkedIn Spamming

Among all the social media platforms, LinkedIn has built a reputation as the meeting hub for people who want to do business. It has become a place where people can not only showcase their skills, but where people can search for sales opportunities, products, and services.

While LinkedIn is a great place to generate leads, there’s a right and wrong way to do it. Those random invitations to connect that ask you for a moment of time? Not so much. How often do you reply, schedule a call, and then buy someone’s product or service from LinkedIn?

Your answer to that question is exactly why you should avoid LinkedIn spamming.

However, LinkedIn is not all bad. In fact, it’s a great platform for networking and is actually the top platform for B2B lead generation. You just need to know how to use it properly and without spamming any potential leads you may have.  

B2B Inbound Marketing 2021

Now that you’re caught up on B2B marketing trends for 2021, you can adjust your strategy moving forward. Never forget that all of your marketing efforts should cater to your target audience, and should revolve around their questions, concerns, pain points, and so on.

To learn more about running a successful inbound marketing campaign, check out our free inbound marketing campaign checklist: