One of the main areas of focus for B2B marketing is lead generation and ROI. This is the bread and butter for companies to attract and convert more quality leads. They also want to know what they’re getting in return for their marketing efforts. Below are trends and tips to stay on top of if you want to succeed this year with B2B marketing.

Targeted Audience

Don’t try to target everyone you think would be interested in your business at once. It’s best to have a targeted audience and refine the audience so that you have a core audience. Create buyer personas and truly understand who you want your client to be. Sometimes it’s not the person you think it is. Take time to put research behind your personas and focus on these people first.

Brand the C-Suite Executives

The executives are a major factor in attracting companies to your brand. The Founder, CEO, CMO and more need to have a face and make sure they are representing the brand. Consumers want to put faces or personalities behind the products or services they use. Having the C-suite promote the brand and talk about their expertise gives the consumer more trust and makes it more likely for them to consider your brand.

As opposed to B2C, where consumers know exactly what they’re getting and can put items in their online shopping cart, B2B usually doesn’t have that luxury. This industry generally requires more thought and touch-points before purchase. Therefore, offering as much authenticity and a voice for consumers to rely on is key.

Visual Content

Visual content is more successful than any other form of communication. We’ve seen the benefits in B2C marketing where visual assets can entice a consumer to make a purchase. A woman is looking at a pair of shoes on Nordstrom’s website and they remarket her by the showing the shoes to her again on another site. The same can be said for B2B where visual content can entice a consumer and keep your brand top of mind. Other ideas for visual content include videos, infographics and images.

Experiential Marketing

People learn and retain information in different ways, but a truly successful tactic is to show someone rather than tell them. Provide your potential customers with demos and give them an experience where they can see or test the product. For example, a luxury furniture manufacturer wants to have their beds in all of the 5 star Miami hotels, so they put a few beds in some of the rooms to test. The General Manager of the hotel can lay on the bed or have guests test out the comfort, softness, etc. This gives the consumer a better understanding of your offering and a more vivid experience. This can be translated across multiple industries. Take something

UX Design and Marketing Collaboration

You can have the best offering such as a free toolkit or trial period for consumers, but if they get lost or confused on your site, you’ve lost a potential customer. Make the experience as streamlined and easy as possible for consumers to find your offering or additional information. If someone has to dig for info by clicking on multiple tabs, the experience has been tainted and many do not have the patience to look further.

This is why UX Designers and the marketing team need to work together. The marketing team knows where to find the potential users, attract them and lead them to a landing page. The designers will make sure the user stays on the page to perform the desired action.