The Ultimate Guide to B2B Marketing in 2025 (New Data + Expert Tips)

Effective B2B marketing is difficult to get right. Between creative requirements, budget constraints and channel decisions, marketers have a lot to juggle when developing their marketing strategy.

However, the biggest factor in effective marketing is your target audiencee. If you don’t properly target your buyer persona, your promotions and ads are likely to fail. In fact, you might as well not do any marketing at all.

By the end of this article, you will have a better understanding of the most effective B2B marketing B2B marketing Strategies and how to engage and convert your business audience.

What is B2B?

B2B stands for “business-to-business,” a business model in which companies sell products and services to other companies instead of to consumers.

The purpose of B2B marketing is to familiarize other companies with your brand name, demonstrate the value of your product or service, and convert them into customers.

HubSpot is an example of a company that does B2B marketing. HubSpot’s customers are other companies, not individual consumers. Therefore, you can classify all of our marketing efforts as B2B.

B2B vs. B2C marketing

B2B and B2C (business-to-consumer) marketing differ in their respective strategies and applications, as well as their target groups and the way they communicate with them.

B2B marketing targets the needs, interests and challenges of people who make purchases on behalf of or for their organization (and not for themselves), thereby achieving the goal organization the customer.

Here are a few examples of B2B companies:

• A coworking space that rents office space to remote teams and freelancers (e.g rooms)
• An on-demand order fulfillment, warehousing and screen printing service (e.g Powerful)
• A marketing software company that provides social media management tools, lead generation software, and other marketing tools to companies and organizations (e.g HubSpot!)

B2C marketing targets the needs, interests and challenges of individual consumers who make purchases on their own behalf or for themselves and so on person the customer. Here are a few examples of B2C companies:

• An e-commerce company that sells office supplies to remote or self-employed workers (e.g Poppin)
• A store that sells t-shirts and other clothing and accessories (like Goal)
• A music platform that sells streaming subscriptions (like Spotify)

For more context, let’s take a look at this chart comparing B2B and B2C customers.

	For B2B marketing	For B2C marketing
Goal	Customers focus on ROI, efficiency and expertise.	Customers are looking for deals and entertainment (which means marketing needs to be more). Fun).
Purchase motivation	Customers are driven by logic and financial incentives.	Customers are driven by emotions.
driver	Customers want to be informed (this is where B2B content marketing comes in).	Customers value education, but don’t always need it to make a purchasing decision.
Purchase process	Customers enjoy (if not prefer) working with account managers and salespeople.	Customers like to buy directly.
People involved in the purchase	Customers often need to consult with decision makers and other members of their leadership chain before making a purchasing decision.	Customers rarely need to talk to others before making a purchasing decision.
Purpose of purchase	Customers make purchases for long-term solutions, resulting in a longer sales cycle, longer contracts and longer relationships with companies.	Customers are not necessarily looking for long-term solutions or long-term relationships.

As different as they are, B2B and B2C companies overlap in many ways. While Poppin sells office supplies to remote or self-employed individuals, they also design corporate office spaces and branded items.

On the other hand, Printful offers order fulfillment and warehousing for businesses and fulfills e-commerce printing orders for individuals.

No matter how different the B2B and B2C marketing target groups may be, B2B marketers can always learn from B2C campaigns.

I can tell you from experience that there are nuances to consider. For example, logic and financial incentives can increase purchasing motivation in B2B.

However, anyone who is familiar with sales – be it B2B or B2C – knows that there are usually at least some some Emotions that play a role behind every purchase.

In B2B, this could be fear (e.g. are we falling behind our competitors?) or frustration (e.g. our current systems and processes are slowing us down).

It could also be a feeling of hope (e.g. if we invest in this new software, we can become more efficient and stay ahead of our competition).

B2B marketing strategies

As I said above, marketing depends on its target audience. While B2B and B2C marketing are different, not all B2B marketing materials are the same either.

Some of the B2B marketing strategies I cover in this section are preparatory in nature, such as identifying your target audience, while others are ready-to-implement, such as creating a B2B website.

1. Understand the B2B buyer’s journey.

Before we get into the actual strategies you can implement, you need to understand B2B You can accompany the buyer’s journey so you can develop and implement marketing strategies that meet potential customers at every stage of their buying process.

Due to the higher price of B2B products, B2B sales cycles tend to be much longer than B2C cycles.

Nurturing these prospects through marketing also takes a similar amount of time. This means you need to use specific tactics at each stage to get them to make a purchase decision or request a demo.

In other words, B2B marketing isn’t as easy as posting ads on Instagram and hoping for clicks.

The B2B buyer’s journey is divided into three phases:

• Consciousness phase. The prospect has become aware of a problem and begins to educate himself.
• Consideration phase. The interested party is looking for solutions to their new problem.
• Decision phase. The prospect is ready to make a purchase or officially initiate a purchasing process.

After you understand the buyer’s journey, take this opportunity to create a customer journey map for your company – or, if you’re a new marketer at a B2B company, request one for reference.

A customer journey map is a tailored version of the buyer’s journey that shows how your brand interacts with potential customers at each stage.

This information will help you understand which marketing strategies, such as content marketing, are most effective at each stage.

2. Identify your target market and audience.

Who takes the buyer’s journey and buys your products? You can decide. But it all starts with finding out who they are.

First, define your target market. For B2B companies, I recommend first identifying your target companies using firmographic data such as:

• Company size i.e. small, medium or large.
• Company region or location, e.g. B. North America, South America, Africa or certain countries and regions.
• Corporate sector, e.g. B. Healthcare, Fintech or SaaS.
• Number of employees.
• Revenue.

Then define your target group – the specific potential people who are looking for your brand’s products or services. Remember, you are not marketing to other companies. You’re marketing to people who work at that company.

You can use demographic and psychographic data to identify individual prospects to market to. This may include:

• Age.
• Location.
• Gender.
• Education level.
• Job title.
• Behaviors.
• Habits.
• Beliefs.

This information helps you create buyer personas and customer profiles, which in turn helps you understand how they make purchasing decisions and which marketing channels they are most likely to use.

For example, if you’re targeting an entry-level person aged 22 to 26 at a small company in North America, you can probably reach them effectively through social media.

Pro tips

It’s a wonderful starting point, but to truly understand your audience – rather than making educated guesses – you need to do it Speak to them directly.

Therefore, if possible, I would always recommend interviewing existing customers or working with sales, customer service or customer success teams (basically any colleague who speaks directly to customers).

This gives you precise insight into motivations and vulnerabilities. (At least some of this can be found in existing testimonials or reviews.)

I would also view your buyer personas and customer profiles as unfinished, flexible documentation. This means that if you discover something notable, you can update the documents to reflect your findings.

3. Choose your marketing mix (or the 4 Ps of marketing).

Now that you have your buyer’s company, demographic and psychographic information, it’s time to start developing a B2B marketing strategy tailored specifically to them.

Start by defining your marketing mix, or the 4 Ps of marketing:

• product – what product you sell.
• Price — how much the product costs.
• Location — where the product is sold.
• Financial support — where customers find out about the product.

Defining your 4 Ps will help you develop a more comprehensive marketing strategy. It combines all the information you’ve recently found about your prospects with the information you already know about your own product.

This will allow you to develop a more effective strategy than if you started directly with tactics and execution.

Recommended Resource: Marketing Mix Templates

Click here to download the templates for free.

4. Create a B2B marketing plan and strategy.

Once you’ve defined your marketing mix, you can go even deeper by creating a marketing plan and strategy.

A marketing strategy connects market conditions to your company’s goals, and a marketing plan provides an actionable roadmap with specific channels and metrics.

The most important thing is to outline your business’s summary and target markets and decide where you want to advertise it. We recommend starting with a template to create a marketing plan and strategy.

But like your buyer personas and customer profiles, you should view your marketing plan and strategy as something that can change.

This means you can adjust your marketing plan and strategy as you get more data, and that makes sense.

Recommended Resource: Free Marketing Plan Template

Click here to download HubSpot’s free marketing plan template.

This template compiles all the information you need to choose the right B2B marketing channels for your business.

You can design the following:

• Business overview and initiatives.
• Target market.
• Market strategy.
• Budget.
• Marketing channels.
• Marketing technology.

In this list, we could have easily mentioned specific marketing tasks you can do, such as creating online content or publishing short videos.

While these activities will likely be worthwhile, it’s more important to spend your time developing strategies to minimize marketing costs and increase your ROI.

Strategic thinking is the core of your B2B marketing strategy – not implementing specific tactics like blogging or SEO. These will come later once you have defined the big picture.

5. Cover all the basics of your B2B marketing, such as launching a website.

It’s time to get down to the basics, which can vary depending on your industry. For example, in a more traditional industry, you might rely less on your website and more on industry events.

However, you want to make sure your B2B company has most of the following things covered (click on each one for a walk-through checklist):

Regardless of what B2B industry you’re in, and regardless of the type and age of your audience, these things will likely benefit you.

Pro tips

I’ve outlined the “Basics of B2B Marketing” above, and as I said, each is worth implementing as a starting point. That means you don’t have to – and you probably do shouldn’t implement them all at once if you don’t have the resources/infrastructure.

Instead, a staggered approach can help you avoid doing everything achieve nothing because you are underfunded and overwhelmed.

It can also help you set up each marketing area as a pillar that supports rather than hinders the next.

In practice, this might mean launching your website first. This means you get a steady stream of blog content in Hopper and your blog content operations run like a well-oiled machine.

Then you could introduce social media and focus on sharing a mix of new content and repurposing your existing blog content.

This is exactly what I did as a B2B marketing army. (Of course, if you have the resources and infrastructure to launch everything at once, that’s a different story.)

It’s also worth noting that if you start in any of these areas, stick with it over time, using proven methods while experimenting.

But it still doesn’t prove fruitful. You don’t have to move on just because you do think You should.

If you don’t have an in-house specialist and have the budget, it may be worth bringing in external expertise. Even an hour-long consultation with a specialist can help you figure out how to improve your approach.

You may also be better off reallocating your budget and resources Work for you and not for what is not.

6. Conduct a competitive analysis.

To choose your specific marketing strategies even more strategically, conduct a competitive analysis.

Explore the market and see which companies appeal to your target audience. Find out what they are currently doing – do they have a website? A presence on a specific social media platform, such as LinkedIn?

When inspecting competitors, you should pay attention to the following:

• Competitor product offerings.
• Competitor sales tactics and results.
• Competitor marketing content and social media presence.

Recommended Resource: 10 competitive analysis templates

Download now

By taking a high-level overview of these elements, you can identify your competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats – also known as a SWOT analysis.

Once you understand where they stand, you can better compete with them and choose the best channels.

For example, if none of your competitors are on Instagram, Instagram marketing may not be a good strategy (or you should at least test it out first before investing too many resources into it).

Another thing to pay attention to is what you can do better than your competitors. Think about how you can differentiate yourself, which leads us nicely to brand positioning.

7. Determine your brand positioning.

Next, define your brand positioning in the market.

This statement is the who, when, why and how of your brand identity – or how your brand is perceived through the eyes of the customer.

This will help you maintain a consistent brand image regardless of the marketing channels and tactics you use.

Craft a brand positioning statement that your team and potential customers can believe in, and you’ll be ready to take the next step.

Recommended Resource: Positioning statement templates

Download now for free

8. Explore marketing channels you can use.

After completing the previous steps, you are ready to diversify your B2B marketing portfolio and reach the companies you need.

Depending on your customer segments and competitor analysis, you can explore channels, strategies, etc Tools to optimize your leads and customer funnels.

To effectively measure and analyze the success of your marketing efforts across these channels, use HubSpot’s marketing analytics software.

This powerful platform helps you track performance, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions to improve your marketing strategy and drive more sales.

Next, let’s look at the types of B2B marketing you can implement after you’ve created your overall strategy.

Types of B2B Marketing

The following categories are B2B marketing channels that you can connect with your target audience.

B2B email marketing

Email marketing is a proven method for reaching both private and business customers. Most B2B marketers use email – are you one of them?

That should be you. Emails drive engagement, which turns subscribers into leads and then customers.

Download our guide to optimizing email marketing for conversions and learn how to grow your email list, ensure deliverability, and increase engagement.

In contrast to B2C customersB2B customers who respond best to emotions and entertainment look for logic and positive ROI. Essentially they ask themselves: “How can your company help my business grow?”“

That’s why your email marketing needs to consistently resonate with your business customers and focus on things that matter to them – like time, money and resources.

(BUT that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t also deal – tactfully, I might add – with the emotions that might influence your purchasing decisions.)

Email marketing is also a powerful way to share your brand’s content.

Many B2B companies use email newsletters as part of their content marketing program, and the B2B marketers we spoke to say these newsletters are most important to their content marketing success.

With the constant flood of emails flooding our inboxes, it’s more important than ever to create and send effective marketing emails.

To help you create outstanding emails, you can use: HubSpot’s AI email writer.

B2B email marketing best practices

• Write enticing subject lines. Your subject line must be short and engaging. We recommend devoting almost as much time to the subject lines of your emails as the emails themselves. You can also A/B test your subject lines to find what works best for your audience.
• Stick to one call-to-action (CTA) per email. Don’t overload your emails with a dozen CTAs. With one CTA per email, you allow your audience to focus on your email content and ultimately an action.
• Segment your emails to reach the most relevant audience. Email list segmentation helps provide more personalized content to your audience, regardless of where they are in the buyer’s journey. Consumers sometimes prefer email quality over quantity.
• Make sure your email designs are responsive. Most email users access their inboxes on their phones, and emails that don’t display properly on mobile devices are often deleted. Ouch. Don’t allow your email address to be included.
• Don’t be afraid of the cold email. As inconvenient as it is, the right email can attract new customers – like these cold sales email templates that will help you capture your leads’ attention.

HubSpot Tip: You can’t send marketing emails without recipients – these people make up your lists. There are many easy ways to grow your email list. Start with opt-in forms on your website’s homepage, about page, and blog. To get started, check out HubSpot’s Free Form Builder tool.

B2B digital marketing

Every business, B2B or B2C, should have a digital presence – which consists of paid ads, search engine optimization, a website, and any other places your B2B business operates online.

Let’s explore different tactics that can strengthen your B2B digital marketing strategy.

1. Define your target group.

A strong B2B digital marketing strategy starts with defining your target audience or buyer persona. This demographic and psychographic information will inform almost all further marketing activities.

In short: it ensures that your content and digital material is seen by the right eyes and ears (and that no resources are wasted on your site).

2. Create your website.

Secondly, digital marketing cannot work without an informative and engaging website. Most buyers visit a website before making a purchase.

Additionally, the typical B2B sales cycle often involves many key players (e.g. gatekeepers, decision makers, and other people who need to participate in a purchase).

That’s why influencer websites are a simple and easy way to share information about your product or service.

Check out this video to get inspiration on how to build the best B2B websites to impress:

3. Optimize your digital presence.

Your website needs to be more than just informative and engaging, but it also needs to be discoverable.

You can achieve this with on-page SEO and technical SEO tactics. This includes everything from image alt text and meta descriptions (what your visitors can see) to structured data and site speed (what your visitors can’t see).

Off-page SEO also plays a role here, which refers to external linking strategies and social sharing – SEO tactics that take place outside of your website.

4. Run PPC campaigns.

Finally, round out your digital presence with pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, which allows you to expose your content and brand to new audiences through search engines and other advertising platforms.

I recommend maximizing your PPC investment by promoting more than just your specific products or services – such as your brand personality, blog or social media content, or your company’s slogan.

The best way to determine the ROI of your paid ads is to 1) incorporate your buyer persona data and 2) promote content they can relate to.

For example, it is highly unlikely that a new consumer who has never heard of you will search for your exact product.

Maybe they’re looking for a location-based solution or product feature. To reach the largest number of potential customers, you should make sure to target relevant categories within your brand rather than promoting your product or services.

B2B content marketing

We talked about how B2B customers are focused on expertise, guided by logic, and have a desire to learn. What better marketing tool to address these priorities than B2B content marketing?

While a traditional PR marketing strategy interrupts a consumer’s day with promotional material, a content marketing strategy adds valuable information and educates the consumer – which is exactly what B2B customers are looking for.

Not to mention, content marketing supports SEO efforts, which are all about anticipating what your audience is looking for, helping them discover your website and content… and potentially converting them into customers.

It’s important to note that content marketing is most effective when you target your content to different stages of the buyer’s journey.

Jonathan Franchell, CEO and founder of Iron papersays, “Effective content in the awareness phase educates the buyer about their weak points.”

A common mistake B2B organizations make is not educating the buyer about their own company, product or service, notes Franchell. However, he says the buyer is not willing to do that. They are just beginning to understand their problem.

Franchell adds: “B2B companies should also test content. Run a test with an incentive and vary the type of content – use a webinar, an e-book or a video. Understand which content format attracts the right types of buyers and evaluate it at the individual human level.”

Business decision-makers would rather get information from an article than from an advertisement. Knowing this, I would say that you should invest the same (if not more) resources in your content marketing as you do in your traditional advertising strategy.

Because the B2B buyer’s journey is slightly different than the B2C buyer’s journey (which has shorter sales cycles and fewer decision makers involved), the content you create for your B2B content marketing strategy can vary more than the content , which you as a consumer have seen yourself, as shown in the graphic below.

However, before you start creating content, I recommend creating a business blog.

(Don’t worry, growing your blog’s readership is easier than you think.)

Your blog contains all the content you create and serves as a starting point for readers to visit and subscribe.

B2B social media marketing

Believe it or not, B2B buyers and C-level executives can and do do this when making a purchase. That’s right – social media marketing isn’t just for brands that target individual consumers.

However, many B2B companies struggle with social media marketing.

It can be more difficult to connect with business customers through social media, especially because (as mentioned above) there is typically a longer sales cycle and chain of command.

Honestly, B2B social media marketing may not be where you convert the most leads, and that’s okay. It likely comes into play at the beginning of your buyer’s journey.

Social media is a powerful tool for building brand awareness, giving your business an online personality, and humanizing your business – all very important factors when it comes to marketing and connecting with potential customers.

Like email marketing, social media is also a highly effective channel for sharing your content and improving your brand authority. We know that the latter is valued by B2B customers.

Overwhelmed by social media? Spend more time engaging with your followers by using our time-saving social media tools.

Even though your social media accounts may not convert as often as your content or email marketing, they are still just as important. In this case, followers are just as valuable – you never know when they will turn into leads or customers.

HubSpot Tip: Content shared by employee advocates can generate more engagement than content shared by brands. So include your employees in your B2B social media marketing strategy. Encourage them to create their own social media channels and post about life in your company.

Create a culture account (like our @HubSpotLife Instagram) to show what’s going on at work, not just what you’re selling. You never know – this could also attract strong talent.

B2B marketing trends in 2024 (new data)

HubSpot’s blog team conducted research to identify the challenges, opportunities, and initiatives most B2B marketers are focused on in 2024.

I combine these insights with insights from B2B marketing experts.

1. Data protection is the biggest challenge for marketers.

Changes in data protection will be the top priority for everyone in the coming year. In fact, 84% of marketers surveyed in our survey have The Industry Trends Report 2024 states that this has already had an impact on the strategy for 2023.

In 2024, marketers expect the following key changes to impact them the most:

• Opting out of third-party cookies in Google Chrome (a concern of 47% of marketers).
• Apple iOS privacy features (41%).
• GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) (40%).

Specifically for B2B marketers, 21% cite increased privacy regulations that limit access to personal data as the biggest challenge they face in 2024.

Second, at 20%, is a lack of information about the pain points and challenges their customers face.

Expert Insights: Adopt audience-centric thinking.

“As marketers no longer have the ability to track users as closely, there is a necessary move toward a more audience-focused mindset. Instead of “following” users around the internet with advertising, it’s more about being where they are in an authentic way.” says Marcus ClarkeFounder at Viewfinder.

Clarke explains that this requires marketers to think deeper about two things:

1. Where are your users?
2. What content are they consuming across the funnel?

For example, do they consume before or after photos on Pinterest or watch tutorials on YouTube? Marcus certainly emphasizes that “It’s about building a better ecosystem to capture demand holistically.”

2. B2B marketers should use AI, but…

At least 70% of U.S. B2B marketers surveyed in HubSpot’s 2024 State of AI survey agree with marketers should use generative AI in their roles, But You shouldn’t rely on it too much.

This compares to 19% who say marketers should use generative AI as much as possible and 11% who believe marketers should avoid using generative AI in their roles entirely.

Additionally, over 70% of B2B marketers agree that generative AI…

• Improve the quality of the marketing content they create (76%).
• Help them create marketing content more efficiently (76%).
• Help them create significantly more content than they could without this opportunity (72%).

…which suggests that the key use cases for AI in B2B marketing are specifically to improve the quality, efficiency and volume of content creation. But how can B2B marketers use AI as a key instead of the entire toolbox?

Expert Insights: Treat AI as a tool, not the entire toolbox.

“A large part of our B2B business is cold outreach, SEO, email and some demand generation programs. So it’s mainly content for which we use AI. Then a few use cases in ClickUp automation.” says Adi AbdurabSenior Content Marketing Manager KodeKloud.

Abdurab notes that in an ideal world, we would tell the AI ​​to write everything we need and we would be done in 23 seconds. “However, at the first opportunity, the AI ​​will write something that is not only unreadable but borderline offensive.” he says.

Adi explains that to combat this, the team created a custom GPT and trained it on all of KodeKloud’s (and some of its competitors’) marketing materials.

The team uses the GPT to help with brainstorming and outlining. But there is no case where they can just send the content without a second look.

Adi adds: “The biggest thing I keep noticing is that ChatGPT resets itself after a few prompts. And repeatedly transforms the text into a marketing pitch. An impersonal one at that. So when we launch a sales campaign, we ask them to create ad copy, offers, and filler content. The kind of stuff we know people are going to skim over anyway.”

Another use case from the KodeKloud team is using AI to support customer onboarding. The team uses AI to sift through simple data for them so they can do it “Focus on the most important topics of conversation and don’t get bogged down in unnecessary diagrams.”

3. Finding new content ideas is one of the biggest challenges for B2B marketers in 2024.

At least 16% of B2B marketers cited “finding new content ideas” as their biggest challenge They believe they will face each other in 2024.

No wonder brainstorming new ideas or perspectives is the top marketing use case for generative AI, according to a recent study from HubSpot.

In addition to new ideas, B2B marketers expect further challenges in content marketing.

“Creating content that drives high levels of online engagement” and “reaching your target audience” came in second at 15%. The areas of “measuring ROI” and “creating content that attracts more traffic to your website” ranked third with 14% each.

Expert Insights: Leverage technical content marketing

“With SEO becoming increasingly saturated and Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) now in beta and soon to come for the rest of us, it’s time for some new strategies. One that I advocate is investing in.” Technical content marketing,” says Lauren LangContent Director at Uplevel.

Lang explains that decision makers and stakeholders need more in-depth BOFU articles to evaluate the product and explore features.

To top it off, you can also use these BOFU pieces to create a moat (helping you stand out and stay competitive) by highlighting:

• What really sets your product apart.
• Why it’s the best way to get results.
• How it works for common use cases.

Lang adds: “This goes a level deeper than typical SEO content, but decision makers are looking for this type of information. The more you can present it to them in an accessible way (rather than having them comb through your product documentation), the more likely your product is to stand out.”

First steps: Technical content marketing is worth it if you’re looking for new B2B content ideas. To get started, Lauren recommends reaching out to a product marketer on your team if you have one.

If not, reach out to your product team directly and start collaborating.

4. Short video content increases ROI for B2B marketers.

HubSpot’s 2024 Trends Report found that short-form video content (e.g. TikTok, Reels, YouTube Shorts, etc.) provided marketers with the highest ROI at 17%.

In context, creating content that reflected their brand’s values ​​(e.g. social responsibility) followed (13%).

No wonder, then, that 53% of B2B marketers surveyed plan to increase their investment in short-form videos in 2024, while 36% plan to continue investing the same amount.

But how do short videos actually work in B2B?

Expert Insights: Promote a recognizable, relatable brand.

Daniel KosmalaSenior Marketing Manager at Uscreennotes that short content is very difficult for B2B companies. The sales process is usually longer than with e-commerce or other B2C offers.

“Not to mention, potential customers will typically see your short-form content outside of your ecosystem via recommended content, whether they’re scrolling YouTube Shorts, TikToks, or Reels.” says Kosmala.

Kosmala explains that because of this, you are not only competing with your competitors, but also with anyone who is trying to grab the attention of your ideal viewers.

Taken together, these things create a more challenging environment for B2B marketers.

To overcome these challengesKosmala recommends having a recognizable, relatable brand and a relationship with your audience.

“And of course a killer hook can help a lot, but having that relationship and quickly giving the viewer the context they need without losing their interest is bound to have an impact in short videos.” says Kosmala.

5. B2B marketers plan to use short videos more than other media formats.

We reported that 53% of B2B marketers surveyed plan to increase their investments in 2024.

However, when it comes to media formats, short-form videos are generally the preferred choice, with 21% of B2B marketers making them their preferred investment.

As mentioned above, short videos also generated the highest ROI compared to other formats like images, blog posts, podcasts, and case studies.

This connection to ROI will likely make B2B marketers want to invest more in this area in 2024.

What I love: I may be biased here, but I really like how HubSpot approaches short-form video content on TiKTok. I just shared an example above. But HubSpot’s TikTok channel is full of great examples.

I especially love this short video because it’s fun, relatable, and presents a HubSpot product in a relevant context. I mean, are you even in B2B marketing if you don’t come back?

6. When using influencer marketing, micro-influencers are best for B2B.

Due to the pandemic, we have seen a huge shift in the way consumers shop: the majority now shop online – and particularly buy products directly through social media.

It makes sense, therefore, that marketers with influencer partnerships would want to ensure that their products or services appear on social channels.

This is evident in the unprecedented growth of the influencer industry. Influencer marketing is expected to be one $24 billion industry over by 2024 three times It is Size since 2019.

Especially in the B2B sector: 46% of marketers surveyed are already using it Influencer/creator marketing.

But here’s a warning: Choose your partnerships carefully. While it can be tempting to find influencers with huge audiences, many companies have found more success with micro-influencers.

For example, 61% of B2B marketers found the most success working with micro-influencers (10,000-99,999 followers/subscribers).

In comparison, only 18% said they found success by collaborating with mega-influencers (more than a million followers/subscribers).

So if audience size isn’t the be-all and end-all, how can you be sure you’re choosing the best influencer partnerships for your B2B brand? And at the same time run effective campaigns?

Expert Insights: Get inspired by the B2C space.

“It’s no surprise that influencer marketing is seeing growth in the B2B space. For many years we have seen Facebook, Instagram and now TikTok flooded with product recommendations from content creators.” says Rob IllidgeCEO of the B2B content platform Vulse.

Illidge notes that LinkedIn is no different. As personal branding becomes more important, we are already seeing a rise in influencer marketing.

“At Vulse, we were the early pioneers of this approach and have built an army of over 1,200 brand ambassadors who truly enjoyed, used and loved our product.” Illidge says.

If you want to get started with influencer marketing in B2B, Illidge explains that the process for running your campaigns should be no different than those in B2C.

If you’re not sure what that looks like, here’s Rob’s recommended five-step process:

1. Define your product offering and message and answer why you are doing this.
2. Research the B2B content creators you want to work with. Select those with different audiences to test the effectiveness of the campaign. Thoroughly research your audiences and engagement rates – these metrics are critically important.
3. Build a relationship, get to know them and understand their tone. Don’t try to force them to post something that doesn’t reflect their personality.
4. Run campaigns that span multiple posts. Try to avoid the trap of posting once, as it is unlikely to give influencers the reach and attention they deserve. Offer creators multiple creative options.
5. Analyze performance consistently. Check the effectiveness of the campaign and talk to the creators to see how they responded to paid partnerships.

7. When it comes to social media marketing specifically, B2B marketers struggle to measure ROI.

At 17%, measuring the ROI of social media marketing efforts was among the top social-specific challenges for B2B marketers.

Measuring ROI can be easier for some activities than others. For example, tracking the ROI of a social media advertising campaign is easy if you track the sales generated from an ad placed on Facebook.

Sales are a tangible result and Facebook Ads Manager makes it easy to track the ROI of your efforts.

However, other activities may be more difficult to track. For example, analyzing which social media or blog content led to sales can be tedious and complicated.

To address this challenge, read How to Calculate ROI in Marketing (Free Excel Templates).

Additionally, consider A/B testing different marketing activities and tracking ROI to determine which platforms traditionally produce the greatest ROI for your business.

For example, most marketers find the highest ROI on Facebook. This may vary depending on your brand or business needs.

Expert Insights: Measure the ROI of Influencer Marketing.

I spoke to Rob Illidge from Vulse about influencer marketing through social media. He specifically shared insights on how to measure the ROI of these campaigns.

“This is something you should live and breathe. The first step is to set goals – what does success look like at the end of each campaign day, campaign week or campaign month?” he says.

Rob adds: “Assign three KPIs that will determine the success of the campaign and make sure you have the right tracking in place before you begin. Test these before you begin. Test and adjust your campaigns over time to align with your goals.”

8. The top goal for B2B marketers in 2024 is increasing sales and revenue.

Looking ahead, B2B marketers’ top priority in 2024 will remain the same as last year: increase sales and revenue.

For comparison, here are the five most important B2B marketing goals:

1. Increase sales and revenue (22%).
2. Improve customer experience (19%).
3. Increase brand awareness (18%).
4. Increase engagement (17%).
5. Improve sales and marketing alignment (17%).

A word about brand awareness: About half of B2B marketers said “increasing brand awareness” was their top goal in 2022. The reduction occurs in 2024, and it is still one of the top three marketing priorities in the B2B space.

Brand awareness is critical to driving trust, long-term loyalty and brand equity. So it’s understandable that so many marketers consider this crucial to long-term success.

He is also the main evangelist at Final stop Sangram Vajre predicts that data collection will become a key priority for brands.

As he puts it, “The quality of our campaigns and initiatives will increasingly depend on our CRM, CDP and third-party sources to create stylized, targeted and actionable marketing initiatives. And as CMOs become increasingly tied to ROI numbers, we need to up our game.”

Take a look at Everything You Need to Know About Data Management to consider how you can manage your data more efficiently and sustainably.

Additionally, if you’re not sure how to continue tracking your audience without using third-party cookies, check out 7 Marketing Alternatives to Tracking Cookies.

Expert Insights: Remarketing to Past Customers.

When it comes to increasing sales, it may seem logical to continue acquiring new customers. However, this generally results in a longer sales cycle and the leads are colder than the ones you already know.

A cost-effective marketing tactic to increase sales focuses on the customers who already know you and have used your product or service in the past.

Rachel Whitehead, Vice President of Marketing at ChartMogulsuggests updating your reactivation campaigns.

Whitehead says: “The top quartile of SaaS companies are winning back One in four customers has churnedcontributing to revenue growth of up to 30% of churned ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue).”

Whitehead points out that the high churn rates among B2B companies over the past two years were largely due to aggressive short-term cost cutting that forced customer champions to part ways with their favorite tools.

“While enterprise technology spending is unlikely to reach 2021 levels any time soon, it is now stable and automated reactivation campaigns are a cost-effective activity worth setting up.” Whitehead says.

Whitehead understands that cost cutting increases churn rates among B2B companies. However, with targeted marketing, companies can encourage existing customers to return.

First steps: For a successful reactivation marketing campaign, Whitehead recommends you “Segment your churned customers to find out who else meets the ICP criteria and lure them back into a sales conversation or a free trial of your now improved product.”

These former customers already know your brand, so the cost of regaining them is relatively low. “Although it’s easy to miss, you shouldn’t sleep when reactivating,” says Whitehead.

9. This year, B2B marketers will reduce their investments in NFTs, white papers, podcasts and other audio content.

As important as it is to learn what marketers are up to, it is equally important to learn what they are up to not to do.

This can help you identify your own guardrails and ensure you stick to the most efficient marketing strategies instead of wasting time and resources on everyone.

Blog research from HubSpot found that 17% of B2B marketers plan to reduce their investments in NFTs this year.

This is closely followed by 16% of B2B marketers planning to reduce investments in white papers and 15% in podcasts and audio content.

That doesn’t mean these activities are inefficient, but it is important does suggest that some survey respondents found the time, effort, and resources required for each of these efforts to be inadequate.

Ultimately, it comes down to your audience’s preferences.

That said, audio content isn’t going anywhere – so if you haven’t already, you might think about testing different audio formats in 2024 to see how they resonate with your audience.

If you’re not sure how to get started, take a look at Everything You Need to Know About Starting a Podcast or Clubhouse vs. Podcasts: What Should Marketers Use? (Data + Expert Tips).

Expert Insights: Go beyond the faceless corporate host.

“I think the way B2B marketing teams approach audio content can and will change. Most teams have now tested the podcast and we have proven that it is incredibly difficult to create a podcast that people like with somewhat boring content and a “faceless” corporate presenter.” says Ben Goodey.

Goodey is the founder of Spicy margarita content and the SEO podcast and case study community, How the hell.

Goodey reiterates that podcasts are far from dead, pointing out that they have never been more widespread or popular in the B2C space – video clips from podcasts drive half of the internet content on Instagram and TikTok.

But how can B2B marketers reflect this B2C success? Ben recommends B2B marketers check out what professional B2C creator podcasts are doing: “Build it around hosts with great personalities, make it a video and audio show, and then distribute it heavily via video across all platforms.”

Examples of B2B marketing

A B2B marketing approach that works for one company may not work for another, but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn something from the pros.

Here are eight Examples of B2B marketing from companies doing it right.

1. Social Media Marketing: Adobe

TikTok seems like a difficult platform to stand out as a B2B brand, but some companies have managed to attract thousands – if not Millions – the viewer to their videos through high-quality content and an understanding of the app.

Let’s take the software company Adobe, which has 262.3k followers and 2 million likes TikTok account.

When Adobe first joined the app, the company’s second video received over 2 million views. The video asked its audience: Who is a creative TikToker we should know? This encouraged high audience engagement.

Adobe is successful with the app because it creates engaging content that is specifically tailored to TikTok’s target audience. All of Adobe’s videos are short, entertaining, and easy to understand.

Take the example below, which has over 370,000 views, and shows how user @emilesam used Adobe’s After Effects editing to create a fight sequence against himself.

The brand does a good job of highlighting its products in a fun and non-promotional way.

Both consumers and companies can see a clear connection between using Adobe’s products and success on TikTok – making this a great example of B2B marketing.

2. Content Marketing: Shopify

The e-commerce company Shopify produces many different types of content resources, such as blogs, business courses, and community events.

But one content avenue that helps the brand stand out is theirs PodcastAptly titled: Shopify Masters: The eCommerce business and marketing podcast for ambitious entrepreneurs.

The podcast focuses on inspiring stories from entrepreneurs and offers practical tips for starting an online business on Shopify.

Episode topics range from “Turning the soda industry on its head with a healthy twist” to “How Masks For Dogs landed a deal on Shark Tank.”

Offering so much valuable and interesting content for free is a fantastic example of effective B2B marketing that should always provide value before trying to extract it.

3. Digital Marketing: Mailchimp

Mailchimp homepage is easy to navigate and focuses entirely on its customers’ pain points.

For example, think of the first large text you see when you click on the page: “Get down to business and increase sales.” The smaller text below reads: “Interact with your customers and increase your business with Mailchimp’s advanced yet easy-to-use marketing platform.”

The language focuses on the customer and how Mailchimp can help them reach them her Aim to grow their business.

Additionally, the website offers a banner at the top of the page that allows customers to choose which language they prefer to view the website in.

Even the company’s product navigation menu includes information about how the product can “get your business online” and “market your business.”

Ultimately, the company shows how much it values ​​each customer by tailoring each piece of content to their individual challenges.

4. Customer testimonials: Venngage

Venngage took advantage of the positive customer reviews and distributed them on its website.

This social proof shows prospects that you have a track record of reliability and have delighted previous customers beyond their expectations.

Sharing testimonials can also have a big impact on potential consumers in the consideration and decision phase.

Finally, 76% of consumers “regularly” read online reviews for local businesses, which is up from 77% in 2021. Therefore, leveraging customer feedback is a great tool to attract new business.

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5. B2B SEO: TravelPerk, Google

A B2B buyer spends 27% During the purchasing process, they research online independently and may use at least one search engine during the online research.

It’s worth making sure other companies can find you easily.

TravelPerk offers a diverse range of paid search and SEO services. Its impressive SEO strategy involves using topic clusters and subtopics to reach its target audience.

TravelPerk ensures that search engine sites such as “Business Travel Expenses” have a paid ad that leads to its website or high-level blog content that provides the information travelers are looking for.

6. Inside Influence Marketing: IBM, Influencer and Employee Advocacy Program

The IBM Systems group of companies has recognized the growing importance of employee voice and the rise of employee influencers as a strategy in B2B marketing.

In the words of Ryan CashGlobal Social Programs Lead, he says:

“In the world of B2B marketing, we all understand that buyers trust individual voices more than formal marketing and advertising messages. Therefore, finding ways to optimize influence internally is becoming increasingly important.”

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Having people in your company who have an affinity for the industry and extensive knowledge of trending topics and your brand could be the key to building new relationships in the industry.

7. B2B Referral Program: Blackbaud, Blackbaud Champions

Blackbaud offers an incredible B2B referral program that encourages existing customers to become product advocates – Blackbaud Champions.

Champions are encouraged to share their insights into how the implementation process works, what it’s like to collaborate with the team, and how Blackbaud solutions have helped them advance their mission.

If you share your experiences, the brand will reward you with benefits.

By providing your feedback and participating in case studies, you will earn reward points in the Blackbaud Champions Hub, which you can redeem for Champions Rewards.

Champions are eager to redeem these points, which include incentives such as discounts, free tickets, gift cards, VIP experiences and more.

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Referral programs are a great way to increase customer loyalty and ensure advocates spread the word about your business across the network.

Invest in B2B marketing and reach your business customers

Marketing isn’t effective if you don’t keep your audience in mind, and no other audience is as fickle and critical as business customers.

Your marketing should communicate how your company can help their business. If this isn’t the case, you can align your B2B marketing strategies to make it happen.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in March 2021 and has been updated for completeness.