B2B Marketing Trends to Shoot Up Sales In 2021

What change do you find in the customers nowadays?

Most of you would reply-customers are on and off in the sales cycle.

With the current pandemic hitting hard, it’s just not the marketers who are bearing the brunt; the customers are also facing the same. Although their challenges are distinct, the outcome is the loss for both of them.

This is making marketers push the boundaries of the already established marketing strategies. They are having the best marketing plan to reach the target. Some of them are even outsourcing it to shoot up sales instantly. But not many prefer to outsource it completely; they like a combination of both.

Here you can see, almost 76% of B2B professionals stating that they have a formal marketing plan, and almost 56% stated that they would like the combination of both in-house and outsourced one. Its because during these unprecedented times, marketers are confused about which strategy to choose from.

Source: smartinsights.com

In another finding, almost 44% of the CMOs stated, having midyear budget cuts due to pandemic. This shows that they wanted to spend on tactics that would shoot up the business results. ~ gartner.com

The best techniques are often run by innovation.

As stated by Milan Kundera:

“Businesses has only two functions- marketing and innovation.”

It makes sense in the current scenario, where organizations work on a completely different model during the pandemic.

Popular B2B Marketing Trends for 2021:

1. The Ever-green Email Marketing:

No other marketing strategy has been highly successful as email marketing. In the current scenario, it has beaten other tactics convincingly.

With organizations planning to cost-cutting, every other company finds email marketing a safe and reliable communication mode.

As per a finding, almost 81% of the small businesses rely on this channel for their primary customer acquisition.

~ oberlo.com

This is an impressive number and shows the level of trust which they have in email marketing.

2. Content Marketing:

The freshness that content can provide is incomparable.

In the current world, where readers don’t have the patience to stick to a specific content, an innovative style of presenting the content could turn around things.

Here, we take the example of Shutterstock, which excelled in its content marketing strategy. In this image, one can see the brand making the best of its resources. It made its marketing approach interactive for better outreach. The colors and the images are just enough to attract attention.

Remember, good content can just nudge your marketing strategy; you need not try hard.

Source: optinmonster.com

3. Chatbot:

You can now find chatbots almost everywhere. Whether they are large enterprises or the growing SMBs, chatbots fill the void of 24/7 customer service like being available every time. We should understand that representatives are also human like us. And the job where you give high importance to customer’s challenges, and satisfaction, you can’t afford to be unreachable for a fraction of a second.

The chatbots do this mechanical job with great efficiency. With the chatbots getting evolved with AI, they can now provide relevant and programmed answers to the customer’s satisfaction. So, don’t stereotype chatbots as technologies that can never advance!!!

Some of the top industries that have already benefitted hugely from chatbots are the travel industry, finance, healthcare, and real estate.

4. Deja-vu or Familiar Marketing:

Marketers often overlook the power of deja-vu marketing.

Source: frontiersin.org

What is deja-vu?

Have you ever felt that you visited a place before or faced the scenario before?

It’s called the déjà vu feeling where you get the nostalgic vibes.

People like comfortable and safe products to fall back upon when everything else fails. As a marketer, you can also fall back on this déjà vu strategy to bring back the old products just as putting old wine in a new bottle!!!

Announce to your customer that their favorite service is back…

Further add, it has been modified as per the current demands and would offer the same quality service to make them happy. This form of marketing arises curiosity among the customers motivating them to purchase the service. They would want to know how the amalgamation of the old and new practices lead to the new product.

The practice leads to brand recall where customers remember how the product fulfilled their requirements before and now, and discuss it with their friends and families.

5. Changing Mind with NUMBERS Content:

Every B2B organization likes to collaborate with other businesses that offer valued service and provide knowledgeable content or form of discussion. While the qualitative content is popular among the audience, the quantitative one is the show-stopper.

Why so?

Decision-makers like content that has some numbers and data to back that content.

Source: smartinsights.com

Just as you check this content with mammoth numbers, you would come to know the importance of numbers. In this context, a typical question was asked to the B2B marketer?

And all the answers are in %, a useful and informative short content.

You can’t say qualitative content is not trustworthy but when you have the numbers added in the same content, it increases the content’s value. Thus, you can project yourself as a thought-leader in the industry to help others in their decisions.

6. Our very own- personalization:

Never forget about personalization. This tactic looks simple but actually needs more research and ideas. The more you personalize the more you can engage a specific set of customers. It makes your way into the hearts of the customers. Isn’t that what you want?

A great engagement, leading to a fulfilling customer experience.

Source: neilpatel.com

Now here you can see some of the valued benefits of personalization. Almost 66% of the marketers stated improved business performance and the customer experience drives the implementation of personalization.  It helps keep consumer longer and let the wallet grow faster.

When personalization is implemented the right way, 78% of the customers are more likely to become repeat customers. A good number for you!!!

7. Process Automation:

With automation, you can streamline the process, and reap the benefits. The technology makes the connection faster with the customer and that too at the right time.

Just how?

To start with, the personalized cart abandonment emails, the welcome emails, and others can be automated. The technology just shoots up the email at the right time.

This is one of the fine examples of the welcome email, where you can see the marketer welcoming the customer and putting across a simple and sweet message such as “We’re so happy to have you! Stay in touch.”

This gives a good feeling, now this entire message has been crafted precisely, and added into the automation process where it automatically shoots the email to the right customer.

8. Keeping the Customer Back:

You must know every existing customer is a valuable customer. You couldn’t afford to ignore any of them, so find out different ways to hold onto the customer.

This type of marketing is called retention marketing where you think of the strategy to include the content, approaches, and others to develop a good relationship with your customers. It further makes the customers loyal to your brand.

As per a finding, a 5% boost in the customer retention rate increases the profit between 25% to 95%.

Another statistical finding, businesses lose $1.6 trillion with the acquisition of their customer by competitors.

All these numbers are the trigger points to develop the right strategy to retain the customers.

Conclusion:

While some marketers have adjusted to the new normal, others are still struggling. But none can disagree that they need to revamp their strategy to meet the fast-changing requirements.

To play a long game in the digital world, they need to find the best tactics suitable for their businesses. The blog lists out some of the best B2B marketing strategies to boost sales in the year of hope-2021 after the pandemic.