8 Marketing Trends in 2022 to Help B2B Businesses Build Effective Content Strategies
In 2022, B2B businesses are not exempt from the race for growth to recover from the “wounds” that the turbulent year of 2021 left behind. Quickly updating and successfully applying the latest marketing trends is the key to outpacing our competitors. Discover the top 10 marketing trends for B2B businesses in 2022 through the article below!
Popular Marketing Trend in 2022: Investing in Video
The rise of video platforms, especially TikTok, has led people to spend more time immersed in engaging video content throughout the day. Therefore, video is considered a marketing trend and an effective tool for businesses to enhance personal connections and emotions with customers in 2022.
Introduce your company’s work environment, create entertaining “trend-catching” videos with the audience, showcase new products, and more. There are numerous ways for us to leverage video to connect with customers.
In reality, if your business has not invested in this medium, there’s a high likelihood of falling behind current competitors. Even if you don’t have a large budget or an in-house video production team, there are still many ways to produce high-quality videos that businesses should explore and implement.
Implementing D&I in Marketing Activities
Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) is a marketing trend in 2022 that B2B businesses cannot ignore. It’s seen as another way for businesses to translate their ‘commitments’ into specific and meaningful actions.
A study by Deloitte identified 4 main directions in which brands can implement D&I: attracting talent, retaining talent, brand messaging, and community engagement. Marketing plays a significant role in these aspects. Deloitte’s 2022 Global Marketing Trends report also highlighted that 57% of consumers become loyal to brands committed to addressing social inequality in their activities.
Marketers have a great opportunity if they apply D&I consistently across all areas of the business, from the images used on the website to the brand stories they want to tell, and many other activities.
This is the best way for businesses to maintain transparency, demonstrate responsibility to those who have put their trust in the brand, including customers, employees, and business partners.
From the images you use on your website to the stories you tell about your employer brand, marketers have a tremendous opportunity to not only tell but also demonstrate how they prioritize D&I across all aspects of the organization.
Doing this is the best way to maintain transparency and responsibility to everyone who has invested in your brand, including customers, employees, and colleagues.
Creating Blended Experiences – A Timely Marketing Trend
The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us the power of digital connections as we shifted from offline events to virtual ones. Even though distancing regulations are gradually being eased, it will be difficult to return entirely to pre-pandemic offline activities.
That’s why blended experiences that combine in-person and digital elements will become the new standard. Both live and virtual events have their own advantages, and adopting this marketing trend will provide more options for people, enabling customers to personalize their own experiences.
Deloitte’s 2022 Global Marketing Trends report also points out that 75% of global executives will invest more in providing blended experiences for customers in the next 12 months. To leverage this 2022 marketing trend and create suitable experiences for customers, businesses need to know who their customers are and what they expect. Younger customers may desire interaction through digital platforms and social media apps.
On the other hand, older customer segments may prefer direct interaction. To be more certain about their needs, businesses can conduct surveys to gather feedback and adjust marketing activities to provide a better experience for customers.
Channel-Specific Content Investment
Personalizing customer experiences to persuade them towards purchase decisions is a challenge for B2B businesses. We need to meet customers where they are and guide them towards the value we provide. Particularly on social media platforms, businesses need to maintain contact and conversations with customers.
To achieve that, we should tailor content to fit each specific platform. This is also a marketing trend in 2022 that is easy to apply and cannot be overlooked by businesses.
“Ensure your brand profiles are updated on all social media platforms and divide your owned content and useful materials into dedicated sections for each platform.
For example, if you own an ebook, extract a small piece of content to share on Twitter, create a chart for Instagram, and share an in-depth excerpt on LinkedIn. This is a simple way to adjust your content and expand the reach of your content.
Micro Influencers – A Not-So-New But Evergreen Marketing Trend
According to Klear’s report on influencer marketing, influencers have a 10x higher ROI compared to paid media. Influencer marketing is not a new trend, but it’s evolving every day. Influential individuals (Influencers) aren’t just those with millions of followers.
Micro influencers (such as those with 15,000 followers) also have the highest engagement rates and the most loyal followers. Therefore, tapping into a network of smaller influencers might be a more sensible investment for businesses when applying the 2022 marketing trend.
Investing in Visual Content on Social Media
Visual content with high-quality images has been dominating social media for many years. Coupled with the fact that social media platforms are increasingly diversifying visual content (videos, stories, reels, shorts – short-form video content), users have more ways to interact with them.
This doesn’t mean businesses need to create visual content in every format – that might not always be effective and can become overwhelming. Businesses should simply choose a few suitable formats and purposefully arrange their images.”
Microcontent, or bite-sized content, is built with very little information so that readers can quickly understand and decode it within a few seconds. Due to its concise, direct, clear, specific, and easily consumable nature, microcontent is an easy way to publish visual content on social media.
For example, businesses can share interesting information by creating a concise image containing that information and using images of brand employees. This helps viewers envision the team behind the brand, creating opportunities for employees to shine and providing useful information for readers.
Moreover, illustrated images, simplified data visualization from larger content (articles, ebooks, reports, etc.) are also used effectively to promote businesses on social media platforms. It can be said that impressive visual content is one of the marketing trends of 2022 that will become popular and widely adopted.
Brand stories need to be told on the company’s online channels
Customers are gradually having less time to learn about businesses. In the post-pandemic digital world, where everything becomes digital, consumers want to quickly complete their online shopping journey. Therefore, on all brand channels, whether it’s social media accounts or a website, strive to optimize and provide customers with what they need to know and want to know about the brand.
According to Sana’s B2B Customer Report, nearly 90% of B2B buyers use online channels to identify new suppliers, and 74% use it to evaluate whether they want to purchase from these suppliers. This marketing trend requires businesses to have a clear understanding of the content across all of their channels. Whether it’s an incomplete profile on Instagram, a vague description on Twitter, or a hard-to-navigate website, businesses need to review their channels as if they were newcomers to the brand by answering the following questions:
Did you clearly state who you are and what you do? Did you mention more elements beyond your products? (brand value, mission, vision, etc.) Are the links to information clear and visual on the business’s website? Is there a clear next step for customers?
Lastly, to ensure people receive relevant information at the right time, map out the customer journey to figure out how to tell the brand story on various platforms.
Focus on building relationships
Turning complete strangers into fans is the ultimate goal of marketing activities. However, this isn’t a process that happens smoothly and quickly. To succeed, businesses need to invest in people, establish and nurture relationships before, during, and after they become customers.
In the context of the online landscape dominating our lives, creating connections with customers through screens is crucial. So, how can we achieve that?
Make your business marketing activities as personalized as possible. This might sound obvious, but many brands create boring, generic content with inappropriate images. As a result, businesses miss out on the opportunity to establish strong connections with customers. In reality, 84% of B2B buyers will buy from a well-connected supplier, even if that business offers fewer advantages than other brands.
It is hoped that these 2022 marketing trends will help B2B businesses create strong content campaigns. However, formulating a strategy and executing it are two different things, depending on the business’s time, knowledge, and resources. To execute effectively, businesses need to build a suitable specialist team, optimize the planning and content creation process, or even better, consider collaborating with a professional marketing entity.
Metta will also support businesses in executing marketing strategies to ensure results are achieved as planned. Contact phung.metta@metta.com.vn now for Metta to listen and realize your business’s desires!
Source: Business2community.com
Metta Marketing
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