This past year we have seen a dramatic digital transformation within the B2B landscape, in large part accelerated by the challenges and implications of Covid-19. Many more companies are making purchase decisions online, and as a result, the competition is stiffer than ever before. New variables are increasing in importance as outlined here in our leading B2B marketing trends for 2022, and unsurprisingly, these trends have one thing in common: They are entirely digitally-powered.
At SnellMedia, we work with digital marketing for B2B organisations in industries such as manufacturing, healthcare/pharma, SaaS, and hospitality. Our core value is continuous learning as this ensures we are one step ahead of digital marketing opportunities and how B2B companies can successfully implement them to boost lead generation.
With COVID-19 emphasizing the importance of marketing towards digitally-powered solutions, we are seeing a fundamental shift in the number of businesses looking to embrace online marketing. As there’s a demand to remain relevant within the changing business landscape, our schedules are crammed with new business proposals from B2B businesses that want to start the year off booming.
Marketing trends for 2022 include lead generation, content, and format diversification. B2B companies must be visible to prospects, build brand trust, and retain client relationships. This is secured through visual content, adapting to modern methods, and exploiting AI. This year, exposure is a key factor for success.
Digital will be the name of the game in marketing this year. Read on to discover the key digital marketing trends that will help ensure your business thrives in 2022 and beyond. In addition to the 12 in-demand strategies for B2B businesses, stay tuned for the bonus marketing trends at the end of the article. In the article, we cover:
In this article, you’ll learn which trends are having a huge impact in B2B settings and how you can address them in your business today. You’ll be proceeding after the read with vast insights on how to successfully leverage digital marketing to boost your online presence.
B2B digital marketing is all we do at SnellMedia’s digital marketing agency. With exclusive marketing experience, we understand the complex nature of business-to-business relationships and how to leverage the ever-expanding opportunities available in digital marketing of today’s B2B field.
The changes we are facing today are rapid, and this requires businesses to pivot their marketing mindset accordingly and embrace a new, agile way of doing business in the digital world, i.e., board the digitally-powered chariot.
Implementing all these trends in 2022 may prove to be challenging; however, knowing the trends you can most easily leverage to make the largest impact will make a significant difference. The ‘new normal’ requires businesses to speak loudly and create impactful messages that resonate in an online landscape where everyone wants to be heard. At our agency, we have noticed that the spectrum of 2022 marketing trends covers the following:
B2B Popularity: 84%
The popularity of email marketing has truly had its ups and downs, but we are seeing this method of outreach once again being considered a viable practice with great potential. 60% of B2B marketers state that they consider email to be a high-value revenue-generating outlet. Even more, 84% of B2B marketers report that email marketing is one of their most successful marketing channels, due to its high ROI potential. What we’ve found to be a great source for email marketing success is how well it interjects with social media.
Email marketing is undoubtedly the supreme champion of digital marketing in 2022. After all, over 4 billion people use email — and that number is growing every year. If you want to learn more about this top-tier lead-gen tactic, head over to our post on B2B Email Marketing Best Practices for 2022, and find out more on how to maximize your ROI.
We’ve worked with email marketing extensively over the years. In our experience, this tool has proven highly efficient in generating quality leads to businesses in B2B settings. We’ve adopted the marketing strategy because it not only lets us promote customised content or serve ads; it has also proven to be a successful relationship-building strategy for nurturing leads, interacting with current clients, as well as generating new, qualified business.
In 2022, personalisation is vital in assuring that your outreach initiatives are bringing quality business to your sales pipeline. With an extensive amount of email marketing software and high competition in bringing forward the best features for businesses’ marketing efforts, there are many advanced platforms that bring personalized messages to the core of any email campaign. Going that extra mile is a key component in successful outreach. Why? Because 88% of users look more favorably on emails that feel personally written for them.
With Covid-19 (and the infamous Omicron variant) having a huge impact on our corporate world, the number of emails sent has increased significantly, putting higher demands on businesses to offer a tailored experience with key features that speak to their audience. According to Dyspatch, these elements are vital to building lead-gen success with emails:
Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) will make tracking email outreach performance trickier in 2022 and going forward. Launched by Apple, Mail Privacy Protection hides users’ IP addresses, so senders can’t track activities and locations, or determine open times for any emails opened with the Apple Mail app, which constitutes 49.8% of all email opens.
Truth is, there is a lot of work that goes into building an optimized email marketing strategy this year, and our job is to make sure we support marketing teams in the best way possible, enabling them to start seeing results - and fast. We offer solutions that benefit the personalization and balance between being memorable and embracing diversity in format.
For B2B marketing teams, email marketing will need more attention than previously, especially in regards to tracking and monitoring campaign performance. With a devoted B2B marketing agency in your corner, these changes won’t complicate your efforts more than absolutely necessary. Get ahead of email privacy updates by reaching out to us today.
B2B Popularity: 75%
This trend looks at your online presence and the digital version of word-of-mouth marketing. In the B2B environment, 80% of leads are generated from LinkedIn. This is where a substantial amount of marketers share professional content and start professional communities with like-minded businesspeople.
During the rise of the pandemic, 67% of marketers reported that an increase in social media presence was their top priority. Our general experience is that this priority is definitely valid, and one of our top four priorities. When we add social media into a project for a client, our priority is the sites that work well for cross-channel marketing, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram.
In addition is the retargeting trend. People engaging with your content should end up as converted customers, as they are clearly already in the market for what you are offering. Retargeting is a must in 2022, as it lets us recapture otherwise lost leads, generate more leads to expand market positioning, and increase brand recognition. This is where you maximise your ROI; So missing out is a big no-no.
Lastly, we want to mention the use of influencer marketing which is an area we believe will be a great addition to your online marketing this year. Holistically speaking, we normally keep content on the client’s own accounts and pages; however, as there is a need for major online visibility, influencers can help you achieve just that.
B2B Popularity: 70%
Early engagement with in-depth account metrics is where quality is brought into the mix in 2022; highly qualified accounts will be the way forward. These let us make better decisions about resource allocation and select priorities that reflect the big picture. ABM is the darling of the marketing world in 2022, with 87% of B2B marketers reporting that their ABM initiatives outperform other marketing investments in terms of ROI.
ABM has successfully become a cornerstone for transforming sales, marketing teams, and customer satisfaction, into lead generators. In 2022’s societal landscape, it will be crucial for B2B marketing teams and professionals to remain atop trends and consistently put efforts towards optimizing processes that improve business efficiencies and ROI. Trends suggest that 2022 is the time to focus on growth models, improved reputation, and customer engagement that can build longevity for the long term. This is the year of ABM.
Account-based marketing places value at the heart of lead generation initiatives and defines quality metrics early. On a simple scope, ABM does this in 6 value-promoting steps:
ABM is expected to become a vital strategy for leading B2B companies’ marketing in 2022. Bringing together sales and marketing to create personalised experiences that result in growth, lets businesses focus earlier and more intently on those that really matter. Here are some things to consider about ABM:
In 2022, lead generation that distributes revenue growth is crucial. For this year, interaction is key, and ABM merged with demand gen allows businesses to get hyper-targeted, personal, and encourage sustained interests that lead to revenue. With a focus on encouraging interest and knowledge delivery, ABM is an ideal practice to address a shift from leads to insight-driven sales opportunities.
Progressive marketers will look beyond the traditional web form fills and seek out intent signals directly from key accounts. B2B marketers will need to become more strategic and analyse how their ABM campaigns are impacting new sales opportunities, pipeline, win rates, deals sizes, and contract renewals. To do so, it’s vital to bring all your outreach efforts under one umbrella in an omnichannel approach. The best way to do this is with the help of ABM-friendly tools. Some examples include:
At SnellMedia, we’ve opted for HubSpot as a way to achieve omnichannel success in lead generation and keep track of all measurements that make up our ABM campaigns. Today, HubSpot is a popular platform among marketers in B2B industries, as the platform comes with a suite of tools that empower marketing teams to build a variety of campaigns in sales and marketing simultaneously. This includes account-based marketing, sales automation, social media management, email marketing, content strategy, and lead management.
As an example, In HubSpot, you have the opportunity to connect advertising channels, such as Google Ads, to your sales efforts to help you decipher high-value leads to lower-value leads and focus on activities that get you higher quality business.
Since ABM is all about tailored marketing and custom conversations, it’s crucial that businesses keep track of user behaviors and campaign performance. This is where Google Analytics becomes a favorable tool in ABM initiatives. At our agency, we leverage the analytical platform to analyse insights from our website and consistently improve our pages to maximise user experience, all for the benefit of improving conversion rates.
This is the year of ABM. Trends submit that more and more B2B marketers are learning the value of ABM, and the benefits it conveys. This year will demand efficiency in sales, and truth is, AMB shortens the B2B sales cycle and boosts its efficiency. This has a lot to do with marketing and sales teams working closely together as a unit.
Account-based marketing is more likely to convert leads as it places personalisation at the top of our to-do’s in anything related to the campaign (outreach, ads, marketing initiatives, landing pages, website, etc.). Today, mature ABM programs are constituting 79% of all sales opportunities. This is because personalisation improved the customer experience.
In conclusion, it’s not the year of ABM; it’s the year of ABX. ABX (account-based experiences) is the next step in ABM. This holistic, evolved state of ABM is hyper-targeted, personalised, and leverages data-driven insights to give your leads unique experiences they’ll remember. ABX unites the traditional ABM with an intense focus on customer experiences, giving you the best insights on when and how to interact with any account.
B2B Popularity: 69%
In marketing, there is one thing you can always be certain of: Content is king and your strongest companion for the ultimate strategy. If you want to stand out and be considered an authority in your space by Google, original content is essential. Committing to your content management and having a coherent ROI strategy are the most essential and fundamental ways of winning at marketing in 2022. The best ways of doing this are by:
Since we started our agency, the focus on content marketing has only increased. We are seeing that there are substantial potentials in creating authoritative content that acts as an ultimate resource for an audience. Providing this ultimate resource means sharing high quality research-based insights conveying conformation consensus, authority, helpfulness, and total relevance to your audience. This type of content will not only help you rank on Google, but it will also increase your chances of gaining high enough authority that your content becomes a staple resource ranking for a long time.
B2B Popularity: 63%
An omnichannel approach means utilizing all of your channels to create one collective experience for your audience, prospects, and customers. When you adopt this in your marketing, you’re creating a coherent message that is tailored to your customers based on their behaviour through the sales funnel, and maximising their customer experience. This results in an excellent reputation and businesses with omnichannel strategies achieve 91% higher customer retention rates than those who fail to incorporate them.
With competition booming in 2022, we’ve put in extra work to make sure that we deliver strategy proposals that help B2B businesses get in front of buyers as they compile all intel needed for purchasing decisions. What we’ve learned is that an omni-channel approach is especially effective since B2B buyers today use up to six different channels when making a decision on who to hire as a supplier.
B2B Popularity: 60%
Search intent is all about listening to the intentions behind a search. It is a helpful tool when understanding the nature of why people search, as this helps us marketers create the best content that fits prospects’ needs and intentions most. As Google is getting smarter and better at recognising search intent, this is becoming far more valuable to your marketing than keyword intent.
By addressing searchers’ concerns and becoming a mogul for information supply in the eyes of your audience, we at SnellMedia help you achieve increased domain and brand status. We predict that sustaining search intent will get you the leads and traffic you need, depending on how well you leverage addressing the intent behind queries. Our work revolves around understanding what people need and what problems they need you to solve. This is why we focus specifically on search intent.
If you’re interested in learning more about this trend, we also cover it in Content Management Trends for 2022.
B2B Popularity: 58%
In 2022, as your website will be the online door to your facilities and offers, you’ll need to make sure that your products are perfect, your website is on point, and users always enjoy interacting with your brand. With this, we focus on three specific areas:
B2B Popularity: 46%
Behind every successful web presence is a well-calculated keyword strategy that complements organic search optimization efforts and helps businesses maximize reach. This is your SEM strategy; The use of pay-per-click marketing, which is one of the faster and more efficient ways for B2B companies to capture the right leads and generate brand awareness.
In 2022, we are expecting PPC to become a primary tool for quick intel, better automation, and thorough diversification. The best defense in 2022 will be a close-to-perfect offense. This is what PPC is for any business looking to get ahead. More than that, we harness the results of our PPC campaigns to create a library of information to quickly bring to the holistic marketing strategy. This saves time and keeps the marketing efficient. That’s why we are pushing for optimized use of PPC this year.
B2B Popularity: 43%
When it comes to webinars, 73% of B2B marketers report they are the best way to generate high-quality leads. The assumption is that webinars ensure quality customers, as they are the ones showing interest in signing up for and attending your webinar. Although we are excited about the arrival of the COVID-19 vaccine, it’s probably still going to take time before the pandemic is under control enough for us to start meeting face-to-face to the extent we did before. Until then, webinars are the perfect stand-in in 2022 and going forward.
In a larger context, online events emerged superlatively in 2020. With that, 87% of marketers consider the opportunities emerging with virtual events as a success factor, talking a good game about this marketing tool’s potential to bring bearings in 2022. Last year we had the chance to work with EWMA on rebranding their in-person healthcare event into a booming virtual experience. This involvement opened our eyes to the high potentials of bringing in virtual events as part of online marketing even after the pandemic.
B2B Popularity: 38%
In our agency, we use video content for retaining interest from the client’s audience. Video marketing brings a visual aspect into your B2B company realm and lets potential customers engage with your brand, get a visual appreciation of your company and products, and understand the buyer journey. Additionally, short form video format is really taking off right now with opportunities on YouTube (shorts), Instagram (Reels & IGTV), as well as TikTok.
Since video content is gaining popularity, YouTube is a great tool for upholding presence and creating eye-catching content with which your audience can interact. YouTube welcomes 2 billion logins each month, so your audience is definitely here. Trends suggest that 73% of active users use YouTube for “how-to” videos, content that is popular among business video marketers.
B2B Popularity: 25%
As attention needs to be concentrated on your marketing, this is also where investments need to be allocated. According to the 2022 Marketing Mix Report, digital marketing holds the majority of marketing spend across B2B businesses, with 56% allocating budget for it. This is a significant top-expense that substantiates that digital marketing is our new norm. This is where businesses engage prospects and gain awareness.
While organic search and reach are still something we aim for, the other side of the coin needs consideration as well. Paid search helps with further reach and extending the potential of being seen, heard, and remembered. You need paid marketing because:
B2B Popularity: 10%
As we’ve reached the fourth step of the industrial revolution, a global ideal is to up the use of revolutionary AI, and this applies to marketing as well. AI has made inroads into the B2B marketing environment, making it increasingly possible to automate strategies with interactive tools, one example being chatbots. At least one in five businesses utilises AI-powered marketing for superior insights, quicker analysis, and streamlining routine tasks. We have adopted the use of AI into several projects, and the speed and ease of automation we’ve experienced really make this trend a stand-out for us.
We still clearly remember life before Alexa, Cortana, and Siri voice searches. Voice search has become a huge phenomenon, and companies are continually adapting this technology to make searching even easier. The volume of searches done by voice is expected to reach 5 billion by the end of 2022, specifically due to the fact that people are staying home more, and home is where most people do voice searches.
Even more fascinating is the fact that voice searches are especially popular when it comes to business-related searches. Last year, 58% of voice searches were made to find information about a local business. If you want to leverage this opportunity, here are a few things we do to make sure our clients are included in those searches:
Featured snippets are an important feature for getting online attention. The value of featured snippets has been discussed at length, and while we recognise that some marketers may disagree, we definitely see great potential in featured snippets. Google’s featured snippets are great for exposure and reputation, as a snippet shows authority and exhibits good characteristics.
Featured snippets are the direct answer boxes that turn up at the top of the page when you do a search on Google. Even if a featured snippet is achieved, the content will rank in the search results list, which means that you will be featured on the page twice. Featured snippets get you in front of your competitors, and this is an opportunity you can’t afford to miss in 2022.
In a turbulent global economy, it’s important to stay flexible in your approach to marketing. Today, 76% of B2B marketers have an explicit marketing plan. While this is great news, this year calls for B2B companies to look into their marketing strategy and optimize it for flexibility in approach and, for the time being, push heavy on the use of digital marketing.
Are these trends making you reconsider your marketing priorities for 2022? Are you a decision-maker in a B2B company looking to kick off the year with a successful digital marketing strategy? If you’re unsure where to start, then you’ve come to the right place.
SnellMedia consists of a proficient team of marketing professionals working solely on making the B2B marketing environment more vibrant, more accomplished, and all-in-all more fun to compete in. We love the work we do with our clients and as an experienced B2B digital marketing agency focusing on digital marketing solutions, we can build intriguing PPC, SoMe, SEO, and email campaigns designed to bring your marketing to its A-game in 2022.
If you’re curious to know more about what we do, and how we can help you grow your business online, feel free to connect with us as soon as you are ready. We are always happy to help.
Our main objective is to stay ahead of trends and apply current expertise and new learnings to every client project. We make sure you get the absolute most out of your marketing investments.
Good luck in 2022 - We are excited to see the changes and success in B2B companies’ marketing this year.
What is the purpose of B2B marketing?
The general purpose of marketing is to reach a targeted audience with the intention of selling a product or service to them. For B2B companies, marketing is rooted in the need to attract supply-dependent companies to sell their offerings for use in the production of goods, to general business operations, or for resale to their customers.
For B2B, marketing is all about getting a message to resonate with top-tier audience members and potential long-lasting customers. In essence, it’s not so much about the quantity of people who discover you, but about the quality of them. In B2B, supply relationships are forged to hopefully last. With that, there is no value for B2Bs in having one-time purchasers coming and going, if they instead can focus their marketing efforts on targeting ideal accounts that, once converted, is a privilege to forge a business bond with.
Is Facebook good for B2B marketing?
There’s no doubt that Facebook is an extremely beneficial platform for B2B marketing. The social media platform has high potential in audience targeting and retargeting. The average Facebook user clicks on 12 ads per month, according to their private or professional interests, and Facebook ads can reach up to 35% of the world’s population.
If you are interested in learning more about what platforms are available and beneficial to B2B social media campaigning, head on over to our article on Social Media marketing trends of 2022, where we divulge the true potential of each popular platform.
Does B2B need Digital Marketing?
If they didn’t, we wouldn’t be here. Just like any other industry, B2B-oriented companies need digital marketing to remain top-of-mind with customers. Specific to B2B, there’s a vast and vital need to apply digital marketing strategies that improve relationship development and make you a useful resource for key influencers in purchasing decisions.
To be successful in marketing as a whole, digital elements need to be applied and improved. you have to adjust to the trends and needs of business luminaries in the digital age, and create high-value digital campaigns that speak to your niche audience specifically. Resonating messages mean B2B buyers focusing their attention on your online presence when looking for solutions or products in the future.
Are you a B2B company looking to start a successful lead generation initiative in 2022? Do you need help optimizing your current strategy to better address lead-gen opportunities? Are you part of an in-house marketing team knowing the potential of digital marketing trends, but are looking for the best way to maximise lead-gen and campaign effectiveness?
In that case, look no further, ‘cause we’re here to guide you. As an experienced B2B digital marketing agency focusing in part on valuable lead generation solutions, we can build personalised, intriguing campaigns designed to maximise your ROI in 2022. If you’re curious to know more about what we do, and how we can help you grow your business online, feel free to reach out to us when you need us. We’d love to hear from you!
This article is part of our digital marketing trends series, showcasing the primary pillars of digital marketing that we at SnellMedia focus on; PPC, SEO, Lead-Gen, Social media, Email marketing, Web design, and content marketing.
1. Sagefrog's Marketing Mix Report for 2022
