How B2B Marketing is Transforming with Emerging Technologies

We are all customers, but not all of us are marketers. But those who are both consumer and marketer are far more familiar with how technology is changing the way we view digital marketing at whirlwind speed. Gone are the days when catchy slogans and ad campaigns pioneered and positioned consumer products in the marketplace and developed demand. From cold calls to ROI analytics, B2B marketing has been completely transformed from what it was to what it is.

1. Recent Advancements

It doesn’t take more than a blink of an eye for your “Brilliant” marketing strategy to become outdated. So it is extremely important to know exactly what kind of changes are taking place now and how they are affecting your business.

2. Mobile Technologies

As the transformation towards small-screen is evolving day by day, responsive web design is gaining a lot of traction in the digital marketing world. Mobile application development is becoming a strong weapon for marketing nowadays. Perhaps, the essential of these latest advancements is the capability to effortlessly move from a call to action in an email to the company’s website without having to experience slow loading times and crooked content.

3. IoT (Internet of Things)

With IoT and big data, B2B marketers have successfully gained the ability to collect user information, analyze it, and make necessary modifications to content, products, and services in order to enhance the overall customer experience.

Technology is certainly changing the B2B marketing in some obvious ways and in some not-so-obvious ways. However, here are some fine examples of how technology is constantly changing the marketing in unanticipated ways.

4. Technology has led to purpose-oriented marketing

Lately, purpose-oriented marketing is becoming increasingly famous and of course, technology has its role in its rise. With employee review websites like Glassdoor, an organization that fully don’t commit to the purpose they claim they are committed to, the deficiency of originality will be exposed and mostly cost them not only customers but also talent.

In today’s world, customers want to have relationships with companies. It is much more than the value they get from your product. And this is not only from a customer perspective, even employees want an aspiring reason to go to the office than just to pay bills.

5. Technology has made the user experience king

With technology in hand, customers have more power. Right from a basic product information about the products and services they would like to buy from a retail store to posting product and service reviews, technology has given immense potential to customers. This kind of transformation has made customer-centricity an indispensable for marketers. For creating impeccable customer experiences, as a result, marketers are focusing on offering personalized experiences that their customers would love.

6. Technology has set a benchmark for a good advertising

Gone are the days when marketers considered delivering the right message in an attractive and compelling way as good advertising. Now, it is more of delivering the message in a way your customers prefer to receive it. If your marketing message is not delivered in a proper way, then it may fail to get the customer engagement you crave. One such company that mastered the art of customizing its content according to their audience preferences is BUZZfeed. Utilizing data, they blend content with famous conversations in real-time.

7. Social Media and Mobile are Replacing the Conventional B2B Lead Generation Campaigns

Today’s modern B2B buyers are eschewing old school lead generation strategies and taking control of the B2B sales cycle. They are utilizing the same behavior as customers – research about B2B products and services online before choosing to engage in the sales procedure, asking queries on online communities, and depending on the online recommendations of their family members and associates.

B2B buyers have become dubious about the marketing campaigns and sales pitches; instead of letting the sales representatives to control the buying process, they are verifying their research with competitors and deciding when to interact with a sales representative.

8. What technology has in store for 2019 and beyond

Today’s modern-day marketers are greatly relying on SEO, content, podcasts, etc. to gain potential prospects attention. But, what’s trend today may be passé tomorrow. So in order to reach your new prospects, it is important to stay updated with current trends. Although a few trends look may like parts of sci-fi movies, but developing them into our future marketing campaigns is what will turn our talent from good to better, and give our customers a competitive edge over their peers. Here are our top 3 emerging technologies that will revolutionize the B2B marketing in the future.

9. Virtual reality will submerge and take us to a completely new digital world

With its extremely high-quality video, VR goggles capitalize on “Don’t say, show it” strategy of marketing, by building a 3D, eye-catching experience. Virtually sending these consumers to Hawaii developed a position of “Try before you buy,” and displayed them an engaging vacation that no marketing material can compete with.

Another solid example for this is hotel industry. Hotels letting brides and grooms visualize their “Big day,” instead of taking them on a tour of empty banquet halls. Letting prospective buyers come as close as they can to experiencing a reality and build a sentimental connection, without actually being in it, is injecting a completely new wave of B2B marketing.

10. Augmented reality adds a fresh layer to world of digital marketing

Right from cosmetics to eyewear, Augmented reality is present in every marketing sector. It improves what you currently see by covering virtual parts over it utilizing something as basic as your mobile camera. Assume being able to point the camera at yourself and swipe through different products of your choice until you find the right one. Or, you can even point the camera in your drawing room and swipe through book shelves.

But what marketers need to remember is that augmented reality is not about creating a whole new reality rather, improving what currently exists. Not in 2019, but in the future wen can see consumers scanning products in the cosmetic aisle to check whether it suits them or not.

11. Artificial intelligence (AI) offers better and deeper marketing insights

The very first and foremost thing that comes to our mind when we think of AI (Artificial intelligence) is the future full of robots. We have already witnessed the rise of automation in the automation sector. But what about other sectors? Will it affect them too? Could you imagine this post writing by a robot? Would that robot understand link building or SEO? There’s so much to understand..phew!

Before anything else, what we need to understand is that AI is about amplifying our expertise and knowledge and not entirely replacing it with robots. For instance, we have lots and lots of customer data and that is based on characteristics like gender, age, etc. Data is everywhere and of course, we love analyzing customer data. But the main concern is that there is a ton of data for us to bifurcate, analyze, and act upon it. Now, in such scenario, imagine a software that can sort, process, and provide us with real-time updates. Yes, we are now talking about rise of AI. With such kind of up-to-the-minute information in hand, we can spend less time in bifurcating data and more time acting upon it to build customized and personalized connections with consumers.

However, the above mentioned 3 trends are just some of the many that are yet to be found. With any new kind of technology, some marketers may keep up with the new changes and while some may not. Nevertheless, we can not predict the exact future, and there is absolutely no reason why we should not plan for it. As B2B marketers, we have to keep our customers in mind by measuring the effectiveness of various new technologies and how they can fit into our marketing campaigns.