Outlook 2022: What’s Next in B2B Marketing?

With millennials and Gen Zers joining major B2B enterprises, 'B2C experiences' have been spilling over to the B2B market.

This has led to the expectation for B2B to have B2C-style client support with rapid response times. Such a change is significant, as B2B marketing remains an industry that continues to rely on offline mediums quite a bit, such as phone calls. These steps are integral to the B2B sales process and allow SDRs to encourage direct interaction with prospects as they search for more information on products/services.

The hype surrounding User Experience (UX) design also entered the B2B arena, transforming dull websites and content into interactive, rich media. With the forced digitisation of businesses as the world continues to recover from a global pandemic, changes to UX design are set to be an ongoing trend. B2B companies with poor design will be outperformed by their competitors as the value of a seamless experience continues to rise.

Executives tend to have an extensive network made up of others in similar roles, as well as business connections and other interested parties who may be following them for future job opportunities. This, in combination with their status, adds weight to their thought leadership content and is more likely to create network-building discussions.

Employees can also help to boost brands and their campaigns by taking part in company-wide marketing campaigns on social media linked by the same hashtag. In this way, they act as brand advocates and expand a campaign’s reach.

In both cases, the focus on the people behind an organisation on social media can help to build relationships with prospects and add value by humanisng a company.

This represents a potential shift from prioritsing behaviour tracking and lead generation to a 'client support' perspective in strategies. In this case, content that is essential to inform purchases would be kept ungated and leads could be allowed to finalise quotes with an online tool rather than an SDR.

While adapting to this trend might be a challenge for many B2B companies, the prevailing takeaway is the need for client-centric services. Even though the line between the B2C and B2B buying experience is beginning to blur, there are still many who value and prefer more interaction and guidance.

Therefore, it is essential for marketers to appreciate not only how buyers prefer to make informed decisions, but also how they work.

Buyers are under pressure to make purchasing decisions in spite of their busy schedules. It is only natural that they seek a buyer’s journey with the least amount of friction possible.

To make things clearer, imagine a prospect that’s been interacting with content for over three months. Without multi-channel attribution, marketers and salespeople tend to analyse only the first or the last interaction as the most significant event.

Meanwhile, with multi-touch attribution, an AI algorithm scores the lead by analysing their data more holistically, which accounts for their sales readiness with more accuracy. Not only does this deliver valuable insights, but it also helps boost morale, particularly when marketing and sales teams are aligned in reaching the same or similar key performance indicators (KPIs).

Contextual targeting is an option, with ads placed in contextually relevant websites and social media for buyers. This would include, for example, a banner ad on MedTech in a popular healthcare blog. As a result, the content users will see is based purely on the context of the other content being consumed, rather than a broader behaviour profile, yielding a more favorable user experience outcome.

This, however, creates the necessity for highly specific ads for target keyword groups and site pages, as well as a need for a better alignment between advertiser and publisher for large-scale applications.

By leveraging content as the new 'cookie' in contextual targeting, marketers can take advantage of the opportunity to differentiate advertisements with content that informs and entertains.

Pixels which track IP addresses are also an alternative, since the user’s geolocation can be easily discoverable. However, this tactic may be more of a challenge in today’s workforce environment, since many companies have permanently moved away from requiring their employees to co-locate in offices and have adopted working from home as a result of the pressures of the pandemic.

While the change to working from home was an obstacle for some, many stand to benefit by ditching the daily commute and adopting a flexible schedule that fits their lifestyle and allows them to have more time at home with their families.

As remote work continues to be the norm for many organisations, companies ready for growth in 2022 will benefit from taking advantage of building international teams that speak the languages and live in the time zones of their clientele.

The Gartner report lists three components to create workforce resilience:

• Healthy employees: Work-life balance, along with physical and financial well-being. HR teams must also analyse stress, burnout levels, and general well-being.
• Healthy relationships: Trust in teams and leaders, as well as an environment built around collaboration and psychological safety.
• Healthy work environment: Innovative, inclusive, and responsive workplace with opportunities for employee development.

At INFUSE, we believe the future of CMOs will be transformative, with roles beginning to encompass extra responsibilities.

CMOs, as such, will serve as leaders that can connect ancillary parts of the organisation, enabling the relevant skills, poised for growth and expansion.

The blurring lines between CMO and Chief Revenue Officer (CRO): Many B2B companies are already tasking CMOs to take on the responsibilities of CROs, including formulating go-to-market strategies and planning revenue growth through marketing campaigns. The Gartner report further highlights this, with the pressure for CMOs to prove their ROI and value to the overall organisation.

The rise of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and the return of the brand marketer: Harkening back to our point made on the 'B2C experience' and the entry of Millennials and Gen Zers as B2B decision makers, CSR strategies are becoming a key component of a brand image, curated and planned out by the CMO.

The increased visibility and importance of the tech stack: With the rise of distributed workforce, marketing has become more digital than ever before, and this includes the demand for CMOs and their teams to become tech-savvy to scale campaigns and gain better results. This is the year that CMOs will no longer be able to ignore investments in technology—they need to personally get involved in every decision—and to do that, they will need to hire a solid marketing operations team to make it all happen. The role of identifying these marketing-related technologies which support the new order of distributed workforce will become the responsibility of the CMO, and their partnership with the CIO/CTO will continue to be a driving force in organisations, particularly those in tech.

CMOs will own the client experience (CX): As B2B enterprises continue to focus on digital channels with tight budgets, the quality of the client experience will be mainly determined by CMOs and their marketing campaigns. There will be a blurring of responsibility between marketing and client success teams, with CMOs owning CX beyond the buyer’s journey. Even in companies with dedicated client success teams and UX design specialists, CMOs will be expected to lead these efforts and guarantee a high-quality experience as well as adapt products and solutions on a client-per-client basis to ensure long-term success and brand loyalty.

In this new environment, CMOs will be more equipped to prove their value to stakeholders, as well as maintain control over the brand image and its outreach.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) coined the term cyber resilience at the end of 2021 to mark the transition from the current cybersecurity framework to one that is better equipped to predict and combat digital risks to businesses and individuals.

With the rise of remote work, phishing and ransomware attacks increased by 50% and 105% respectively. This will likely continue to escalate as the conflict in Ukraine acts as a catalyst for more misinformation campaigns, an issue which has already been anticipated ahead of the midterms in the US and other notable elections (such as Brazil’s choice of president) in 2022.

Data breaches are growing exponentially, rising by 537.5% in the past 15 years as demonstrated in an FBI hearing. Indeed, in the first six months of 2020, the Bureau received nearly as many complaints of cyber crime as the whole year of 2019.

Therefore, we can safely deduce that 2022 will be a year of even more cyber attacks, possibly fuelled by the turmoil of the war in Ukraine.

However, even the prevalence of attacks does not mean that they cannot be stopped. These threats can be anticipated and combated by developing preventative and reactionary strategies.

In light of this scenario, our experts believe B2B companies should prepare for the following cybersecurity threats:

1. Misinformation will be rampant

As the war in Ukraine endures, misinformation campaigns that seek to exacerbate the conflict and shape opinions in the West will likely gain a stronger presence on social media.

As campaigns become more sophisticated, even professional platforms like LinkedIn are not immune to inaccuracies or propaganda.

With this in mind, it is essential to train staff (especially sales representatives) how to identify misinformation and to refrain from sharing this content on their profiles. After all, a polarising post, comment (or simply a like) can be seen by target accounts, and therefore, lead to the loss of valuable sales.

While taking a stand is important, this should be made with an informed, uniform message guided by the C-suite members who are able to define your brand’s standing. Consistency is essential in order to deliver a unified message that best represents your organisation's interests and most importantly, your collective values.

2. Phishing and ransomware attacks will likely increase

As war provokes political instability and economic turmoil, this in turn incentivises crime.

As Europe becomes unstable, cybercriminals will take advantage of hard-pressed companies by targeting team members with phishing and ransomware attacks, either to steal data or to earn money from a ransom.

Times of political uncertainty can understandably influence productivity, especially for those directly impacted by the war in Ukraine. These stresses may result in a higher risk of data leaks, as well as security breaches (such as opening an attachment with a virus) due to their negative effect on the ability of teams to focus on tasks.

Also, it is worth noting that supply chains often rely on legacy software, which can be easily attacked by cybercriminals—the ramifications of which could be compounded by the supply chain issues already forecast (especially in the energy sector) due to the invasion of Ukraine and ongoing sanctions. One noteworthy example of the knock on effect of these attacks would be the 2021 ransomware attack to Colonial Pipeline, caused by a single leaked password and that resulted in fuel shortages across the Eastern US for a week.

Security professionals stress the importance of training your staff, as cybersecurity can’t be handled by IT professionals alone. Ensuring all team members receive up-to-date training is particularly important as cybercriminals usually identify and target team members they believe are less tech-savvy and more vulnerable. This is attested to by the WEF’s Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2022 in which 59% of cyber leaders affirmed that responding to an incident would be challenging due to a lack of skills on their team.

Therefore, in 2022 and beyond, B2B companies should organise workshops with all their staff on cybersecurity essentials, as well as implement 2-factor authentication and email filters to decrease most risks.

B2B Cybersecurity Checklist for 2022

In view of the rising risk to your digital applications in 2022, we developed this list with the essentials you should cover at your business to stay safe online:

• If you don’t have a cybersecurity team, hire one now. If this is not financially viable, hire a consultant to structure your security operations.
• Prohibit staff from repeating passwords and request password changes every six months. Implement 2-factor authentication for all platforms and only allow strong passwords.
• Hire an email filter service to detect phishing emails, spam, and signs of a cyberattack.
• Back up data consistently so you do not have to cave in to ransomware. Archive emails to avoid sensitive data loss.
• Monitor device usage. Staff that log onto new devices should request access from an administrator. Install a firewall and Virtual Private Network (VPN) for all team members, if possible.
• Encrypt sensitive data before sending it. This can be as simple as emailing the files as a .zip container with a password.
• Host a cybersecurity workshop to train staff against the most common threats.
• Conduct due diligence of third parties and suppliers, because a partner’s data breach will also affect your business.
• Keep all systems up to date and avoid legacy software at all costs.
• Break down data silos as they can be vulnerable to attacks. Centralise data and maintain tight security protocols.

From all these predictions, we can conclude that 2022 will be the year in which B2B marketing will evolve to the scale and maturity of B2C.

It will also be the year when marketing executives prove the value of their constrained budgets and gain leeway from the pandemic and its disruption.

Performance marketing, along with a holistic approach that blends marketing with sales, tech, client success, operations, and finance will position the discipline as crucial to how clients perceive the brand—and not a mere afterthought to boost sales.

The shift to remote work is here to stay, and businesses that insist on employees returning to work in person will lose precious talent in an already critical labour shortage in North America and Europe. HR teams will need to use their post-pandemic expertise to optimise their team-building skills and provide well-being benefits to a distributed, global workforce.

Finally, the death of cookies is only a facet of the overall demands of buyers for privacy. Companies should research privacy-first advertising models and adapt their marketing to an outreach that will comply with future, restrictive changes to legislations worldwide.

Update

The ongoing war in Ukraine will shape, and will most probably be a determining force driving many changes to B2B marketing in 2022.

Analysts are divided between how the conflict will impact Europe and the world as a whole, however, many agree on the possibility of an economic crisis—especially in the energy and food sectors.

This means that the possibility of budget cuts is quite likely as companies optimise their marketing spending, something we already predicted at the end of 2021.

As a refugee crisis forms, staffing will also be impacted, as Ukrainians relocate to work elsewhere, and companies with offices in Ukraine either shut down their operations or adjust to meet the hardship.