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What are your business goals?
So you are looking forward to growing your business this year using new and improved B2B marketing trends? It seems reasonable since we are living in competitive times. Especially in Business to Business space, where it is of utmost importance to stay up to date with current trends in order to maximize your selling power and your reach.
In this article, we will show you what really drives home the growth and how these smart business trends will expand your business to new heights.
But, that’s for later. Right now, we are more interested in your goals. Let us guess, is it driving Enterprise ecommerce growth this year? If so, remember this, a hallmark of a good achievable goal always comes down to these two factors.
i) The goal must be specific
Your goal must be well-defined and well thought of. It will help you devise a perfect game plan. Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean that all goals should be small, but that they need to be realistically achievable.
Just think of the other scenario, “I want to drive business growth.” Seems pretty vague, right? How will you drive growth? And by what deadline?
ii) The B2B goal must be measurable
There should be a time frame, or a countable scale, or some such sort of metric. It will help you go from “I want to drive business growth” straight to “By the end of this quarter, I’m going to gain X leads through Y method.”
See the difference? That’s why you should come up with a goal both specific and measurable, one that is tailored to your business and industry.
The next step, after you have defined your goal is to figure out what enterprise ecommerce strategies will work and how you will implement them to take action. Because marketing, as you know, is anything but a ‘one size fits all’ solution, especially for Business to Business companies.
So, our next step would be to help you devise a game plan for your business, one that will be a perfect combination of smart business marketing trends that will help you drive business growth this year.
Smart business trends to look out for in 2020
1. Tailor Your Marketing Strategy
Just like you and your business, your B2B Marketing strategy too needs to be unique. If it weren’t for uniqueness, b2b marketing would have been a one size fits all approach. In that case, there would have been no competition in the marketplace.
And no competition means we would all be out of business.
Now you see why it’s so important to find what works best for you in your specific market. After all, this is the personalization of your marketing strategy we are talking about. So, let’s see what you need to be aware of in 2020.
- Business enterprise ecommerce companies have and will always turn to influencers as sources of authoritative, research-backed and reliable information for their customers. In fact, 95% of customers are more likely to be loyal to a company that they trust
- Video content has become somewhat critical for your wholesale business (rather than optional). So, if you are looking forward to differentiating yourself from the competition, use more video content in your digital marketing strategy
- Data continues to grow in leaps and bounds. With such a huge amount of data accessible to B2B marketers, the trend is moving toward making all this data available through visualizations (such as charts) rather than just a bunch of numbers
- Let 2020 be the year when marketing and sales teams will join hands and work together to attain organizational goals including revenue growth. Studies also support this theory, showing that 60% of marketers are in favour of sales-marketing alignment
2. Account-Based Marketing
In the Business to Business industry, you must have heard of using segmentation and creating personas to target the prospects that might or might not be interested in your enterprise ecommerce wares.
Though an effective marketing technique, it resembles more like putting out a specific variety of birdseed on your porch (because pigeons like that type of seed). So if you are going to watch birds, they might as well be pigeons.
You might have guessed at this point that the seed is your Content marketing and targeting and the pigeons are the prospects you are trying to convert.
Now, account-based marketing is a slightly different concept (one that is bound to make waves in 2020). Here instead of trying only to attract the pigeons in the vicinity that are fired up about your free buffet of seeds, you focus on some specific birds (pigeons, sparrows, nightingales) that hang out in the same stand of trees.
Put in simple words, account-based marketing targets B2B companies and not personas.
With this type of marketing program at your disposal, you will easily find all the relevant birds that you are interested in, namely
Shorter sales cycle by eliminating unqualified prospects early in the game
Aligns marketing and sales to articulate a holistic and joint marketing plan
Enhance business growth through quality, long-term relationships and relevant conversations
Helps you develop buy-in with key stakeholders involved in the buying cycle
All in all, account-based marketing is a powerful strategy that will help you promote to specific companies instead of wasting your time and budget on unqualified prospects.
3. Enhanced Privacy and Protection
If you are running an enterprise ecommerce platform, you already know how important Security is. And when we say security, we mean data security, accountability and privacy, something which is the number 1 set of demands from the modern, business buyer.
With high profile data breaches that have dominated 2019, the people, whom your business is trying to convert, need to be convinced that you can be trusted with their personal information.
To stand any chance of growing your wholesale business next year, you will need to prove to your customers that their information is secure with you.
Let’s see what you can do to enhance privacy and protection for your B2B clients and be ready for 2020.
- Working with a virtual private network or VPN is a must-have if you are looking to improve the safety of your internet connection. VPN offers a strong security system which prevents hackers from getting into the back-end of your system.
- Get Secure Socket Layer or SSL certificate for your ecommerce website. This gives your website that little padlock next to the URL. it means that private data such as personal details and payment information is securely managed.
- If confused between an open or closed source code for your Enterprise ecommerce platform, go for the one that suits your interests better. Both come action-packed with their own set of unique features.
- Try to implement single sign-on solutions. They make updating and changing passwords quite easy in order to maintain high strength standards.
Other than these, you can feature security badges, credentials, case studies, testimonials, and your privacy policy. Just remember, the more quality proof you can provide, the better.
4. Boosting Mobile Experience
Mobile has offered huge opportunities for business marketers in 2019, and it surely won’t let you down in 2020 as well.
Think about it, isn’t it simply amazing that with mobile, you can offer your B2B customers the information, interaction and purchasing options at their convenience? If not, you’d run the risk of falling behind your competitors.
It’s a bad way to start the new year.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Let us understand why boosting Mobile experience is so important for your business customers in 2020.
- Often times, mobile sites serve as the first point of interaction, that’s why they must be prepared to engage, meanwhile offering everything they need on your enterprise ecommerce website, from easy navigation to relevant content to the ability to buy.
- The mobile experience can easily be personalized by showing potential buyers the products and services they are most likely to be interested in. Besides, you can personalize the mobile experience based on personas as well, showing content and experiences tailored to individual roles within the company.
- The right content delivered at the right time is simply priceless. It enables you to nurture leads to the point of sale. Be it website blogs, social media posts or emails, you will always stay in touch with your B2B customers conveniently via mobile.
- Omnichannel strategy is another great way of offering a seamless experience to your customers. For mobile commerce, it means having a cross-platform application and a mobile website, whatever helps you connect better with your customers.
Embrace the power of M-commerce now, so you won’t face the risk of losing any momentum in 2020 when the wholesale industry goes all the way from the web to mobile.
5. A Fresh Look for Email Marketing
Email marketing is a tried and tested method that works wonders for both individual consumers and business customers. Were you aware that 93% of business enterprise ecommerce marketers use emails to distribute their content? Plus 83% of b2b companies are using email newsletter in their content marketing programs?
Are you one of them? Well, you should be. Let’s look at some valuable tips to assist you in joining them in 2020.
- If you can’t even hook your readers with a few dozen characters of the subject line, why expect them to open and read the whole thing? So, begin by writing compelling subject lines.
- Don’t confuse your recipients with too many Call-To-Actions. Just stick to one CTA and let them focus on that only.
- Also, make sure the B2B email designs are responsive since the majority of email users check their inbox on their mobile devices.
- Not every email that you send will be proper on your list, they might be at different stages of the buying journey. That’s why it’s better to segment your email list to reach the most relevant reader.
- Lastly, do not hesitate to make use of the cold email. Though the may be uncomfortable, the right email can help convert new customers.
This is how an effective email marketing campaign works on your enterprise ecommerce platform, it helps you engage with subscribers, then turns them into leads and later on, into customers.
6. Refining Your Content Marketing
An effective content marketing is another strategy that will play an important role in the success of your business in 2020. Be sure to hone it well.
So, instead of interrupting your consumers on a daily basis with promotional material, focus on creating a content that adds useful information to align with your business customer’s buying decision journey. Keep track of the latest content trends as they are highly evolving and ever-changing.
These B2B content marketing strategies that work efficiently in the good old 2019 (it’s December, after all) will evolve in the year 2020.
And we are not just talking about blogs, whitepapers, and other written assets but also about including different types of media including infographics, videos and podcasts. This type of visual content not only raises customer engagement but also encourages sharing which in turn, positively boosts your SEO performance.
And we are not alone, 80% of marketers believe visual content to be an effective enterprise ecommerce marketing strategy, out of which video alone stands at 63% which has even surpassed blogging at 60% in terms of usage.
A mixture of different content types to support marketing efforts will be of great help in 2020 when it comes to converting your business prospects into customers.
Also, it would be a better idea to focus on quality over quantity of content, you know, just to keep your audiences from being overwhelmed with needless distractions.
7. A Customized Website
Customization has proven itself to be a powerful tool in 2019 and this B2B trend will see itself in and through 2020, only with higher expectations. Even Gartner expects a profit increase of about 15% by 2020 for wholesale companies who apply personalization technologies in the right way.
Convinced? Let’s look at the different ways to help you customize your b2b website for 2020.
- Do not assume that just by building a website, you can attract customers to it. Use paid and organic media strategy through channels such as display advertising, search marketing etc. to draw customers to your business.
- Provide your customers with seamless navigation throughout the buying process on your enterprise ecommerce website.
- Use chatbots, they are extremely useful for upselling and cross-promoting products. But most importantly, they are available 24/7 to help resolve your customers’ queries or concerns.
- Implement an SEO strategy to appear on the top search results. Otherwise, you will risk losing your customers to more optimized competitors.
- Offer personalization via your business website to the customers by providing them with a bespoke dashboard, pricing items, and specific deals and offers only available to them.
Web customization will prove itself to be among the top business strategies in 2020. So, be on board when this train leaves the station.
Summing Up:
In the B2B industry, decision-makers constantly need to be aware of their current status based on where things are headed. And even though trends can change in any direction, or completely disappear or return with short notice, the idea of keeping up with them is as relevant today as it was in 2019 or years before that.
Because this keeping up with trends by paying attention to the patterns is what differentiates successful b2b organizations from ‘not so’ successful ones. Storehippo has integrated many features to help you ace your B2B game in 2020 and beyond. Explore the platform by starting your 14-day free trial right away!
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