What Are the Top 5 B2B Marketing Trends for 2022?
The past couple of years have been catastrophic for B2B marketers, especially due to the unprecedented conditions that erupted during the pandemonium. With many of us having navigated an unnatural horror pandemic over the past year, you’d have to be really thick-skinned not to feel excited. For businesses everywhere, we can look forward to a new chapter that is certain to be an exciting time for marketers across all sectors.
The pandemic has created a go-to place for marketers who want to get their brands in front of potential customers. There are many new B2B trends that are emerging every year and as a result, it's easy to get lost in all of the jargon. Here are five B2B marketing trends for 2022 that will dominate your domain.
1) Real-time marketing
2) Video content and Live Webcasting
3) Augmented reality and gamification
4) Mass personalization and social media integration, and
5) AI-powered virtual assistants
1) Real-Time Marketing
Real-time marketing is the ability to take advantage of new trends and opportunities at the moment, quickly implement a strategy, and measure the results of your initiative. With the worldwide growth of digitally connected consumers on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, brands have more opportunities than ever to adapt their strategies and capture emerging trends.
When it comes to marketing, your business needs to be aware of the current marketing trends because these have a major impact on your brand’s online visibility. Moreover, missing out on important trends means you could be losing out on potential clients. As we continue to move towards 2022 you need to know what marketing trends are most likely to impact your business and explore how you can benefit from them.
CRM plays a crucial role to help marketers make the best use of real-time data. According to a report by LinkedIn in 2020, 65% of sales professionals use a CRM and 97% consider sales technology “very important” or “important.”
Real-time marketing (RTM) is the practice of monitoring your customers’ actions and sentiments, recognizing the most appropriate moment to engage with them, and delivering personalized content that resonates.
2) Video Content and Mobile Live Webcasting
Does your video marketing strategy include video content and live to webcast? If not, it needs to be on your radar in 2021. Video for B2B marketing is about to become a lot bigger in 2022 than ever before.
Video and webcasting aren’t new, but they’re top B2B marketing trends for 2022 because they fill a need in the B2B marketing world as mobile usage rises. As more people interact with their phones, businesses are looking for ways to capture their attention while taking advantage of this increased user base.
Video is among the most important B2B marketing trends for 2022, and HubSpot predicted that over 80% of the content in the year to come will be video. It’s visual, easily digestible, and can convey a large amount of information quickly.
B2B marketers need to pay attention to the rapidly growing demand for video content.
As per Metigy’s B2B Marketing Trend Report 2022, 74% of people have purchased software or services based on how well you showed how it would meet their needs through your content. It also found that 43% don’t buy from a company until they’ve seen them make a post or appear in a webcast at least once.
3) Augmented Reality and Gamification
Augmented reality and gamification will revolutionalize the B2B space in 2022. Keeping this new reality in mind will be instrumental to your marketing goals and will help you to achieve them.
Augmented reality (AR) lets you digitally project information onto the real world. Through your smartphone, AR can give the viewer extraordinary, interactive experiences like no other media. In this guide, you'll learn everything you need to know about AR, how you can build an AR app, who's currently building this tech, and who is using it.
Augmented reality (AR) adds digital elements to a live view often by using the camera on a smartphone. Examples of augmented reality experiences include Snapchat lenses and the game Pokemon Go.
Augmented reality (AR) will superimpose the real world with digital elements, such as 3D graphics or text. This will be incredibly useful for B2B companies, making it possible to create interactive product catalogs, helping sales reps educate customers and prospects.
New research shows that using augmented reality in B2B marketing is a smart business decision. According to the study conducted by Supply Chain Management Review and this brand, augmented reality could be a game-changer for marketers.
With the advancements in AI and computer vision, it’s no surprise that augmented reality is set to be a key B2B technology in 2022.
According to a PwC report, by 2022 the AR market will exceed $160 billion in value. A similar CB Insights report indicates that global AR revenues will jump from $7 billion in 2018 to $198 billion in 2022, with an insane CAGR of 228%.
You'll find augmented reality (AR) increasingly integrated into retail eCommerce stores for shopping assistance. This bodes well for the future of B2B marketing, as this technology can be used similarly to enhance a buyer's entire experience.
Gamification is the use of game mechanics in non-game contexts to engage users and solve problems. This includes such aspects as leaderboards, badges, and rewards. Incorporating them into your business will make customers more engaged with your brand – act as a catalyst for more sales.
Gamification refers to the application of game-design elements and game principles in non-game contexts. It can convert intangible things such as loyalty and trust into the desired outcome—like sales, customer acquisition, or advocacy. Gamification can be used in a variety of customer life cycle stages, including the initial customer attraction phase, customer engagement, and customer retention phase.
How are these practices going to change the marketing landscape?
The more we analyze our audience and understand how to reach them – through better, more authentic touchpoints – the more successful our marketing strategies will be. And AR and gamification will not only make our lives easier as marketers, but they'll also make our customers happier.
4) Mass Personalization and Social Media Integration
In a recent survey of B2B marketers on the state of B2B marketing, mass personalization and social media integration were ranked as the top two trends for 2022.
To create a stronger connection with your customers, mass personalization is going to be crucial for B2B marketers in 2022. By responding to customers’ queries quickly, through the right channel, you can improve the marketing ROI significantly.
If you want to impress your prospects and customers, you need to stay on top of the latest business-to-business marketing trends. Therefore, social media integration and mass personalization are going to be important for B2B marketers in 2022. By responding to customers’ queries quickly, through the right channel, you can improve the marketing ROI significantly.
5) AI-Powered Virtual Assistants
Artificial intelligence has become an important part of marketing strategies in the B2B space. By 2022, AI-powered virtual assistants will be used to provide personalized experiences for every customer.
How?
They'll allow marketers to express their brand's unique personality while showcasing product offerings.
Frost & Sullivan, a B2B consulting company, predicted that AI-powered virtual assistants, or bots, will be an essential tool for marketers by 2022. Bots are not just another marketing trend: these tech tools will revolutionize the way B2B organizations communicate and connect with prospective buyers and existing customers.
The B2B marketing space can be challenging. On the one hand, your customers are more educated than ever before and expect immediate answers; on the other, it's nearly impossible to reach all of them personally. But new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) have created exciting solutions that you can use to automate many tasks.
AI-powered virtual assistants are already well-established in the B2C space, but these technology-based personal assistants are now emerging as game-changing allies for B2B marketers. Whether through websites or apps, AI is helping companies provide customers with a personalized experience that leaves a lasting impression.
One study noted that 56% of consumers and business buyers would be more likely to shop with a company if it offered an AI-powered virtual initiative that helped them find information quickly. The same research found that 54% of consumers were interested in using AI for chat functions, and 42% were interested in using this technology for product or service customization.
In Conclusion
The B2B environment is constantly evolving, with new marketing trends and technologies emerging every year. Learning about the top 5 B2B marketing trends for 2022 will equip B2B marketers to better meet their customers’ expectations meet and will help them frame an all-inclusive strategy to keep their business bottom-lines aligned with their customers’ successes.
Valasys Media is a well-known name pioneering the B2B media space and helping B2B marketers optimize their marketing and advertising campaigns to accomplish their revenue goals.
The world of B2B is changing quickly, and businesses are struggling to keep pace. Fortunately, there are strategies and tools available that can help your team get ahead.