The Interview: What will 2020 bring for B2B Marketing?

   

The month of December. We love the vibes the end of December brings for us.

Simply rejoicing.

Few days are left to embrace the brand new year 2020. No doubt, the upcoming year is going to be special for everyone, no exception – to our fellow B2B marketers as well.

A decade is about to over. A decade – that was most revolutionary and inspiring in a digital way.

Last week (On 18 December 2019) – our content creation team came across to some of our ABM specialist, Marketing researcher and Digital Marketers over a conversation of – ‘What will 2020 bring for B2B Marketing?’

What did we get? Let’s learn.

Stay with us.

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P is for the participant’s response.

 

Interviewer: ‘Now It is clear that lead to lead approach is becoming less relevant in these days of ABM. Account - centric approach is a priority for many marketers – right? and...’

‘All participant Nods.’

Interviewer: All are agreeing. Okay, cool!! let’s gets in detail. The first question is -  

 

Q. Do you see Account-centric approach –  like ABM is to be continued as a top priority for Marketers?

 

P1. Absolutely!! If we see the recent trends of ABM – from early 2010 to now, the one thing we are sure that ABM is flourishing with the time. We have no sign that the trend is ending.

 

P2: Rather we can say, now ABM has become mainstream. From this point, it has to become advanced with the use of marketing technology and tools. In 2020 just ABM will not be enough to spark the revenue engine – you must be willing to put continues supply of fuel of data and insight in order to make it work for you.  

 

Q. Well!! The kid ABM is matured now. Beyond that - with ABM - content experience is a term B2B Marketers finding next big thing?

 

P1: I could be a great hypothetical but I won’t. Content Experience is more about letting buyer control their content consumption and journey – and of course – personalised content suggestions.  

Keeping a B2B approach in mind we need to create a clever buying experience – that is to be aligned and integrated with the sales team. Mere content experience restricts us with Marketing and I do not want us to see marketing is a different task than the selling – at least for B2B Digital ecosystem.

 

P2: Be it content experience or buying experience – we need to keep in mind that we have to put a buyer at a central of content creation and pipeline development. This is not either easy, we will definitely need real-time behaviour data from a lead and aggregate from account to customise the right buying experience for buyers. It is not the next big thing – it is a thing we must work now. What do you say, data man? (laughs –  giving a look to our ‘actionable lead database’ executive.)

 

P3: We need consistent content experience that is buyer-focused, agreed. It is true that we need to work hard on it. If you review a decade 2010 to 2020 – look a generation wise point of view – millennials – has taken over the businesses. How buying decision used to be made is not relevant today. See, this millennials guys have no idea how the world looked like without the internet. They can make a decision by things veteran finds less important. To them experience is everything.

 

Q. Well, as we have brought the data thing in I want to ask you so what will be data’s role in creating CX and revenue-driven marketing?

 

P3: Marketing without data is Christmas without Santa Claus. (laughs). Santa brings us a lot of gifts, as data brings us a lot of insight and the most important, a perspective.

In 2020 – having a lot of data won’t be useful but a rigorous identification of driving factors from it is something we can say needed. 

Again, Intent data and predictive analytics will be playing a crucial role from designing marketing strategy to driving growth from it. To create effective TAL, we need to dig to the intent of the market – all on that from available first party and third party data. For many agencies, it is overwhelming to handle core operation and data mining at the same time so it will be more encouraging to many other agencies to focus on mere data services like intent data supplying.

 

Q. There is much saying about – sales and marketing alignment – what is your views?

 

P1: I don’t agree totally. I think apart from alignment; the integration is very important. Many marketers mix both terms while they are not the same. Marketing alignment to sales is about marching toward the same growth goals, being on the same page, while integration makes the implementation of marketing strategy effective. 

 

P2: Ya, she is right. Alignment brings clarity in operation but to implement process effectively we need to integrate as many as tools and both department possible. Technology must be used to save our greatest asset, ‘time’. Marketing and sales integration will start taking shape in 2020.

 

Conclusion:

 

That was some fractions from the communication we had. To us, it is clear that these (below listed) trends will buzz 2020?

 

1. Data-Driven Marketing.
2. Integration of various partners.
3. Buying experience – content experience.
4. Intent data and Predictive analytics with AI.

 

What do you think?

What will rule the 2020 B2B Marketing ecosystem?