“I’m not surprised that enterprise buyers have responded to the pandemic by bringing digital transformation strategies forward, with obvious benefits to B2B companies with innovative solutions. At PolyAI for example, we’ve seen increased interest in our contact centre automation solutions. I’m delighted that so much of the FINITE community has seen success in spite of mass job losses and budget cuts, and hope that we continue to support each other during this awful global crisis.”
“In line with the FINITE research report findings, we at Tide have also launched a series of webinars (our Small business Masterclasses). As all in-person events had to be cancelled and we still wanted to be there for our members and Small Business owners.
We also continued to invest in SEO as 39% of the survey respondents did. Personally, I think this is a very sensible approach given a number of reasons:
- SEO is one of the cheapest, most cost-effective marketing channels. If you don’t have the budget for any other marketing campaigns you can still utilise SEO to generate traffic/leads/sales at nearly no additional cost at all.
- SEO is a long-term effort and takes time from implementation to seeing results. The more competitive your industry is the more you need to put in an effort continuously. So stopping isn’t really an option.
- When everything stands still it is an opportunity to clean up old SEO-debt. While everyone is busy and campaigns are running more general non-campaign related tasks (such as updating your website’s CMS, cleaning up tech-debt, updating old content) tend to get pushed down the priority list as nice-to-haves/do-later. With things potentially being a bit quieter, now is the time to go through those lists and prepare for full speed again.”
“At LoopUp, we have increased digital spend during lockdown because other channels like out-of-home and trade shows have been unavailable – a strategy that probably many B2B tech companies took, contributing to digital content saturation, and creating a need for marketers to ‘cut through the noise’. To do this, we have invested in the quality of our content to maintain engagement in a more crowded online environment – likely something that all marketers will need to do on some level going into 2021.”
“Marketers are going to increase their MarTech budget and usage next year to keep up with digital demand. This will be primarily driven by the transition to digital-only experiences, but you’ll also see marketers putting a stronger emphasis on overall effectiveness and productivity. Given that, I foresee a big spike in investment in project management and workflow management tools in 2021.”
“I love to use a “cherry picker” process to classify projects and tactics by complexity and value to exploit the highest value and lowest complexity initiatives. As marketers today, we have A LOT of fruit to pick from, and there’s always ripe easy to reach cherry’s left on the tree. It’s not surprising many marketers still don’t feel it’s time to replace the more tried and tested options with maturing AI based technologies. For now, at least!”
“This survey result captures the transformation of events as a B2B marketing channel. The switch to digital events was made out of necessity, but with many businesses successfully rethinking their formats, they’ve proven to allow for engaging touch points with customers and prospects alike.
This without the financial and environmental cost of travel, and limitations that physical spaces bring. The event experiences in 2020 have also shown us that it’s complicated to mimic face-to-face networking and the relationships which it builds. I believe that the ‘hybrid’ event, which combines a local in-person event with an online component, could evolve to be standard for B2B tech events in the future.”
“Although the shift of budget to digital channels is an obvious one it will be interesting to see what comparisons can be made with ROI and lead generation numbers compared to previous years, and if a positive impact is seen, how will this impact future budgets when face-to-face events are back on the cards.”
“2021 will be all about focus. This year saw all B2B marketers become digital marketers overnight. It was unexpected, and it was quick – no plan or strategy had been pressure tested for this. Marketers pivoted to meet the needs of their customers, creating a lot of new programmes and assets.
It’s no surprise that the top two challenges are linked back to the ‘noise’ of 2020 – the only way to cut-through is to laser focus on your customer. B2B marketers need to get back to basics, reassess their audience and their new needs, and focus their marketing strategy. Whatever you knew to be true about your audience last year, is probably more uncertain today.”
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About FINITE
FINITE is the private global community just for marketers in B2B tech, software & SaaS to connect, share, learn & grow.
About Clarity Performance
Clarity Performance is the B2B digital marketing agency working exclusively with the world’s leading B2B technology, software & SaaS businesses.