The rise of SEO as a B2B tech marketing channel:
“Given the ups-and-downs we experienced in 2021, it’s great to see that SEO is receiving greater recognition from our marketing peers. Though not as reactive as other channels, it has proven to be an effective, evergreen medium that can stay steady even in the most unsteady of times.
The B2B market can be a slower one to embrace digital change, so it’s encouraging to see an uptick in SEO’s perceived value, and it is an area of solid focus here at LSEG as senior leaders and wider teams have seen its worth and ROI effectiveness as a marketing channel.
As businesses face the financial knock-on from COVID, SEO must play a vital role in maximising ROI, streamlining spend and serving as a solid foundation for all marketing efforts. While SEO can be a long-term play, planting the seeds early and sharing SEO success will only continue to show it’s a worthwhile investment.
Having SEO present and optimised in an omnichannel mix can only provide better results, I would expect to see this 40% grow as we move into 2022 and B2B marketers continue to see SEO for all its worth.”
“Marketing teams in 2022 should prioritise being able to attribute their work to revenue. From our experience the most successful marketers are the ones that can prove, with data, their contribution to their companies revenue growth.
It’s great to see a majority of B2B tech marketers, who can’t measure their impact on revenue, actively working on this in 2022.”
“As the MarTech landscape has matured, it has become so vast that it’s now hard to spot the vendors that can truly add value to the team.
That said, as the marketing team and the demands of our function scale here at Leapsome, we’re constantly looking to leverage the right tools to enhance our processes and, ultimately, achieve more with less. Inevitably, our investment in our marketing stack continues to grow.”
“Almost three-quarters of respondents indicated that they will be investing more in brand marketing, and I’m not surprised for two reasons.
First, B2B buyers want to progress through the majority of the buyer journey (upwards of 70% or more) on their own before they engage with a vendor’s sales team. This means we need to provide high-quality brand content that both informs and inspires. The brand becomes more than just identity or image (although that is important to get prospective buyers to begin the journey); it is necessary that the brand messaging builds credibility, confidence, and provides thought leadership to buyers through their journey.
Second, B2B buyers consume 10 or more channels of communication to interact with suppliers (what some call omnichannel sales). Across these channels, having a strong and consistent brand message is vital to building the relationship with prospective customers. Yes, we need a strong brand message to attract potential clients at the top of the funnel, but we also need strong brand assets to guide and equip that prospect through every interaction until they reach the point of sales engagement.”
“It’s refreshing to see so many companies moving towards incorporating ABM into their marketing plan. It’s been a big focus for Doddle over the past couple of years with great impact.
In marketing, we’ve been tailoring our message to audience for a while. ABM takes that one step further, and targets decision makers within a high value account. Instead of creating content that appeals to the masses, you can create personalised content that talks directly to the decision makers you want to convert. For a company like ours, with a small, high value audience, ABM has been invaluable.
What’s also been great about ABM is how it’s brought the sales and marketing teams together. Often there’s friction between the two teams in the B2B world but working together to identify target accounts, develop a strategy to target these accounts and keeping track of progress means you have to work together. And a good working relationship with your sales team just makes marketing a lot more effective.”
“Throughout the pandemic, and a lot of uncertainty, hybrid events were the logical move to keep momentum on events in 2021, but as for 2022, I predict hybrid events will be on a minimum scale.
Hybrid events tend to translate to double-the-work, since you’ll need to assign part of the team to be exclusively online, and the other part to the venue. They are relatively high risk, as they require a lot of resources, which might not pay off when ROI isn’t met.
At Affise this year, we will participate in offline conferences, and will focus on partnering for online events with other networks, influencers and brands etc.”
“Whilst both retention and acquisition are important for sustainability, the value of acquisition for long term growth is becoming increasingly important. Whether your business is new to the market or if you are a leader currently saturating the growth potential of your existing customers, the tools and processes available to grow your market can bring results for those who focus on acquisition.”
“The findings from FINITE’s B2B marketing trends report seem to follow a pattern – more budget and responsibility to be granted to marketing teams to tackle the increasing expectations from buyers with ever increasing choices. But with the rise in budget comes additional responsibility to spend wisely and track impact. Hence the finding that ‘attribution and tracking ROI was cited as the biggest challenge for B2B tech marketers in 2022’ is not too much of a surprise.
I believe that B2B marketing teams that speak the language of hypothesis testing (since there are far too many variables along a B2B pipeline to do simple A/B testing), rapid experimentation and causality (what really affected bottom line revenue WoW and MoM?) will be the most likely to succeed this year and beyond.”
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.