B2B digital marketing trends for 2016
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The slides from my Smart Insights webinar on 2 December 2015, where we looked at the 6 critical aspects of the marketing mix to focus more attention on in 2016. We cover content (video and blogging), email, social media (Linkedin), marketing automation and analytics and include b2b case studies on companies including Fisher Tank, Indium, Ferguson, Tata Steel and Maersk.
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B2B digital marketing trends for 2016
- 1. Digital Marketing Priorities 2016 Brought to you by: B2B Digital Marketing 2016: New ways to showcase your expertise René Power Independent consultant and trainer, Vision B2B Author: Brilliant B2B Marketing Are you looking to raise profile, create traffic or drive engagement? To help you meet these goals, René will use examples to explain how to apply six of the critical elements of the modern B2B marketing toolkit in this free webinar.
- 2. 2 Agenda Context – biggest challenges going into 2016 Content marketing (blogging & video) Email marketing Social media (Linkedin) Marketing automation Analytics led marketing
- 3. 3 About me Help companies selling to other companies (b2b) position on expertise and value 20 year business marketing professional Well networked and connected Vice Chair, Manchester CIM Published, blogger, speaker, trainer
- 4. 4 Where are we now and where are we headed?
- 5. 5 Context – An internet minute Source:Domo
- 6. 6 The stalwarts of b2b marketing Marketing automation Content marketing Email marketing Social media
- 7. 7 Everyone is creating content and telling stories
- 8. 8 Everyone is sending emails
- 9. 9 Everyone has a must follow social media account
- 10. 10 New ways to showcase b2b experience
- 11. 11 Evolved content strategy Begin with the end in mind Go without mentioning product Be the best in your sector Be the best on 1-3 channels
- 12. 12 1. Blogging reinvented Write longer, better, less frequently Anchor around a hot industry topic or piece of research ‘How to lists of ten’ are the all time best type of blog post Integrate with email and social to give traffic a boost
- 15. 15 2. It’s time to embrace video
- 17. 17 3. Responsive, customer focused email design Use of lightboxes in email Rise and rise of mobile Personalisation
- 19. 19 4. Maximising Linkedin Get your shop window right 1 2 3 4
- 20. 20 Publish
- 21. 21 Network
- 22. 22 Run an engaging company page Creative header Complete About section Add links to website, blogs, other channels Use interactive content esp. video
- 25. 25 HighQ
- 26. 26 6. Analytics led marketing Use analytics to improve content focus & quality 10 standard aspects to monitor SALES Conversion to sales New vs. returning visits Behaviour (content) Dwell Bounce Social referral Exit path Device Geography
- 27. 27 Summary Evolve your approach to content Master of selected channels rather than jack of all Adopt a fresh approach to blogging and video Email more frequently to test and refine Maximise Linkedin for brand & expertise building Apply marketing automation thinking even if the software is still unattainable Have an idea of what success will look like and use Analytics tools to move in the right direction
- 28. 28 Further reading B2B Marketing Guide (updating Jan 2016): http://www.smartinsights.com/guides/brilliant-b2b- digital-marketing-ebook/ Content Marketing Guide: http://www.smartinsights.com/guides/content- marketing-strategy-guide/ Email Marketing Guide: http://www.smartinsights.com/guides/email- marketing-7-steps-guide/ Social Media Marketing Guide: http://www.smartinsights.com/guides/managing- social-media-marketing-guide/
- 29. 29 Webinar offers Offer 1 25% off Smart Insights Expert Membership with the code SMARTB2B. Visit www.smartinsights.com to start today and access ALL guides, templates and content
- 30. 30 Webinar offers Offer 2 Secure a 20% discount off the £450 price of Rene’s exclusive “Marketing Plan in a Day” review session if booked/paid before 20 December, 2015 and taken by 29 January 2016. Visit http://visionb2b.co.uk/go/marketing-plan-review/ to find out more.
- 31. 31 Thank you Please don’t forget to rate the webinar when you leave For more: www.smartinsights.com www.visionb2b.co.uk
Editor's Notes
- Thanks for taking time out of your busy Wednesday to join me for this webcast looking at digital marketing priorities for b2b marketing in 2016. My name is Rene Power and for the next 40 minutes I’m going to take you on a whistle-stop tour of the six areas I think b2b marketers need to be focusing on in 2016. I’m optimistic everyone joining us today will pick up a few things to takeaway, research or try out. As we move through the presentation you’ll see there are a number of polls. Please join in. I look forward to obtaining your feedback. Dave Chaffey is also online throughout at this time and we hope to answer questions and take feedback as we go. Usual rules apply. Take the polls when directed. Ask questions and please leave feedback when you exit the webinar. Ready? Let’s go!
- The webinar is pitched at an intermediate audience. We’re assuming that everyone on the call has some understanding and experience of using the marketing disciplines listed here. With the time we have, I’m going to be focusing on making small but significant mindset and technological changes in each of these areas and will be using examples to show b2b brands that are winning in these channels.
- Twenty years in marketing (5 client side, 15 international agency consulting) in a wide variety of sectors means I am ideally placed to help companies tell and sell their expertise better than the rest. I’m currently building my own marketing and training firm and content, email, social and marketing automation are a major part of getting the message in front of the right people. I’m a practitioner like you. [Poll 1 – context the audience]
- Marketing moves fast and the digital marketing landscape is evolving faster than nearly any other industry. That’s because the web, itself, is changing faster than ever. We’re nearing the realization of Web 3.0 – The Semantic/Intelligent Web – thanks to the mountains of data pouring out of new devices, products, and social platforms every second of every day. Marketers need to understand how this deluge of data impacts their content & community marketing strategies – in order to make better decisions about time and investment to better serve customers and prospects.
- If we have to hang a hat on something, I’d argue that in b2b the best ways to influence a customer lie in providing the right information at the right time, it is reasonable to assume that the story, or offer (content), played out through direct and indirect (passive) channels is going to be the right combination. Creating material in formats that can be shared across a variety of social platforms and directly through email is still the most logical and preferred integrated strategy. And as marketing automation technologies become more mainstream, expect these to dominate marketing resource discussions in all sizes of business in 2016.
- Ask any business and they’ll say they are engaged in content marketing. Relatively few plan it strategically, analyse the results, are able to attribute success but spend is rising. Budgets for content marketing have been increasing steadily over the past several years. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 51% of B2B firms plan to increase spending on content marketing in 2016. For most B2B marketers, the value of content marketing is crystal clear: it helps prospects move through their Buyer Journey faster because the brand is providing answers to questions that are being asked before the prospect reaches out to a sales person. And as other vehicles for marketing communications, like display advertising, continue to spiral downward in effectiveness for a variety of reasons – including the increasing adoption of ad blocking software, increasing ‘ad blindness,’ and ineffective mobile ad formats – content marketing increasingly becomes a way to cut through the clutter and genuinely engage and educate prospects.However, most B2B marketing & communications departments are resource-constrained, meaning that they’re trying to do more with less, and their content marketing efforts, therefore, less effective. Look for CMOs to adjust budgets for 2016, increasing investment in content marketing – from people, to vendors, to technology solutions that manage, measure, and optimize content. Content shock This buzzword first popped up in 2014 as a means of describing how difficult content marketing is to sustain. Buyers and influencers are absorbing so much content each day, and content creators are churning out content at unprecedented rates. As a B2B marketer, can you afford to not be creating the best, most engaging, most compelling, most relevant content each month if your competitors are doing just that?
- Email marketing is a topic that is consistently changing. With estimates that there are billions of emails sent every hour, not only do email marketing tactics get more creative, but what consumers want from an email marketing campaign is very fluid. One day it’s images that get your emails opened, and the next it’s the subject line that has the biggest effect. Not only are the actual campaigns changing, but how you get email addresses changes as well. The moral of the story, however, is simple: The sooner you can anticipate what trends might be coming the easier it will be to keep up and stay ahead of your competition. It remain a primary tool in b2b so we especially liked this simple learning from the AddThis team about keeping your email marketing working optimally. Keep your lists clean and relevant. The best way to do this is by using it, so email often. Test everything. Even entry level platforms like MailChimp and Campaign Monitor give you A/B testing options on every send. Use it to try different subject lines, lead stories, images, text. vs glossy html.
- If you’re like me you’re probably following 1,000s of companies and business people on Twitter, 100’s of companies on Linkedin. You may also follow a few brands on Facebook, Instagram & Pinterest too. How often do you see something that you didn’t see elsewhere? I think the majority of b2b brands make three critical mistakes when it comes to social. They don’t have a value proposition for social or their use of each platform. They post the same (similar) material to multiple platforms. They mix engagement and social selling. It leads to a disconnected ‘busy fool’ scenario where there can be lots of activity but it isn’t serving the company’s interests or those of customers. [Poll 2]
- Taken from Stephen Covey’s long-time best-selling book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, you’ll recognize this one as the second habit: Begin with the End in Mind. CMI compared informational/educational posts to posts that mentioned our products and/or services. The posts that talked about CMI received about 25 percent of the total unique visitors that a regular, educational post did. At the same time, CMI received virtually no additional subscribers on sales-related posts, while regular posts brought in between 35 and 75 subscribers. The more you talk about yourself, the more you’ll negatively impact your content marketing efforts. Keep the offers outside the content, and watch your program flourish. Your goal should be to be the best informational resource for your industry. This is critical to making content marketing work for you. If your content marketing isn’t eagerly anticipated and truly necessary, at some point, your audience will see through the façade and ignore you. Ask yourself this: If your content marketing disappeared from the planet, would anyone miss it? Channels take a hit in quality every time you add another one. Be great at distributing content through three channels; use another three to heavily promote that content; and forget the rest… at least for a while. Then check the results.
- Blogging isn’t a new phenomenon but the best practice around it shifts regularly. Currently the advice is to write longer form articles on specific topics that endure over time and become important pieces for niche communities. This requires more in-depth thought, research and editing so blogging less on topical issues. You’ll see a combination at SmartInsights but the long form articles do deliver significant and enduring footfall. To really get the benefit from blogging, you should produce topical blog content though by rooting it firmly in a hot topic or current research into a known problem. Listicles continue to be a valued type of blog post because they provide a rich content in theory lots of links to other resources – further positioning you as an expert in your field. Blogging works best when you incorporate email – to deliver subscription – and social media – to stimulate engagement. Increasingly, high traffic US marketing bloggers are shutting down comments on the blog and encouraging people to create debate on social platforms, esp. Facebook
- Examples on the slide include Facebook posting Use of email footer Email marketing
- Fisher Tank makes giant, above-ground welded steel tanks for clients in the energy, waste water, pulp & paper industries. They are large multi-million dollar with a long lead time. For more than 60 years, the company has made its sales primarily through cold calling and referrals from existing clients. So it took some balls to launch a content marketing strategy online. The company cleaned up the website, added a blog with social sharing, and offered some valuable content by free download. The campaign increased web traffic by 119%, traffic from social media by 4800%, lead conversions by 3900%, quote requests by 500% and new qualified sales opportunities by $3.4 million.
- Plan to incorporate video into your B2B content & community marketing plans for 2016, or prepare to watch your competitors succeed with this highly engaging medium. Video has been on the rise for a number of years in parallel with smartphone penetration, network capabilities, and hardware evolution. It is becoming ever more the norm for users to share stories in new ways, whether it is static YouTube or Vimeo video, bite-sized video on Snapchat, Instagram, Boomerang, and Vine, to live streaming video through Meerkat and Periscope. Where user behavior goes, so must your digital marketing tactics, and B2B marketers who incorporate video early will gain first-mover advantages with their prospects and with the media. How will you harness video for lead generation? For prospect education? For customer support?
- INDIUM develops and manufactures materials used primarily in the electronics assembly industry. Social Media & video marketing in manufacturing is a rarity. 17+ Indium engineers write blog articles to share their expertise with customers, prospects and people with questions about the technical applications related to solder. They shifted from traditional white papers to blog articles, supported by extensive measurements. Video is a significant part of the mix too, used to to develop high value conversations, and this rolls over into trade show attendance. Super focused, highly informative and instructional video highlights key points for success and insights. SEO was improved significantly as a result too. And ultimately, leads increased dramatically too while trade-show costs decreased 75%.
- Ever notice how many websites choose to interrupt your reading or shopping experience with a pop-up? Some digital marketers think of them as a nuisance to conversion, however, using these pop-ups, also known as lightboxes, have been known to grow email lists 5 to 10 times faster than a traditional email signup fields in a website according to recent studies. In respect to mobile, a recent US Consumer Device Preference Report from MovableInk highlighted that 66% of all email in the US is now read on smartphones, and usage is not the only thing changing. Screen sizes are actually getting bigger to accommodate video and gaming demands. You can use your analytics program to see the devices your visitors are using for email. You can inform your email designs, including responsiveness, font size and the location of your CTAs.The main thing to remember with the mobile trend and general Internet usage is that users expect to get things faster and easier. For this reason, it’s best practice to keep emails specific, simple and not too text heavy. Also, if there are large files, like images or videos, make sure they don’t cause poor load time. Personalising email can be done implicitly or explicitly. An example of implicit personalization would be sending certain emails to certain age groups. A recent BlueHornet study found that 18-24-year-olds are more likely to be interested in emails containing a discount, where middle-aged and seniors are enticed most by free shipping. This can be used to inform headline writing, email design and tracking. Explicit personalization, in terms of email marketing can often be utilized best with current customers. For example, if you just purchased a pair of football boots, you might get an email in a few weeks asking you “How are you enjoying your new football boots Mike? They may go well with this limited edition football we just got in stock!”
- Ferguson, an $11bn company, is one of the top distributors of HVAC, waterworks and industrial products in the U.S. Every year, Ferguson hits the road to produce more than 90 trade show events funded by contributions from sponsoring vendors. Part of a larger marketing cooperative program, Ferguson Rewards, the events allow Ferguson's vendors to get in front of customers and promote their brands and products. Moving from a manual registration to fully optimised email programme took 7 months. But it meant that the company could send pre-reg 12 days before an event, a reminder with RSVP to win and a confirmation. An integrated onsite app allowed for much smoother delegate arrivals. The impact was profound: 323 trade show attendees have signed up for Ferguson Online. More than 50% of attendees are actively opening email messages. Nearly 20% of attendees are interacting with email messages. More than 40% of attendees who signed up for Ferguson Online are active transacting customers, generating $10+ million in online sales in 2014 and counting.
- Critical elements of your profile before using the platform. Banner and icon image, your title and professional description and where you work/role. These keywords are crucial to returning you in searches.
- Publishing gives you the ammunition to build your professional profile and brand on Linkedin. Posted articles allows you to reach a significantly larger audience than blogging alone – or relying solely on your connections. You can being to influence a wide variety of customers, prospect and specifiers
- Being to ‘soft connect’ is one of the most powerful elements of the Linkedin offer. Don’t abuse it though. Use advanced search filters to help pinpoint potential customers, suppliers and recruits. Basic free account search results include Full profiles with names of everyone in your network (1st, 2nd, 3rd level connections and shared group members) A maximum of 1000 results per search Basic search result filters Premium account search results include Full profiles with names of everyone in your network (1st, 2nd, 3rd level connections and shared group members) A maximum of 1000 results per search Anything marked gold in the search page incl. Function/job title Years of experience Seniority Caveat: I have a legacy Business account. Some of the advanced search functionality will cost you £40/month. Connect based on common ground – contact, a group, company, news, update or link on another platform. Needs to not be cold!
- Companies that have engaging Linkedin pages share interesting content about their operations and their industry, they talk about careers and development, share publications and links to other platforms.
- Looking a little broader, Danish shipping company Maersk first began using social back in 2011 to raise brand awareness, gain insight into the market, increase employee satisfaction and get closer to its customers. Now the company focuses on the stories that emerge from within the business, such as how it is helping fuel a boom in the sale of Kenyan avocados and where its staff come from. Its presence on each network is tailored to that platform, so for example on LinkedIn it promotes job vacancies and publishes articles about the work culture within the business, while on Instagram it encourages followers to post photos of its ships using the hashtag #Maersk. Maersk now has more than 1.5m Facebook fans (of which around 15% are customers) and 12,000 Twitter followers, as well as active accounts on Instagram, Tumblr, YouTube and Google+.
- Marketing Automation has been around for a decade in power-tool form. Every major digital suite, from Oracle, to Adobe, to Salesforce, to IBM, has a highly evolved marketing automation feature-set, and you also have independent players able to acquire sizable market share, like HubSpot, Infusionsoft, and Marketo. Now, in 2016, we need to prepare for marketing automation to hit the mainstream. Any business with more than a few customers needs a CRM system to manage customer information, needs the ability to send those customers time-based or trigger-based email communications, and needs the ability to recognize when a customer might be ready to buy again, or when they’re getting cold and need some love. Look for the independent marketing automation platforms to roll out new platform features and plans for much smaller main street businesses, and watch the small business ESPs, like MailChimp, Constant Contact, and DotMailer roll out advanced automation features in 2016.
- HighQ, a U.K.-based enterprise cloud collaboration company, provides services to some of the largest law firms and corporations in the world. Used by 98% of the Fortune 100, the company has a lofty goal: to change the way businesses operate. With automated email trafficking people through gated downloads to webinars to free product demo and trial Average email open rate shot up to 46.97% Average clickthrough rate increased to 17.90% The unsubscribe rate dropped to 0.2% With an increase of content offerings on the site, the team has also increased their list size by 2,500%.
- Marketing Automation has been around for a decade in power-tool form. Every major digital suite, from Oracle, to Adobe, to Salesforce, to IBM, has a highly evolved marketing automation feature-set, and you also have independent players able to acquire sizable market share, like HubSpot, Infusionsoft, and Marketo. Now, in 2016, we need to prepare for marketing automation to hit the mainstream. Any business with more than a few customers needs a CRM system to manage customer information, needs the ability to send those customers time-based or trigger-based email communications, and needs the ability to recognize when a customer might be ready to buy again, or when they’re getting cold and need some love. Look for the independent marketing automation platforms to roll out new platform features and plans for much smaller main street businesses, and watch the small business ESPs, like MailChimp, Constant Contact, and DotMailer roll out advanced automation features in 2016.