We enter a new decade in early 2021. The previous decade began when many companies realized the importance of exploring the digital landscape to expand their horizons. The spread of the pandemic towards the end forced more companies to explore this avenue, and as a result, B2B digital marketing gained new momentum.

While the opportunities have multiplied and the possibilities are endless, competitiveness has also grown proportionally. Innovation has become the key to surviving digital Darwinism. Digital content marketing strategies, search engine optimization (SEO), and other technology-driven strategies now have a fair share of the budget when it comes to marketing overhead.

So what are the B2B marketing trends that companies should capture in 2021 to gain that competitive advantage? Here are some of the significant trends that cannot be ignored.

1) Content marketing will continue to be at the center of all campaigns: Digital content will continue to be king. Google’s algorithm keeps getting smarter. Especially after the BERT update (Transformers Two-Way Encoder Renderings, a paper published by Google’s AI Language researchers), the ‘context’ of content based on user ‘intent’ is believed to have gained more prominence. So content backed by proper keyword research, intended audience profile, and analytics data, etc., will be the key.

2) Influencing marketing will gain momentum: Having eminent social media personalities on board to promote various products and services has already been in vogue when it comes to B2C marketing. In 2021, B2B campaigns will also tend to fully exploit it due to its enormous potential to drive sales. In addition, it generates trust and loyalty to the brand. Influencing content like case studies, webinars, video content, and blog content will continue to affect platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook, etc. TopRank Marketing has some interesting statistics related to this here.

3) Artificial Intelligence (AI) Enabled Marketing: AI is a great tool for tracking consumer fingerprints in order to understand their behavior and choices, which in turn helps companies launch targeted marketing campaigns. Additionally, artificial intelligence tools like chatbots have already become an integral part of websites, and according to one study, 67% of customers globally reported using a chatbot for customer service in 2017. There is no reason to believe that this number has not increased since then. later. AI also facilitates programmatic advertising, semantic search, email personalization, and more. and therefore it will be a great tool for lead generation.

4) Video content marketing will increase your engagement: According to a Wyzowl study, 86% of people would like to see more brand videos in 2020. Additionally, people watch an average of 16 hours of online video per week, a 52% increase over the past 2 years. It’s safe to assume that video content marketing will continue to gain prominence and is likely to deliver a great return on investment.

5) Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR / AR) will add more value to marketing strategies: According to Statista, total AR / VR spending worldwide was projected to reach US $ 12 billion in 2020, and is projected to rise sharply to US $ 72.8 billion through 2024. While the reality Virtual is great for simulated experiences, augmented reality offers you an experience to test products virtually. For example, L’Oreal’s makeup app allows users to try various types of makeup online.

6) Customer retention marketing: Acquiring new customers is often more expensive than retaining old ones. According to one study, a 5% increase in customer retention can increase a company’s revenue by between 25% and 95%. So investing in improved communication mechanisms, customer education and onboarding, best-in-class customer support and customer appreciation, etc. can really be a great way to optimize your ROI from marketing.