The before and after

Content marketing is, as ever, on the minds of B2B digital marketers.

However, our research shows a slightly changed picture from the B2B world of last year (and the three before, since Econsultancy began producing B2B Digital Trends reports in 2012) – customer experience is taking on a greater, and substantial, role in the B2B space.

As readers of our past reports will know, B2B trails B2C pretty consistently in focus and market prioritization. In our latest report we discuss some ways to halt this trend, partly by looking to successful B2B marketers to identify winning strategies.

Data

It’s not going away. In fact, almost a fifth of marketers believe that the most exciting change of the next five years will be in the direction of data-driven marketing that focuses on the individual.

However, marketers lack confidence in their data analysis abilities.

Majorities of B2B and B2C marketers are either neutral on the question of whether they have the analysts necessary to “make sense of our data,” or they out-right disagree:

B2B and B2C respondents replied similarly when asked whether they had a good infrastructure in place to collect the data they need.

Data handling capabilities are a problem

Data handling is an issue that still dogs marketers. Strangely, many still don’t believe that using data across online and offline channels will be of special importance in the years to come.

Brands need to catch up to their customers. Mobilize!

It’s become a tiresome trope that everything is going “mobile,” but it’s no less accurate for being a true blue marketing cliche.

Problem is, brands aren’t following. What’s the hold up?

For starters, brands still aren’t prioritizing the move to mobile. and neither are they shy about saying so.

Respondents were asked to rank five key digital marketing areas in order of importance for their organization in 2016.

Mobile was one of these options. Figure 10 shows the breakdown for organizations and how they responded with regard to mobile.

For 61% of B2B respondents, mobile doesn’t crack the top three priorities for 2016.

As always…

Modern marketing is the story of learning how to sell in the face of changing realities.

The customers’ world is changing faster than brands can adapt, and marketers commonly site a shortage of skills as being of the top barrier to optimizing the digital customer experience.

Inside this year’s B2B Digital Trends report are a few insights that will help marketers improve brand performance in this area. Click here to check it out.