The global pandemic triggered the shift towards digital channels, quickly changing face-to-face interaction to online engagement. What started out as a crisis response has now become the ‘New Normal.’ Along with the rest of the world, marketing departments continue to confront the unprecedented challenges faced.

For B2B marketers, staying ahead of the curve in 2021 has become more important than ever before…

B2B Marketing Trends You Can’t Ignore in 2021

Many B2B marketers in the financial services sector have been adapting to these changes and trying to stay on top of the recent trends. In this blog, we will be focusing on the top 5 main movements you need to be aware of in 2021.

1. Virtual Events

Virtual events have seen vast growth and are likely to become an essential part of any marketing strategy. Based on projections from Grand View Research, virtual events will grow nearly ten-fold over the next decade from $78 billion to $774 billion.

This all sounds great and most of us are now wondering “where do we go from here?” and “what makes a virtual event successful?”

Find out all you need to know about virtual events in our recent Virtual Event blog.

2. Audience Engagement

Audience engagement has become a vital aspect of digital marketing. It is no longer enough to put out a message and see what happens – engagement is key!

The global pandemic has accelerated this trend; people no longer feel like passive listeners, but want to be engaged and want to influence, interact, and be immersed in a brand’s conversation.

A report by SproutSocial found that engagements on brands’ social posts increased on average by 44 engagements per day across all networks and industries (during April 2020 compared to Q1 2020). On a per-post level, they also increased by about 7.3 engagements per post per day.

3. Voice Search and Impact on SEO

 People have been typing text to search online over the past several decades; however, it has become more convenient for a user to speak than to type. Data predicts that voice search utilisation is expected to reach to 6.4 billion in the year 2022.

This may be a good trend to be aware of as there have been a few marketers predicting that voice search will alter SEO strategies.

For example, voice searches tend to be sentence-based, which is why long-tail keywords may become an important part of your marketing SEO strategy. By adapting to the rise in voice search, your website will gain greater visibility and reach a larger group of customers, especially the ones that use this type of search.

4. Video Marketing

It is predicted that customers will spend 100 minutes a day watching online videos in 2021. This is a 19% increase compared to daily viewing minutes in 2019, which stood at 84. It therefore comes as no shock that 99% of the marketers who are currently using videos will continue to do so in 2021.

5. Retention Marketing

B2B Marketers are always talking about acquiring new customers. But the bottom line is that Retention Marketing might be a better place to start in 2021 – especially if the pandemic is creating limited budgets and making it harder to obtain new clients without the human-to-human contact.

According to a Referral Rock survey, 83% of all people surveyed agreed: It’s more beneficial to focus on retaining existing customers than it is to gain new customers.

Applying these trends to your company’s marketing strategy

Marketing trends are always advancing, and those mentioned above are only a few of the top trends we can expect to see in 2021.

Hopefully, after reading through these trends, it will be easier to pick out and apply the most effective strategies for your business and audience.

Ensuring that you can pick out and apply the most effective strategies and trends for your business and audience can be time consuming. If you’re not sure where to start, we can help.

Find out more about our approach and how to contact us to explore your options here.