Four Important B2B Marketing Trends for 2019

Gravy, baby. It’s a Christmas staple, usually made from meat (or other appropriate vegetarian alternative), spice, oil and a thickening agent like flour to bring it all together.

The same can be said of your 2019 marketing plans. With the Christmas holiday season upon us, it’s an ideal time to think about the marketing trends and tools for the year ahead.

So, what are the most important marketing trends to watch out for in 2019?

Campaign landing pages (the meat)

Whatever your methods of reaching customers, in the digital world they all land in precisely the same spot: your website. Here are a few trends to watch in 2019:

• Year of the landing page: Loud and clear – it’s the way to do it. Dedicated campaign landing pages work at their best when the hook is clear, be it a webinar, brochure, product trial, or digital course. 2019 will be the year that dedicated landing pages provide the biggest and best results
• Clean up that user experience: Sorry slowpokes, it’s nearly 2019 now – your website needs to be responsive and easy to navigate. Fast load times and a consistent experience on tablets, mobiles and desktops will improve users’ time on-site, boosting traffic and lifting conversion rates. For more information take a look at the Pingdom Site Tester
• Invest in your messaging: It’s no secret that marketing is prone to change. Instead of focusing solely on the channels you’ll use to promote your business in 2019, think about what you need to say to attract the right customers. Messaging workshops, market research and user testing can help you shape an incredible B2B value proposition.

Predictive analytics (the spice)

It’s been a special year for snazzy marketing tech, and we’re excited to use and talk about predictive analytics in particular. Fear not – the concept is actually quite straightforward.

Popular methods like account-based marketing (ABM), where detailed data points combine with meticulous research on low volume, high-value prospects, are evolving.

Predictive analytics builds on this. It automates more of the process, using sophisticated and granular data to better understand where a prospect is in the sales funnel based on their online behaviour and activities.

Here’s an example of predictive analytics in a typical campaign:

1. Defining demand and market: Understanding how many targets exist that fit within your target market and can be realistically accessed
2. Reducing noise: Leveraging ‘intent signals’ – past online behaviour and present activity – to reduce your target list to only the highest value prospects, which are then ranked
3. Personalisation and engagement: Sophisticated data points help businesses to know what messaging works best on each individual prospect. This is sometimes referred to as ‘qualified demand’
4. The close: Deal time. The deep understanding of your prospects helps sales teams to prioritise, and they can easily assign total values and expected close dates to prospects handed to them by the marketing team.

There’s some fascinating tech wizardry behind this process – machine learning and algorithms galore. Another topic for another article!

Remarketing (the oil)

A big subject, and worth touching on for the year ahead.

Remarketing has proven its value for us this year, and we encourage its use in 2019 and beyond. It’s a simple premise: you’ll get better conversions from prospects who were previously browsing your website. Here are a few of our findings on the subject:

• Test remarketing on existing campaigns: It’s daunting to dive into remarketing, particularly for a business on a budget. If you have existing paid search campaigns, use them to test remarketing by promoting your goods and services using banner ads. Minimal cost, maximum exposure
• Be ready to bid up: Studies commonly find remarketing conversion rates to double amongst buyers who’ve viewed an ad twice or more. It’s worth bidding more for this reason
• Remarket to existing customers: Remarketing works just as well on previous customers or enquirers. Use them as an opportunity to promote new products and services (discounts work well here) to an already interested audience
• Remarketing for search: An often-underused tool, Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA) allow you to match broad search queries with your previous website visitors. Scarily technical to the unseasoned marketer, but highly valuable when used correctly. The reason? You don’t have to worry about the discovery stage, an area where broad search queries often fall short. Using RSLA can help you reduce ad cost and improve re-engagement simultaneously.

Content marketing (the flour)

Sure, we could – and will in future – break this down further into component parts, but you’re busy and we only needed one more subject to make this whole recipe theme work. There’s plenty of stuff to talk about here. Floury, valuable stuff that brings everything together.

Three B2B content marketing tips from the QliQ team for the year ahead:

1. Nail that blog formatting: Having a standardised process is very, very valuable. It saves time and presents your business in a better light. It’s also important to try new things. Consider creating infographics, videos and gifs, and take the time to dig through old posts to bring them up to snuff. Snazzier posts cost more, but the results will speak for themselves
2. Dole out the freebies: Whitepapers and eBooks are the cornerstones of content, and we can’t stop winning when we use them. Keep it specific, make sure you have a solid call-to-action and do your honest best to provide real value. It’ll improve traffic and build email lists like no other
3. Engage on social: A basic social presence is mandatory, but it’s worth considering taking it a step further. Responding to engagement and proactively connecting with your audience will build traffic and followers. To quantify the workload better, consider setting basic rules about response time and hours spent on engagement each week.

Want to make your B2B marketing plan a success in 2019?

If you are a new (or even an existing!) QliQ client interested in a marketing review, we can help you formulate a plan for the forthcoming year.

We know you’re savvy enough to realise the value of this opportunity, so hopefully we don’t have to sell you on the idea!

To discuss how we can formulate your best recipe for 2019 marketing success book a discovery call today.