B2B

As traditional B2B advertising channels continue to wane, savvy B2B marketers are turning to videos featuring influencers to drive engagement and build brand trust. Most B2B marketers (81 percent) have dedicated influencer-marketing budgets, says a new survey, while another 9 percent plan to follow suit this year.

B2B marketers consider brand advertising important, says a new study, but most of them are still in the preliminary stage of developing a branding strategy. The gap between rhetoric and reality carries major risk as an increasing number of younger buyers attuned to branding enter the market and demand more original content.

Marketers who trust their data are three times more likely to report revenue growth, according to a new report from Anteriad. The report, based on a survey of 450 B2B marketing leaders, found that 39 percent of marketers use intent data, while marketers reporting strong revenue growth are 62 percent more likely to use it.

Most SMBs say artificial intelligence (AI) is making them more competitive against bigger companies and saving them both time and money in operating costs. At the same time, a fair share of SMBs remain on a significant learning curve when it comes to how to leverage AI to find new audiences and generate more revenue.

A new report says that marketers place too much focus on the direct users of a product and fail to reach out to C-level executives, as well as influencers, working throughout the company — so-called hidden buyers. Reaching such buyers effectively means B2B marketers will have to reconfigure their thought-leadership programming.

Social media continues to be a critical marketing channel for SMBs, yet many companies struggle with creating enough content to feed the maw and measure ROI effectively. To close the gap, SMBs are increasingly deploying artificial intelligence (AI), which can spur content creation and personalize messaging, new surveys reveal.

A new study released by several major marketing organizations upends the conventional wisdom that B2B purchasing decisions are driven by rational factors, such as product features and price points. The study underscores the growing need for B2B brands to practice a more human-centric, network-driven approach to marketing.

Ricky Abbott, president of global B2B marketing agency Transmission, thinks the status quo is untenable for B2B advertising and says marketers needs to embrace more of an entertainment model to serve both existing and emerging customers.

B2B events are on the upswing this year, according to a recent survey. However, while B2B marketers recognize the necessity of events in an increasingly fragmented media environment, they can't rest on their laurels and need to produce events that cater to attendees' rapidly changing expectations.

What's up with B2B branding? More than one-third (34 percent) of B2B marketers say they face greater pressure to prove ROI in the coming year, yet just 14 percent predict they'll put more focus on brand building in the next year, a new survey reveals. This resistance to branded advertising is turning into a major risk.

Most B2B marketers are using personalization in their sales and marketing activities and customer engagement, according to a recent study. But a siloed approach means buyers experience less customization, not more, as they wend their way through the sales funnel.

Account-based marketing (ABM) has been a tough sell in the past few years. But the tide may be turning, with 87 percent of marketers saying they expect their organization's ABM budget to increase in the next 12 months, with an average bump of 9 percent, per a recent study.

A multichannel B2B marketing strategy is no longer a nice-to-have for companies but a major component for minting new customers. An increasingly popular tool? The telephone.

For B2B marketers, customer acquisition is hard enough, with buyers traveling about 70 percent of the way through the buying journey before they contact a sales rep. Now, as a new cohort of B2B buyers takes charge and purchasing by committee grows, the pressure is on marketers to simplify their onboarding strategy.

While email marketing continues to provide healthy returns, an increasing number of B2B marketers are convinced that the channel can be turbocharged with generative artificial intelligence (AI).

The technology behind deepfakes — in which someone uses manipulated content online for malicious aims — has been coalescing for years and is now encroaching on the B2B field. According to a recent survey, most B2B CMOs are ill-prepared to deal with it.

The future of B2B video is short — in length, that is. After LinkedIn started to test a short-form video feed in March 2024, B2B marketers joined the fray. Video is now the fastest-expanding format on LinkedIn, feeding a growing appetite for "snackable" content among younger buyers.

Some B2B sectors outperformed the national average for digital advertising growth in 2024, according to a recent survey, with search and mobile venues commanding more and more ad dollars. Vertical players are also increasing their investments in platforms that have traditionally catered to consumers such as social media and connected TV.

Saima Rashid enjoyed working with 6sense so much that when she was ready to make a move in the early 2020s, she reached out to the software company about any possibilities. Just a few years later Rashid is playing a lead role expanding the company's "unified revenue" model, which is built on aligning the sales and marketing teams and breaking down business silos.

Spending on B2B experiential marketing is on the rise — outpacing B2C — as B2B firms reimagine their live events to create more memorable experiences for their audiences.