5 Tips for Marketing Agencies Working with B2B Clients

Vũ Khôi

Author at Wotech Electronics Blog

Not just marketing agencies — every business has been through 2 stormy years of COVID. The difficulties of the pandemic have partly taught us how important it is to work closely together and optimize work performance to save budget while still delivering the desired results.

This article offers 5 digital marketing tips to help agencies collaborate better with their B2B clients.

5 digital trends that help marketing agencies plan strategies for B2B businesses more appropriately and effectively

Before diving into the article, let's briefly revisit the concept of B2B. B2B stands for "Business to business" — a business relationship between companies. B2B companies' customers are other companies and businesses. A typical example would be logistics companies, employee management software companies, project management software, and so on.

For this group of clients, agencies should:

• Enhance personalized services;

• Place even more emphasis on video communication and chatbot-based communication;

• Focus on brand awareness;

• Make the most of content marketing;

• Keep social media as the "home base" for every communications campaign

1. In a marketing agency's strategy, the importance of personalization needs to be elevated

In recent years, personalization has consistently ranked among the top digital trends that every marketing agency should pay special attention to. According to Gartner, personalization is "a process of creating relevant interactions to enhance the experience of the recipient." Here are a few seriously impressive numbers about the promising future of this trend:

• The global personalization software market is expected to grow from $620 million in 2020 to $2.2 billion by the end of 2026.

• According to the latest market research report from BusinessWire, analysts forecast the global AI-based personalization market to grow at a CAGR of nearly 13% over 2018–2022.

• According to an IndustryARC report, the recommendation engine market is expected to reach $12.03 billion in 2025, up from $1.14 billion in 2018, at a CAGR of 32.39% over 2020–2025.

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Personalization helps you create a service that stands apart from competitors, because every audience member is unique — no two are alike. Leveraging their differences is precisely how you differentiate yourself. In addition, the thoughtful understanding of customers through personalized interactions will help your clients score more points with their own customers. This strategy can help build a base of loyal customers, which in turn creates word-of-mouth power and builds credibility for the business.

That is why marketing agencies need to focus on developing personalized interactions in their strategies. If you don't know where to start, the best way is to look at what's already out there in the market. On top of that, adopting technology is also an excellent option.

2. Video and chatbot marketing: the digital thread that helps marketing agencies connect people

Given the nature of the industry, a marketing agency must stay on top of trends and react quickly to market shifts. In modern society, as public attention becomes increasingly fragmented and media consumption speeds up, video and chatbot marketing are the favored forms of communication.

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According to research by Social Media Today, 72% of customers prefer learning about a product or service through video, and 81% of businesses use video in their marketing strategy. On top of that, 1.5 billion people devote 1 billion hours to watching video every day. The growth of giant video platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Facebook Watch, and IGTV, along with their unimaginable user bases, means marketing agencies can no longer ignore this prominent trend. Moreover, the encouraging figures on video marketing continue to prove this medium's influence: 66.7% of B2B businesses say video marketing helps them attract target customers, and 47.92% say it drives revenue. In a society that needs to consume content quickly — compounded by social distancing during COVID — video is precisely the brick that builds a lasting relationship between brands and users.

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But video alone isn't enough, because video struggles to create the multi-directional interactions that let people engage with one another. To boost customer connection activities in the context of the "new normal," B2B businesses turn to a smart digital marketing tool called the chatbot.

The year 2020 marked a year of strong chatbot growth in B2B marketing. Specifically, according to a July 2020 report from Drift and Heinz Marketing, with the participation of 538 marketing professionals, chatbot usage growth in recent years reached 92%. Meanwhile, other forms of communication such as live chat and social media grew far more modestly compared with this tool.

These real-world figures prove the potential of chatbots — and especially that it will continue in the "new normal." Simply put, communication is a basic human need. Being heard and having someone to talk to is certainly one of the prerequisites for maintaining our mental well-being. Therefore, during social distancing, chatbots became an effective substitute for the lack of person-to-person interaction. Chatbots today have been greatly improved through artificial intelligence and machine learning, enabling them to automatically deliver specific, useful — and even entertaining — responses.

3. What marketing agencies need to deliver for B2B businesses is brand awareness growth

Why should marketing agencies focus on brand awareness?

Brand awareness refers to the level of consumer recognition of a product or brand by its name. Building brand awareness is an important step in promoting a new product or reviving an old brand.

There are many examples of brand awareness or brand re-awareness campaigns. For instance, consider how Honda attacked the Vietnamese market and created such a high level of recognition that Vietnamese people call any motorbike a "honda" — regardless of what brand that motorbike actually is. More than 20 years later, it's Grab's turn to do the same. Today, people refer to "traveling by tech motorbike taxi" as "going by grab" or "booking a grab" — even if they're hailing a Gojek or a Be.

In the ideal case, brand awareness can even include the product qualities that set the company apart from competitors. Products and services that maintain a high level of brand awareness are more likely to capture higher sales. The most typical example of this is Sprite and its deep imprint on users' minds: when you eat seafood, you drink Sprite. However, the flip side is that repositioning the brand afterward is very difficult.

It also stems from the reality that customers have too many alternatives; over the past several years, companies have been working hard with marketing agencies to raise consumer awareness of their brands. Accordingly, 31.25% of surveyed marketers followed this trend in 2020. B2B marketers have traditionally lagged behind their B2C counterparts when it comes to building brands and connecting with customers. This is a wake-up call that B2B businesses truly need to take this seriously.

B2B marketers need to realize that a brand's experience at both the top and the bottom of the customer journey "funnel" must be equally cultivated.

4. For marketing agencies, content marketing is the "magnet" that attracts customers

One of the most heavily invested communications tools at marketing agencies in 2021 was content marketing. It's true that people tend to consume content quickly — but that doesn't mean content in written form is no longer valued.

In fact, in 2020, content marketing became one of the most effective methods, as audiences grew increasingly interested in content that digs deep into a particular topic. While we have only the first 4 seconds of a video to convince a customer to keep watching, people seem willing to spend far more time reading text-based content.

According to a study by the Content Marketing Institute, 91% of marketers currently use content marketing to reach customers. "Content is king" remains an immutable truth in the marketing world, and it will continue to be a core value in promotional campaigns in the future.

5. In every B2B campaign, social media remains the most successful, most effective lead channel

Social media is gradually becoming saturated. True! But for marketing agencies, that doesn't mean it's losing its power. Even as social networks tighten content moderation and bolster security barriers, over 80% of marketers report that social media is still their main channel. This figure grew 63% in 2021 compared with 2020, with Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn as the leading trio. With low input costs, acceptable CPC (cost per click) and CPM (cost per thousand impressions) on Facebook, and conversion rates climbing in the current period, social media remains fertile ground that agencies are aggressively exploiting.

However, as predicted, Facebook is a platform that has been and is "aging." At some point, its growth will saturate, and companies will have to search for more promising markets to tap.

Marketing agencies must not only focus on trends but also look at the bigger picture

This is not just a principle for marketing agencies — it is also a necessary condition for the growth of B2B businesses in today's difficult context. After all, a business cannot separate itself from the larger social picture, and its responsibility is regarded as an individual's responsibility toward the community. According to research from Harvard University, 65% of respondents said a brand's response to the COVID pandemic affected their purchasing decisions.

Specifically, B2B businesses should focus on increasing their brand's appeal and goodwill among customers by carrying out CSR (corporate social responsibility) activities. Typical activities include: fundraising, awarding scholarships, green projects, community-oriented projects, and more.

Above are the 5 trends marketing agencies can focus on to build promotional strategies in the time ahead. We hope it helps your team create outstanding work for your B2B clients.

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