Optimise Your Marketing Strategy: 6 Key B2b Marketing Trends for 2024

If you want to stay ahead in the B2B marketing game, you must keep ahead of the latest technological advancements and trends and shift your strategy to meet the changing needs of your target audience. By doing so, your business will better adapt, stay relevant, meet your audience’s needs, and stay profitable.

With 2024 just around the corner and digital technology exploding at an unprecedented rate, this is more important than ever.

By staying proactive and leveraging these trends and technologies, you can optimise your marketing strategy, generate more leads, build brand loyalty, and potentially outshine your competitors.

We’ve written this article so that you can take a peek at what the future could hold, identifying the key trends that every B2B business should bear in mind over the coming months.

Keep reading to learn about the following B2B marketing trends for 2024: 

• Trend #1. AI-driven personalisation
• Trend #2. Video content
• Trend #3. Inclusivity & diversity
• Trend #4: Influencer marketing
• Trend #5: Conversational content
• Trend #6: Self-service purchasing

Trend #1. AI-driven personalisation

With the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, getting your B2B customers engaged and ready to click that ‘buy’ button has become easier than ever before.

It provides the tech to curate those personalised, seamless experiences that your customers are looking for, driving engagement, customer loyalty and optimal ROI. This is because AI algorithms analyse vast data sets quicker than any human could, pinpointing their exact needs and helping you to tailor your content accordingly.

According to global management consulting firm, McKinsey & Company, using AI in your B2B marketing campaigns can lead to better client experiences and an average revenue increase of 5-15%. 

Trend #2. Video content

Over the last few years, we’ve seen an increased shift towards video content in B2B marketing. This strategy has proved extremely effective for B2C marketing campaigns.

“More marketers credited video with increasing dwell time, traffic, leads, sales, and reduced support queries than in ANY of our annual surveys since 2015,” says marketing, sales and customer service platform, HubSpot, adding that 92% of the marketers surveyed report excellent ROI from their video content. 

When used as part of a B2B marketing campaign, you can use it to cut through the noise online, increase your traffic, build brand awareness, and stay accessible in the hectic modern business world.

Because video content is short and user-friendly, it is also perfect for targeting those time-starved B2B buyers who need information fast.

Trend #3. Inclusivity & Diversity

When it comes to creating your marketing campaigns, you must ensure that your content is accessible and relevant to all, regardless of their abilities, culture, gender, and background and uses language that doesn’t exclude or offend.

By doing so, you won’t only ensure that you are ethically sound but will build authentic connections with a diverse audience and keep everyone included in the conversation.

Start by adding alt-text to images, and subtitles for your video content, and design your website to be accessible to all. This ensures that neurodiverse individuals and those with disabilities can feel valued, included and part of the conversation. If you can do this, you could outperform your competitors by 35% when it comes to ROI.

Trend #4: Influencer marketing

Influencer Marketing is also a key B2C trend that is proving to be extremely effective for B2B. Its ROI is so high that when surveyed by The Influencer Marketing Hub, around 82% of respondents said they would dedicate an entire budget to it.

This is because influencer marketing is a powerful way to bring some social proof to your B2B business, showing that your offerings are reliable, high quality and trusted by other successful businesses. It also brings a face to your organisation which helps your customers resonate better with your digital marketing messaging and be more likely to choose you over your competitors.

If you want to get the best results from influencer marketing, look for the right influencers with a large and enthusiastic following. Avoid blatant marketing, negativity or trying to sell and ensure your content is less promotional, more helpful and adds maximum value. 

Trend #5: Conversational content

Whereas businesses traditionally use formal, business language in their marketing materials, 2024 is likely to bring a significant switch towards more conversational, everyday language.

This key B2B marketing trend means we are more likely to see blog posts, articles and eBooks written naturally, shorter sentences, contractions like “it’s” and “we’re”, simple language and storytelling techniques that will help your content feel more like a one-on-one chat with a human.

If you communicate with your audience using conversational language, even if you’re creating social posts, writing emails, or setting up your chatbot, you’ll help break down barriers, better connect and resonate with your target customers and build better customer loyalty.

Trend #6: Self-service purchasing

Over recent years, buyer behaviour has shifted significantly with more buying online than ever before. In fact, the majority of Brits now buy online, with around 60 million e-commerce customers in 2023.

The same is happening in the B2B space, with increasing numbers of B2B companies embracing this new channel and reaping the benefits. A recent study from McKinsey & Co. found that B2B e-commerce has become the most effective channel for sales; these are:

1. Deploying advanced sales technology
2. Increasing hybrid sales teams and capabilities
3. Delivering hyper-personalisation
4. Tailoring strategies on third-party marketplaces
5. Achieving e-commerce excellence across the full marketing and sales funnel

B2B customers love e-commerce because they can independently browse, research, and take their time to decide about their purchases, even if this is during non-traditional hours.

Businesses also benefit from the flexibility it offers, freeing up their sales team from routine tasks and encouraging them to focus on high-value activities like building relationships and providing strategic guidance.

If you choose this B2B marketing trend for 2024, ensure you’re creating an extensive knowledge base, including FAQs, tutorials and other resources that empower B2B buyers and encourage them to make that purchase.

Summary: Latest B2B marketing trends

Follow these key marketing trends for 2024 and you’re likely to boost brand awareness, increase leads, build customer loyalty, and enhance your content marketing strategy.

Whether you embrace AI technology, create video content, experiment with influencer marketing, switch the tone of your content to become more conversational or improve your e-commerce offerings, you can stay ahead of digital marketing trends, connect with a wider audience, and boost your revenue.

Want to upgrade your content marketing strategy for 2024? We can help.

Contact us today to find out how.