Best B2B Marketing Strategies That Will Work In 2024

In 2024, there are several important B2B marketing trends that all marketers should understand in order to adjust their B2B marketing strategies accordingly. So, let’s take a look at them and explain what marketing strategies for the business-to-business market work in 2024.

What Is B2B Marketing and Why It Matters?

Business to business marketing, the practices used by businesses to sell products or services to other businesses, are constantly evolving and maintain their relevance and effectiveness. Those who keep up with them and take advantage of the latest tools and B2B marketing strategies can capture the most lucrative business opportunities and achieve all their objectives.

In the past, business to business marketing happened largely face-to-face. Companies used to employ teams of sales agents, who would arrange meetings with the owners of other companies and try to turn them into paying customers. Today, most B2B digital marketing activities take place online, and they include B2B social media marketing, B2B web marketing, B2B content marketing, and others.

Because it can be difficult for companies to maintain a sharp focus on their core business and, at the same time, market their products and services to others, a B2B marketing agency like ComboApp is often hired to handle all marketing activities on their behalf.

B2B vs B2C Marketing: What’s the Difference Between Them?

Business to business marketing and business to consumer marketing have the same goal—sell products or services—and they rely on similar techniques and principles. The biggest difference between them is actually in their target audience.

Consumers are irrational creatures who select products and services based not just on their price and value, but also on their popularity, status, and other emotional factors. Businesses, on the other hand, make decisions predominantly based on price and profit potential.

In most businesses, there’s a specific group of individuals who make purchase decisions, and the goal of B2B marketing strategies is to hyper-target these select individuals and provide compelling arguments about why their products or services are the best.

Many marketing strategies for the business-to-business market are used when marketing to consumers, but they are tweaked to meet the unique needs of B2B marketers.

Best B2B Marketing Strategies and B2B Digital Marketing Trends in 2024

Marketing strategies rarely stay relevant for a long time. Some become outdated and fall out of fashion, some stop being effective, and some become replaced by more modern marketing strategies.

In the following section, we describe 10 B2B marketing strategies that are guaranteed to deliver great results in 2024. The strategies we selected are based on the current B2B marketing trends and supported by an extensive body of research conducted by experts from around the world.

1. Consolidation of Marketing Tools

In 2022, marketers could choose from over 9,932 marketing tools, which is a staggeringly large number considering that only around 4,000 companies were part of the MarTech landscape in 2016. To say that the supply of marketing tools has exceeded the demand for them would be an understatement.

Experienced B2B digital marketing experts are familiar with the countless tools that do nothing but extract readily available data from Google Analytics and turn it into a pretty dashboard—for the small fee of several hundred dollars a year.

2024 is the year when B2B marketers should take a step back and tidy up their toolboxes. If possible, choose B2B marketing tools that encompass multiple functions. Not only will MarTech consolidation save you money, but it will also make it easier to train new people and process marketing data.

When you encounter a new, shiny B2B marketing tool, ask yourself whether its value justifies its price. More often than not, you’ll discover that you can achieve the same results with an existing tool, even if it takes a few more clicks.

2. Going Beyond the Blog

Informative blog posts have been the foundation of B2B content marketing for years because they are relatively straightforward to produce (you just come up with an idea and hire a writer to turn it into a blog post). But marketing statistics indicate that other types of content are becoming increasingly important, sometimes even outperforming blog posts.

Millennials are now the biggest B2B decision-makers, and they love video marketing because videos can be easily consumed on mobile devices and generate a huge impact in just a few seconds. Google is aware of this trend, ranking video content higher than text-based content.

By including short videos in your blog posts, you can attract 3 times more inbound links and increase the time visitors spend on your website by 2.6 times. You can also tap into YouTube and reach its 2 billion users worldwide, many of which are your potential customers.

Companies that aren’t afraid to experiment with emerging technologies should consider virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) as two exciting ways to tell their brand’s story and present their products or services.

3. Marketing Personalization

According to Salesforce, 72% of buyers expect B2B companies to personalize their communications with them. For that to happen, B2B marketers need data—lots of it. They also need a suitable promotional strategy, and account-based marketing (ABM) seems to be the answer.

Also known as key account marketing, ABM is emerging as one of the most effective marketing strategies for the business-to-business market because it concentrates resources on a set of target accounts, relying on heavily personalized campaigns to engage each account.

Yes, it’s true that ABM requires more effort than traditional marketing because all promotional messages have to be written and designed in a way that addresses the specific needs and motivations of each buyer, but the amazing return on investment justifies it.

Back in 2013, 87% of B2B marketers said that ABM outperforms other B2B marketing investments in terms of ROI, and the number has gone up since then. In addition to being a wise financial decision, ABM can also improve relationships with customers and, consequently, the reputation of the company.

If you don’t have enough human resources to personalize your B2B digital marketing campaigns for each target account, you should consider a partnership with a B2B marketing agency like ComboApp, which can help you achieve your business goals with comprehensive digital marketing solutions aimed to engage your target market, be it B2B or B2C, and produce tangible growth results.

4. Email Marketing Is Here to Stay

For an advertising channel that’s nearly 40 years old, email remains exceptionally popular when it comes to B2B online marketing in 2024. In fact, 83% of marketers use it as their preferred mode of communication with businesses.

B2B email marketing is popular because it’s effective. 59% of B2B marketers say it’s their most lucrative channel in terms of revenue generation, and 80% of retail professionals indicate that email marketing has the greatest positive influence on customer retention of all advertising channels.

Marketers can thank smartphones for these encouraging numbers because open rates for email on smartphones have risen by over 40% in the last few years, while open rates on desktop computers dropped by over 18%.

On smartphones, incoming emails announce themselves with push notifications, and it takes a single double-tap to open them. Thanks to mobile data, smartphone users can receive, read, and respond to emails anywhere and at any time of the day.

A Look At The Best Email Marketing Tools

When putting together your B2B email marketing campaign, there is a wide range of tools on the market for you to choose from. In order to help you discover which one is right for your business, we have put together a list of the top 5 email marketing tools. These are not in any specific order, but are presented with pros and cons to let you decide which B2B email marketing software best fits your needs.

1. Aweber

One of the top email marketing tools on the market is AWeber. This software offers a wide range of features and benefits for businesses of all sizes. One of its most popular features is its autoresponder.

An autoresponder allows you to automatically send a message to someone who signs up for your email list. This is a great way to stay in touch with your customers and keep them updated on your latest products or services.

Aweber also has customer support that is considered to be some of the best in the industry, offering you many ways to contact them and get the solutions you require.

Aweber has been an industry stalwart for a long time, and they have earned that spot. They do have some drawbacks compared to some competitors, lacking website builder and CRM tools for instance.

Pros:

• Ease of use - Aweber is simple and easy to use. It can serve as a great starter tool for businesses looking to grow their email marketing for B2B.
• Support - Aweber has some of the best support in the industry, with a phone line, live chat, and email contacts. This means you can have 24/7 support for any problems in the format that fits your needs most.
• Affiliate Marketing - If you use affiliate marketing on a regular basis as part of your B2B efforts, Aweber is one of your top choices.

Cons:

• Limited Free Plan - Aweber’s free plan only allows up to 500 contacts and 3000 emails a month. They also do not allow A/B testing and all of your content will be branded with Aweber’s branding.
• Automation - Aweber has limited options for automation, not letting you take advantage of all of the possibilities to target your audience with specific marketing.
• Building and design tools - Aweber does not have the depth of tools for building your campaigns. No CRM or website builder, and email designer lacks some customization options available to other email tools.

Price: Free option, Pro accounts start at 19.99 /mo

2. EasySendy

EasySendy is another versatile cloud-based email marketing tool that is inexpensive yet powerful. It is a complete email marketing solution that helps you manage all your customer communication channels – from email to SMS and beyond. This platform enables you to easily manage your email marketing campaigns – all from one place. It comes with drag-and-drop features, reliable delivery, and easy integrations with major email service providers. The platform also offers you multiple ways to track the success of your campaigns, including A/B Testing, Webhooks & other Integrations.

This tool is apt for both novices and professionals alike. It allows them to create eye-catching sales emails easily, manage their subscribers, and track engagement.

Pros:

• Micro Delivery - This is another plus as it provides multiple email delivery servers like Amazon, Dyn, Mandrill, Elastic Email, and more.
• Analytics & Reports - Easily accessible, highly customized, and accurate reports.
• User interface - EasySendy has a combination of many vital features with a simple user interface.
• Support System - Fantastic customer support team.
• Pricing Options - Provides an affordable pricing model, which makes it the best choice for businesses of all sizes looking to leverage the power of email marketing.

Cons:

• Limited Templates - With EasySendy, you get only a few customizable templates.

Price: Provides lifetime free account with a limitation on the number of subscribers; paid plans start at $19/month.

3. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is one of the most used email marketing tools on the market. They are considered to be industry leaders and deserve that ranking. They have a wide array of tools to maximise the reach and effectiveness of your campaigns. From some of the most advanced automation tools to the ability to design a custom website right from mailchimp, they are easy to use and will benefit you more the more that you master them. They also offer in depth analytics to help you see what exactly is working in your campaigns and what is not.

Mailchimp lives up to its reputation at the top of the industry, and it does so at a scalable cost. While it is one of the top in features, it is lacking in support. Limited options with free accounts relegated to only live chat makes for a negative in an overwhelming positive product.

Pros:

• Depth - Mailchimp gives you the ability to get the most out of your data. With advanced automation and analytics to let you get granular in your ability to reach B2B customers.
• Price Scalability - The pricing of Mailchimp’s services grows with your userbase. The more subscribers and the more services you need, the higher the price. This lets you target your costs to your needs.
• Generous Free Plan - When you are first starting on your B2B journey, costs are important. Mailchimp lets you have a mailing list of up to 2,000 people and send up to 10,000 emails per month for free. You also get access to some simple automation services at this price too.
• All In One Options - Mailchimp lets you design a website that is integrated with their services. They have their own CRM and site design tools so you can make the most of their services right from their backend.

Cons:

• Limited Support - Mailchimp lacks in its support options. Free accounts only have access to Live Chat support, and phone support can be hard to come by.

Price: Free option, paid options from $9.99 /mo

4. Sendinblue

Sendinblue is a European based company that set itself up as direct competition to Mailchimp. They offer a lot of similar options to Mailchimp, but targeted to audiences who may be paying more from their US based counterpart. Their specialty is in Transactional Emails, which they offer more options and lower prices for than others. Sendinblue also offers extensive automation options even at lower price tiers, and they have a fantastic list management system that lets you prioritize, personalize, and divide by demographics or sales behavior.

Being based in France, they offer support in six languages, and they also offer email and phone support to a larger array of customers. They also are offering some cutting edge campaign styles such as SMS marketing.

Pros:

• Multilingual support - If you are based in Europe or have a multilingual employee base, you can count on Sendinblue to have a language option for communicating with you.
• SMS Campaigns - SMS marketing campaigns can help you reach your audience in a new way. This can be an effective way to reach people when they might not be looking at your emails.
• Pricing - Sendinblue offers unlimited contacts at all pricing plans, and tends to be a cheaper option than competitors.
• Automation - Sendinblue offers automation options at all price points, giving more access to the ability to target based on demographics and behavior.

Cons:

• Conversion Analytics - While Sendinblue offers some fantastic analytic data, including Google Analytics integration, it does not offer social or conversion data.
• Social Media - Sendinblue offers great Facebook ads integration, but does not offer the ability to post and schedule social media posts. You only have the option to make ads and share your email campaigns.

Price: Free option, paid options starting at $25.00 /mo

5. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is designed to be a more advanced and modern version of the email marketing tool. They offer more advanced automations at nearly all price points that give you the ability to target your audience in the most effective ways. As B2B email marketing software goes, this amount of automation and targeting lets you break through the massive amounts of emails that the businesses you are trying to reach receive every day. On top of that, they are another service that is breaking through with SMS marketing that uses your existing contact list.

This automation is integrated well with all of their tools, including their built in CRM, which means you can use its power to automate sales processes.

Pros:

• Advanced Automation - ActiveCampaign allows you to set up advanced workflows so you can send emails, track leads, segment data, and automate sales. This level of automation is one of the most advanced on the market.
• CRM - While MailChimp and other email marketing services may offer CRM tools, ActiveCampaign is above and beyond many others. The CRM is integrated with the automation tools, allowing you to create an effective and data based sales flow.
• No Free Plan - The service offers a free trial, but they do not offer a free plan.

Cons:

• Ease of Use - ActiveCampaign is a more advanced tool, and thus has a bit of a higher learning curve to master.
• Social Tools - It lacks native social media integration.
• Landing Pages Are Not Free - While other services include the ability to make landing pages in the services cost. ActiveCampaign charges $70 per month for this option.

Price: Starts at $7.50 /mo

6. GetResponse

GetResponse is one of the newer B2B email marketing services on the market, and like ActiveCampaign is using automation to put themselves ahead of the competition. While they might be slightly behind industry leaders when it comes to ease of use and design, they let you see more fruits of your labor with the advanced automation and list management options they offer. They also are ahead of the game in knowing that the greatest enemy of the email campaign is the spam filter, and they offer spam testing to make sure your emails make it into the intended mailboxes.

Pros:

• Automation Options - GetResponse gives your company advanced automation options for your campaigns, as well as a fantastic visual workflow tool so you can see exactly how your campaigns will function.
• Support Languages - GetResponse is a Polish based company and offers 17 languages for support purposes.
• Spam Testing - GetResponse offers advanced spam testing, so you can be sure your emails make it into their target inboxes.

Cons:

• Deliverability - While spam testing keeps your email out of spam boxes, GetResponse is a little behind at staying out of the Gmail “Promotions” tab.
• Support Times - Support response times are a little longer than their competitors.

Price: Free Forever plan for companies with 500 and under contacts. Paid Plans start at $10.50 /mo

5. Advanced Reporting and Data Visualization

B2B digital marketing experts today have access to such massive quantities of data that they sometimes struggle to make sense of it. Yes, Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, and other similar reporting tools have been around for some time now, but they represent only one category of reporting and data visualization tools.

Newer tools such as Google Data Studio make it possible to connect data from spreadsheets, Analytics, Google Ads, Google BigQuery, and other sources and unlock its power with interactive dashboards and engaging reports. Without any code or queries, Google Data Studio can transform your raw data into the metrics and dimensions so that you can arm the right people with the knowledge they need to make the right marketing decisions.

Large B2B companies with equally large advertising budgets can explore machine learning for marketing analytics. Despite still having a long way to go, machine learning can already help B2B marketers create new revenue streams, optimize their content, and reduce marketing waste.

6. Programmatic Advertising

Programmatic advertising, the automated transaction of buying and selling advertising online, has become the dominant form of digital advertising, and experts predict that about two-thirds of all digital ads are now programmatic, reaching around $84.9 billion.

The chief objective of programmatic advertising is to use analytics data to automate the bidding process and increase ad relevance. You can think of it as the next evolutionary stage of traditional ad buying methods to purchase ad spots.

The process itself is fairly easy to understand: A visitor lands on a website that serves programmatic advertising. Instantly, automated bidding begins to serve an ad to this particular visitor. After analyzing information on the ad space and the visitor (geography, demographics, interests, etc.), advertisers select the most suitable ad space and ad variation. This entire process happens in just a few milliseconds and without any human intervention whatsoever.

For B2B marketers, programmatic advertising is a great way of how to spend their advertising budgets more wisely and achieve better conversion rates. Over the next few years, programmatic advertising is expected to overshadow all other forms of advertising, and those who learn how to take advantage of it now will be positioned for success later.

7. Chatbots for B2B Lead Generation

Chatbots are software applications that use artificial intelligence to conduct conversations with users in natural language. Such applications are increasingly often being deployed on messaging applications and websites to help customers with common issues, but they can also be used for effective data mining and smart lead generation.

Based on sophisticated behavior analytics, a chatbot can engage a visitor at the best possible moment and offer a personalized solution. A single chatbot can chat with multiple visitors at the same time, speeding up resolution times and saving precious time for customer service professionals.

Most large enterprises have either already invested or are planning to invest in chatbots, and smaller companies are expected to follow suit very soon, as the technology becomes more accessible. By 2024, the chatbot market is expected to reach $9.4 billion, up from $2.6 billion in 2019, a compound annual growth rate of 29.7%.

8. Greater Emphasis on Mobile Apps

According to Usablenet, 78% of B2B companies believe that mobile devices and B2B e-commerce mobile apps are the future of their industry, which is why research firm Strategy Analytics predicted that growing demand would drive the B2B apps market to $140 billion by 2023, a staggering figure considering that there was barely any B2B apps market a decade ago.

B2B companies use mobile apps to sell products and services and share information about them, notify their customers and business partners of upcoming conferences, trade fairs, and expos, deliver software updates, provide customer support, and much more.

Mobile apps boost loyalty because they are always available with a single tap and can deliver push notifications with special promotions and discount coupons. They also improve efficiency and customer experience because they can take full advantage of platform-specific features. A well-designed mobile app can be much faster than a website with similar content and features, and it can remain accessible even without access to the internet.

The mere existence of a mobile app places the company behind it on the digital map and signals a certain level of trustworthiness and industry relevance. Today, developing a mobile app is more affordable than ever thanks to modern mobile app development frameworks like React Native, Ionic, Xamarin, and Adobe PhoneGap, just to name a few.

9. High-Quality Content as the Long-term B2B Marketing Strategy

Content is the king—it always was, and it always will be. Last year, 41% of advertising budgets were spent solely on content marketing, and everyone who is familiar with the average conversion rate of a well-executed content marketing campaign understands why.

What all marketers who are tasked with B2B content marketing in 2024 need to realize is that not all content is created equal. In the past, search engines were not that smart, and they would happily index content without any substance or value behind it. That’s no longer the case today.

All major search engines are implementing quality algorithms aimed at helping their users find sites with high-quality content. In the future, it’s likely that artificial intelligence will be in charge of search engine quality control, making it impossible to rank high for websites with low-quality content.

As a B2B company, it’s in your best interest to come up with a well-thought-out B2B content marketing strategy as soon as possible. Figure out what your potential customers care about, what they want to know, and what obstacles they struggle to overcome. Use the information you gather to create an engaging multi-layered content plan that includes text, images, and video.

10. Up-to-Date SEO Practices

It’s estimated that Google makes between 500 and 600 changes to its search algorithms a year. Many of these changes reflect the constantly evolving nature of the internet, but some are meant to increase the accuracy of Google’s search results and punish bad players who use blackhat marketing practices. What’s clear is that you must constantly update your SEO practices to avoid being left behind.

In 2024, your SEO strategy should take advantage of featured snippets, which are special boxes that show short selections of text above all other search results. Over 50% of clicks from Google originate from featured snippets, so ignoring them is guaranteed to cost you a lot of potential customers.

To have a chance of being selected by search engines for featured snippets, your website must be secure and use the HTTPS protocol. If you’re collecting personal information from visitors, make sure that you’re handling it responsibly and in accordance with privacy regulations like GDPR.

Because featured snippets play a huge role in voice search, it’s a good idea to optimize your content for conversational searches, which tend to be more specific, pointed, and personally relevant. Such searches are performed with the help of intelligent personal voice assistants, such as Amazon Alexa, Google Voice Assistant, and Apple Siri.

Final Thoughts

Technology has revolutionized every aspect of our lives, including the way businesses market their products and services to other businesses. The B2B marketing trends and strategies highlighted in this article paint a picture of a rapidly evolving industry where opportunities abound for those who manage to stay a few steps ahead of the pack. ComboApp is here to help you capture these opportunities and aid you with the implementation of a B2B digital marketing strategy that creates real business impact.

ComboApp is a full-cycle B2B marketing agency that provides a broad spectrum of services, ranging from app and web development and design to SEO and marketing promotion, making it a one-stop-shop for all companies that would like to take their marketing efforts to the next level without spending large sums of money on recruiting and maintaining in-house marketing teams.

*Simply call us at 773.305.0886 or click on the Contact Us button in the header of this site and accelerate your growth through innovative digital solutions.