One of the biggest inputs in my planning is what I think is changing/more prevalent in upcoming years. The trends that are going to accelerate and change the industry we know.
I thought some of you would like to see my notes specific to B2B Sales and Marketing for 2022 and beyond.
1. Account Based Marketing, ABX and Demand Generation
I think the most interesting change I have seen over the course of the year has been ABM morphing not into ABX but into demand gen. Don’t misinterpret this – ABM is not demand gen but when you effectively scale ABM, you can use it to drive your demand gen goals as well as your typically narrower ABM goals.
It drives higher quality revenue faster with sales/marketing automatically adjusting based on their lifecycle. Whether it is always-on company targeted advertising campaigns, DM or email etc – it allows you to maintain more personalised and tailored contact at scale without over investing early in accounts that are not ready.
With more companies’ ABM programmes maturing, I expect to see this more in 2022.
2. Sales and Marketing coming together
I am most excited about this next change. The merging of sales development and parts of marketing. With sales development now creating cross channel nurturing campaigns, they are well and truly duplicating some of the efforts of marketing.
Some have argued that a large amount of #B2B marketing today is just sales so this is righting a wrong. I don’t subscribe to that vision but at the top of the funnel, the strengths of both teams coming together will drive a better buying experience and more pipeline, faster. A win win.
3. Sales Insight
These past few years have accelerated business activity online and with it the ability to help sales and marketing teams gain anonymous insight about target account activity. Sales teams have been the earliest adopters and are using it to get into conversations with companies earlier than before with a better understanding of need.
2022 will see broader data sets that accelerate greater insight and are used within both sales and marketing to drive content and channel strategies.
4. Hybrid Events
One area I hope we see more innovation in is hybrid events. Next year will see many more events, but the past 2 years have driven investment in digital event experiences. Events companies will create far better digital experiences that sit alongside their physical events – driving larger audiences and opportunities for marketers and advertisers alike.
5. Third Party Cookies
Quite clearly the conversation around Google turning off third party cookies will grow given the huge market impact on advertisers, publishers and audiences alike. Those companies on top of this disruption will start looking at platforms that do not rely on third party cookies to deliver targeted advertising and sales insight.
Finally, B2B Sales and Marketing teams rely on LinkedIn and I fully expect to see significant innovation in their Creator programme in 2022 – they’ve already significantly increased the size of their EMEA team so looking forward to what comes next from them.