Traditional offline marketing has been hit hard since the turn of the millennium. As internet access became cheaper and faster, more and more people became accustomed to going online for everything from retail to entertainment, and this sapped the efficacy of signs and billboards. Then along came a pandemic to pitch brick-and-mortar stores into turbulence, leaving shopping areas deserted and rendering the bulk of offline marketing completely ineffective.
Assuming its position at the top of the heap, digital marketing has become a primary concern for businesses everywhere — and as more and more companies move online, it’s only going to rise in importance. You can set up a spectacular industry-leading website, but if you don’t market it then it won’t be found and all of that development effort will amount to nothing.
Very notably, this is even true for B2B companies, despite the B2B industry still being somewhat old-fashioned in some of its methods (prioritizing business relationships, for instance). In this post, we’re going to run through some of the B2B industries that are benefiting the most from digital marketing. Let’s get started.
Enterprise-scale SaaS
The SaaS industry in general is doing extremely well at the moment, having seen its value skyrocket as businesses began and continue to work remotely in a post-pandemic world, and so much of the progress made has been due to digital marketing.
It isn’t PPC advertising that’s made the difference, as that’s more for the B2C world, but SEO falls under digital marketing — and when you think about how many licenses have been purchased (and subscriptions paid) following searches using terms like “Project management software” or “Time tracking tool”, it’s easy to see how fractional improvements in keyword rankings have massively boosted sales. And for those who don’t possess the necessary expertise in-house, a partnership with an SEO agency can prove to be a worthwhile investment.
You can also factor in things like video advertising. YouTube in particular has a lot of educational content that busy professionals can consume to keep their knowledge sharp, and in-content sponsor mentions from influential channels can generate a lot of buzz very quickly.
Business real estate
The real estate market for businesses has hit something of a roadblock recently, what with remote working becoming the new standard, but big businesses are still going to want to have physical offices — and that’s on top of the space they often need for everything from manufacturing to shipping.
Technology has already made its way into the real estate industry in general, transforming the market for everything from listing properties to sourcing mortgages (with the rise in AI tech it will soon be common for mortgage brokers to function through machine learning). The part that’s most relevant here is the move towards multi-channel marketing.
What this means is using everything from social media platforms to professional networks to identify and negotiate with potential clients. Instead of waiting for someone to search online, you can pick up on a Twitter comment about “needing a new office” and reach out directly — stealing a march over other B2B real estate agencies.
Fitness and wellness
Recent years have seen many more businesses come to understand the value of investing in the fitness and wellbeing of their employees. Instead of treating them as simple assets, they’re starting to accept their complexity and take action to help them: healthier employees work harder and are more reliable, so it’s a classic win-win situation.
Think about subscription-based companies that offer regular deliveries of fruit, for example, with The FruitGuys being one such company. More often than not, these businesses pick up traction through online conversation and PR through social media work (both organic and paid). Just one positive mention from a trusted professional can bring a brand into the public eye.
It also bears noting how many companies have taken to using fitness schemes for virtual social events, sometimes signing up to paid programs for their team members to use online, and using those events to form easy social content — content that can then benefit the scheme providers.
Employee training
The training industry is another one that did well during the COVID-19 lockdowns. In their haste to start working remotely, businesses were eager to get their employees up to speed on how to work safely and efficiently from home, and they often didn’t have the resources or expertise to provide that training themselves.
For this industry, networking was the big driver. Those at the helm of relevant training providers collected the contacts and planted the seeds for training sales, using sites like LinkedIn and picking up newsletter subscribers through their blogs (a carefully-timed marketing email mentioning a timed discount can be incredibly effective).
With digital training being something that businesses will continue to invest in for the foreseeable future, trustworthy training providers that can pick up some good word-of-mouth recommendations are set to do very well.
