B2B Marketing in 2021: Statistics and Tactics

A lot had happened in 2020. It is the year that cannot be forgotten easily. The pandemic for sure changed the world a lot, same goes for B2B marketing.  As everything was shut down and most of the things were done remotely, the B2B tech world has to adapt to it. There was already a gap present between the product and demand, and the pandemic increased that gap more.

Events that happened in 2020, changed the way buyers look for a service. For example, due to zoom data leak, people are now more concerned about their data and privacy. This news shook the market so much as buyers started shortlisting software based on this very feature. Buyers are also demanding self-service options that not all providers have.

In this article, we are going to highlight how changes of 2020 are going to affect B2B marketing in 2021.

B2B Marketing Statistics:

Product demos, vendor product websites, user reviews, business agents/ representatives, free trial/ accounts. These are the top 5 information sources for a buyer. These sources help a buyer understand what they are investing into to avoid any regret later.

Reviews are always a top priority while making a purchase. 45% of buyers use reviews for their research on the product during the purchase process. Analytic ranking and reports are used by less than half (21%) of buyers using reviews.

Millennials are spreading over the B2B market graph. 60% of B2B tech buyers belong to Millennials. (Millennials are people of age group 25-39 years.) Only 2% are from Generation Z (A generation of people of age 24 years or younger)

57% of people make their purchase decisions without even talking to vendors. Where on the other hand, 87% of buyers demand self-service throughout their purchase journey.

As we all know, older generations are not that much fond of the Internet and are afraid of online purchasing. Gen Z and millennials alone discover products and services online, two times more likely than older generations.

During the pandemic, privacy and data security changed the product purchase process by a lot, as we talked about in the beginning. 33% of buyers do research online before making purchases. 49% of buyers spend time on research on data security.

Buyers love to get as much information as possible about products before making a purchase. On average, a buyer uses 6.9 information sources to conduct their research on the product.

Pandemic led (more like pushed) the world into the digital era. Businesses are now spending big on digital business solutions. Nearly half (49%) of buyers reported a decrease in tech spending in 2020. This fall increased the budget plans for video conferencing software (64% increase) and online collaboration software (53% increase).

People love to discuss with others about the thing they are purchasing. According to the survey, 92% of buyers share reviews with at least one other person. This sharing helps them get a new perspective to make decisions. On the other hand, 2 out of 5 buyers share reviews with four or more other buying committee members.

On B2B review sites, for buyers, review content is far more important. On the same, vendors think product score is the most important thing for a buyer. A product score hardly describes the pros and cons of a product. Review contents provide this information to buyers easily. A product score may attract a buyer, but reviews are crucial too.

B2B Marketing Tactics:

If we look into the statistics again, we will see buyers love to extract information from different sources. But to approach them, customer referrals, personalized messages, online events, investing in SEO, and lead generation with intent data are 5 B2B marketing tactics one can use. Here customer referral tops the graph with 49% while the rest are at 37%, 35%, 31%, and 27%.

During the pandemic, social media advertising was on a whole other level. Businesses were investing more into social media ads and retargeting ads. As per the report, 55% of vendors believe in retargeting ads as an effective marketing tactic. 48% of these vendors increase their social media ads during the pandemic. On the buyers’ side,  54% reported seeing more ads on social media during 2020.

While businesses were showing their faith in retargeting ads but when asked, this belief was not much. 35% said these ads are doing fairly well or very well, while 12% said not working well for them.

But buyers have a different view about these ads.

• 2 out of 5 thinks that there are too many online ads.
• Annoying for 38%.
• Over a quarter thinks of it as an invasion of privacy.
• 1 out of 3 prefers targeted ads instead of non-targeted ads.
• 13% find online ads convenient.
• 16% prefer personalized ads.

Conclusion:

This is just a small picture of how 2020 changed the B2B marketing statistics. This month we will talk about some more points related to B2B marketing. Like roles of millennials, what buyers hate, and more. So stay tuned with us, not just for this month, for always to keep getting information like this. You can also subscribe to our newsletter to get notified. See you next time.