B2B Marketing 2022 Part Three: Meet the New Marketing Pro
This is the third post in a three-part series looking at B2B marketing trends that are driving change between now and 2022. Check out parts one and two.
Structurally, many companies have taken steps that make the ‘post digital’ change even more profound. Marketing has taken on responsibility for customer-facing, revenue-generating systems and applications. The CMO has more budgetary control than the CIO. And the Chief Marketing Technologist is on the rise.
We’re seeing tech sales development teams reporting into marketing. With ABM on the rise, this makes a huge amount of sense. Also, the rise of the omni-channel millennial buyer, the more integrated the marketing machine, the better. Messages have to be delivered in multiple forms, across an array of channels. And there needs to be someone they can legitimately interact with on the other side of each message we tweet, post to Facebook, sell into media or embed in a web video or TVC.
For marketing and communications professionals, these trends create a huge potential opportunity. For recruiters, they create a huge headache! The modern in-house marketer is no longer bound by channels. Leading marketers work to develop relevant, personalized, and data-driven campaigns.
In spite of change, some things are as true today as they were when Don Draper sipped his first old fashioned. B2B technology buyers are driven by four fundamental needs. A need to communicate, collaborate, consume and create.
Today’s marketers must build bridges and find common ground with the communities that their companies touch. We do this understanding the millennial B2B buyer. By assessing and prioritizing content and channels. By being active in the moment (because our customers certainly are). And by building teams around the new marketing dynamic.
The path to 2022 isn’t easy. We’ll sometimes fail (hopefully fast). And we’ll thrive because of our historical passion for narrative, understanding of audiences, industries, and buyer behavior combined with an array of new and established marketing techniques.
And while the pace of marketing change may be daunting, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Trend 4: Meet the New Marketing Pro
We’re in the midst of the most significant shake-up our industry’s ever seen. The writing is on the wall – by 2022 we’ll be in the age of ‘post-digital’ marketing. This refers to a time when ‘digital’ marketing activities are no longer separated from other activities. Just as e-commerce became ‘commerce’, ‘digital’ will be part of the whole, perhaps a more flexible and quicker way of achieving marketing goals.Structurally, many companies have taken steps that make the ‘post digital’ change even more profound. Marketing has taken on responsibility for customer-facing, revenue-generating systems and applications. The CMO has more budgetary control than the CIO. And the Chief Marketing Technologist is on the rise.
We’re seeing tech sales development teams reporting into marketing. With ABM on the rise, this makes a huge amount of sense. Also, the rise of the omni-channel millennial buyer, the more integrated the marketing machine, the better. Messages have to be delivered in multiple forms, across an array of channels. And there needs to be someone they can legitimately interact with on the other side of each message we tweet, post to Facebook, sell into media or embed in a web video or TVC.
For marketing and communications professionals, these trends create a huge potential opportunity. For recruiters, they create a huge headache! The modern in-house marketer is no longer bound by channels. Leading marketers work to develop relevant, personalized, and data-driven campaigns.
Marketers must create new and innovative experiences that can be enjoyed physically, documented digitally and shared socially. And this ‘unicorn’ employee also has to increasingly have a deep knowledge of the sales process, given they’re likely to be directly involved in it.
In Summary
This is the best time to be in our industry.In spite of change, some things are as true today as they were when Don Draper sipped his first old fashioned. B2B technology buyers are driven by four fundamental needs. A need to communicate, collaborate, consume and create.
Today’s marketers must build bridges and find common ground with the communities that their companies touch. We do this understanding the millennial B2B buyer. By assessing and prioritizing content and channels. By being active in the moment (because our customers certainly are). And by building teams around the new marketing dynamic.
The path to 2022 isn’t easy. We’ll sometimes fail (hopefully fast). And we’ll thrive because of our historical passion for narrative, understanding of audiences, industries, and buyer behavior combined with an array of new and established marketing techniques.
And while the pace of marketing change may be daunting, I wouldn’t have it any other way.