13 B2B Trends for 2022/2023: Future Forecasts You Should Know

The effects of the coronavirus pandemic were immediately felt among B2B industries. In general, 47% of them saw budget-related difficulties, including freezes on budgets and purchases. When asked which weak areas have the pandemic exposed, 56% of B2B companies pointed at technology infrastructure.

More than anything else, the pandemic underscored the urgency of digital transformation. As a result, all B2B solutions are surging ahead at digital transformation, up 15% as a category.

In this article, we will discuss current B2B trends that can affect your company in the coming years in light of these fundamental developments.

Experts warn us that digital transformation is not easy. This is because many companies don’t achieve the digitization results they want. In fact, 70% fall short of their potential as they became lost in transition (CIO Dive). Some blame this on management behavior. They cite this as one major cause of 1/3 of unsuccessful digitization programs. Thus, digitization is not as simple as others may think. It involves leadership and, basically, the whole organization.

In a B2B trends report, it was stated that top B2B companies combine both human and digital interactions into one hybrid customer journey. One company improved sales productivity by 5 to 7% after augmenting face-to-face processes with digital tools. Additionally, companies with the best digital capabilities generated an 18% total return to shareholders and even reduced their costs by 40 to 60% (McKinsey). Making hybrid processes can truly help companies. However, prudence requires us to tread carefully when jumping into this trend.

1. Shifting Spend Behaviors

It is not just consumers that are changing their spending behaviors because of the pandemic. B2B companies are shifting their spending behaviors, as well. In a survey conducted in April 2020, 55% said that they are reducing their overall budget by 4% to 25% (McKinsey, 2020). This signaled optimism and an air of caution, as nobody knew how long the lockdown restrictions would be. On top of that, certain sectors were already feeling the negative effects of the Covid-19 outbreak.

Yet, despite the unknown economic implications of the pandemic, there were still 19% of B2B enterprises that said that there would be no change to their spending at all. Additionally, 26% said that their budgets even increased 4% to 25%.

However, it has to be noted that these changes were deeply connected to the sector. B2B companies that sustained or increased their spending were entities where there was optimism such as pharmaceuticals, medical products, media, and technology. Meanwhile, those who cut their expenditures were enterprises in sectors that had a somber outlook like travel and energy, and materials.

Geography also factors in the shift in B2B companies’ expenditure. In China and India, businesses are maintaining or ramping up spending. On the other side, US companies are doing the same. European companies are doing so, too, but not at the same rate as their counterparts on the other side of the Atlantic.

Whether this behavior will be sustained beyond 2021 remains to be seen. But for now, a decrease in spending in hard-hit sectors is going to be the trend while less affected industries will maintain their spending or even increase it.

2. Marriage of Digital and Remote

Companies that were planning or were in the process of implementing digitization strategies found themselves accelerating the process because of Covid-19. One of the areas this is evident in is the explosion of online events. For example, in April 2020, only 69% of B2B exhibitions had one or more virtual offerings. This increased to 81% in June 2020. There were increases across the board as well for online education sessions, exhibitor promotional content, and general session content. The most marked change could be seen in full virtual trade shows. In April 2020, only 15% of B2B exhibitions were held wholly online. That figure jumped to 41% two months later (CEIR, 2020). On a similar note, 49% of B2B marketers in different parts of the world hosted 20 to 30 virtual events, as of May 2020 (Markletic, 2021).

To achieve these, B2B companies would have to adopt various digital technologies. In fact, 66% of sales leaders rate digital channels for interaction to be more important. On the other hand, only 34% held traditional sales interactions to be more important (McKinsey, 2020). And this shift, as has been previously noted, is also reflected in the changes in the behaviors of customers.

Of course, to support those changes and to ensure business continuity, companies had to embrace remote work. Due to lockdowns and quarantines, B2B sellers had to change their tactics. And they adapted rather quickly: by April 2020, approximately 90% were videoconferencing or were working via phone. China and India lead the transition on a massive scale while Spain and the UK were the leaders in Europe.

But is the new fully digital B2B sales model effective? In that regard, leaders and experts are divided. Forty-six percent noted that it is less effective than the face-to-face model while only 27% said that the digital approach is more effective. The remaining 27% said that the effectiveness is the same.

With that said, B2B companies might have to change their tactics once quarantine and no-movement orders become more relaxed. But the rapid digitization of B2B enterprises and the use of the digital sales model may continue beyond 2021.

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3. B2B Buyer Preferences

Individual customer relationships are valuable for B2B companies. Each client relationship is worth millions of dollars for large enterprises (McKinsey). Thus, B2B companies need to understand how to guide customer journeys better with the help of digital tools.

However, it is not all the time that B2B customers want to use digital tools. Instead, they want to use them in their respective times in their respective user journeys.

A whopping 76% of B2B buyers find it helpful to speak to someone in person or on the phone when they want to purchase a completely new product or service. Unsurprisingly, 52% of buyers want to speak with someone when they are in the process of buying a previously purchased offering but with a different set of specifications. Only 15% want to speak in person when they want to buy the same service or product. Lastly, only 4% of buyers prefer to always communicate digitally.

Thus, when designing the support you are providing for your customers’ journey, you need to take into account such preferences. Of course, it is better if you do the survey yourself to have a set of policies tailormade to your very own customers. It is safe to assume that customer preferences change from industry to industry, market to market, and firm to firm. Thus, it is best to conduct your own customer surveys.

4. Retaining the Human Touch Digitally

Another one of the B2B trends marketing professionals shouldn’t ignore is that 46% of buyers would purchase from a supplier’s website when given the option, and if the service was efficient (McKinsey). This is a great opportunity as only 10% of B2B buyers purchase online. B2B businesses should capitalize on this. However, this is only just a part of more general trends eCommerce sellers should consider.

Firstly, B2B buyers have their online B2C buying experiences as well. Their expectations from their B2C experiences have spilled over to the former. Now, whether it is online or offline, B2B buyers want an immediate response. They want to find and use information effortlessly.

However, these expectations are not met.

46% of survey respondents representing B2B Buyers reported that they find it difficult to compare products online. Furthermore, they find it very dissatisfying that they cannot complete repeat orders easily on many sites. Also, slow response times frustrate them.

These and other reasons contribute to the fact that 30% of industrial tech buyers prefer to buy from distributors rather than manufacturers. As most of the time, the manufacturers take more time to respond to queries than distributors.

The challenge here is to bring superb customer relationship skills that B2B representatives provide online and support them digitally. Below are some tools that top companies use.

Customer-Facing Tools

Leading B2B companies employ comparison engines to help buyers with their purchasing decisions. This enables buyers to easily access information and compare company offerings. Furthermore, reliable click-to-chat support platforms can also help in providing digital “in-person” support to help speed-up conversion. Many experts suggest that a hybrid chat is key here.

A hybrid chat is one that uses AI to suggest things for a representative to approve. This reduces response time and the representative can just take over any time personalization is needed.

Also, marketers mix in other tools such as popular mobile marketing tools to make texting an option.

According to our list of SMS marketing data, sectors that take full advantage of texting include airlines, aerospace and defense, business support and logistics, construction, machinery and homes, and the automotive industry.

Support Your Experts

Account managers of today are required to be experts. Thus, you must take full advantage of digital tools to help them share this expertise with your customers. As McKinsey and Company experts rightly state, human conversation facilitates and drives customization while digital tools bring quick visualizations and specifications. Neither work without the other.

This doesn’t just mean digital touchpoints like live chat or others. This pertains more to apps and the like that account managers use when they meet with their prospects.

For example, you can arm your account managers with digital apps on tablets like a product configurator. In this way, they will have an easier time configuring their sales proposals for products or services according to the client’s needs. Plus, it increases client engagement as well.

This tactic was tested and used by a medical products company. When they employed it, they found surgeon satisfaction increased by 10%. Sales increased by 12% as well. Furthermore, surgeons rate the rep’s expertise 30% better than the control group armed with just brochures and PowerPoint.

As shown by the discussion and example, buyers seem to prefer a good mix of analog and digital techniques. Thus, B2B companies must consider making hybrids to ease the customer journey. We will discuss more of this in the next section.

5. UX: The Six Journeys

As mentioned, companies must create hybrid protocols involving analog and digital interactions to support customer experiences. This goes in line with the current buzz surrounding the UX design trend. UX stands for user experience. This is defined as something that:

“…encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its products.”

Therefore, if you want to design UX, you need not only think about the user interface of apps or your current customer service processes. It should encompass everything including every single touchpoint. You create and curate the customer’s total experience. Some experiences are quite native to the B2B industry.

McKinsey and Company identified six journeys that shape customer experience in B2B industries:

1. Identification of products and services meeting a need
2. Selection of supplier and making an initial purchase
3. Co-development of products with a supplier
4. Dealing with unexpected events
5. Usage of the product and getting the service
6. Reordering familiar products and services

Identification

In this journey, a customer is looking for product or service specifications that can be translated into an explicit one via sales conversation and research. It is the job of the company to make this easier for their clients. One way to do this is to provide web apps that support research and comparisons.

To wit, this is exactly what an agrochemicals company did. They developed an app that allows users to analyze soil, and to try out yield-enhancing products in a simulation. Orders increased because of this according to the McKinsey and Company report. We can draw inspiration from this.

Selection

B2B buyers choose from several suppliers the products and services they want. Many go with price first. However, they’d later find out that the service is not that efficient. They get dissatisfied and may switch suppliers.

Thus, “soft” factors play into this journey. Therefore, companies must optimize the selection process by making digital tools available to augment customer service issues.  Tools include highly-functional websites with quotation engines that make offers transparent.

Also, keep in mind that B2B buyers try to align multiple stakeholders for a choice. So, it is good to remember that you are catering to multiple people here that influence the decision-making process. Thus, digital tools aiding selection are easily accessible.

Co-Development

As mentioned, B2B companies co-develop and customize products for their clients more than their B2C counterparts. It is good to note that this process has a spectrum. Many B2B relationships can range from mere selection to a multiyear joint R&D program.

Also, it is always good to keep in mind that the B2B buyer’s primary need is a return on investment. Thus, this journey requires a sense of partnership in this way. This is applicable to a one-time purchase or regular repeat purchases.

Digital tools you can use to manage longer partnerships range from CRM platforms to project management solutions. Marketers may use these to keep in touch with prospects and have records centralized. The same with salespeople and account managers. Of course, analog interactions should be a part of your toolset too.

Dealing with Unexpected Events

Of course, there are times when your relationship with customers doesn’t go smoothly. Customers experience delays and product breakdowns happen from time to time. Thus, you need to be there for customers when they are in need. Remember, their biggest need is ROI and events like these directly affect it. Therefore, you need to have the right communication tools and service protocols to deal with them.

Usage (and Getting Service)

There are also expected events such as planned maintenance that customers and suppliers deal with. Many B2B companies provide remote diagnostic tools to their staff to monitor service equipment sold. This helps in preempting serious breakdowns in operations.

Also, as planned maintenance goes, suppliers need to invest in communication tools and protocols to keep clients updated on their current status. This includes upcoming sessions and visits. You can do this via notification emails or simple text.

Again, CRM and project management solutions can help enrich this customer journey.

Reordering

This is a major concern for customers who source raw materials and components. They want this to be as hassle-free and error-free as possible. One protocol that works for this is the empowerment of sales reps to make quotes. They don’t have to go back to their price manager to stay within guidelines. This can be done using reliable sales proposal automation tools.

With this, they would be able to format sales quotes and proposals faster and within specified bounds. This cuts down the average wait time for your precious B2B clients.

UX Design Proficiency

There are ways to become more proficient at UX design. It requires a “fail fast and fail often” approach that is hard for B2B companies with a conventional outlook to adopt. In fact, the fail-fast platitude is often misunderstood (UX Collective, 2019). However, when rightly applied, UX design teams can benefit from it. What it essentially tells you to do is to execute rapid prototype creation and testing.

For example, you create a prototype p for a service protocol. You test this together with your conventional protocol and see which is better and find more points to optimize. Testing can happen in small groups of three to five respondents. When you have gathered pain points and addressed them, you then create an improved prototype p1 that incorporates improvements from your last testing. You do this over and over again until you find the right solution.

Of course, this is easier said than done and we couldn’t cover this in the article. However, you can read up on it in this UX toolkit proposing a human-centric approach (Human Centered Design).

Also, you can take a look at these relevant website and UX design data to gain further insights about it.

6. The Shift to Agile

In a perfect world, business leaders create well-defined strategies and policies that subordinates can follow straight to success. All employees have to do is get with the program and everything will be well. It’s almost a need-to-know basis and each cog in the machine just needs to function according to what’s set in the handbook.

However, it is not a perfect world by any sort of measure. Teams run into unexpected obstacles big and small. Thus, this “waterfall” or top-down approach can be a liability when working in an uncertain environment. It simply couldn’t change course as quickly as it is required by certain circumstances.

Therefore, business professionals have been warming up to the Agile approach. You can read all about this in our article about what is agile project management. Roughly, this approach works via small increments over time. These are increments or efforts that slowly and surely lead to small victories.

And, there is really no end when it comes to business. It is a constant evolutionary struggle to keep “physical integrity” and thrive. Also, the ability to course-correct effectively, just like in biology, is an adaptive skill par excellence. This is what being Agile is about.

Moreover, Agile is highly related to UX design as discussed in the previous section. It values rapid testing and efficient course-correction even at an early onset. Basically, it takes inputs from end-users, system developers (managers), and employees. Its leanness is its greatest advantage. Thus, it is trending even in the B2B industry today.

A Good Starting Point for Agile

In this year’s 13th Annual State of Agile Report, data revealed that 51% of companies have adopted Agile to increase productivity (Digital.ai). 34% adopted Agile to increase team morale and 28% wanted to reduce risk. Moreover, 41% adopted the approach to reduce costs.

Additionally, 50% went with the Agile approach to improve business/IT alignment. This, is likely, the best way for many B2B companies to start with their Agile efforts.

Remember, for B2B companies, technology adoption is slow. They don’t only lag behind B2C counterparts but they also miss out on the benefits that digitization provides. There is a mix of reasons for this. Sometimes the company culture doesn’t permit quicker adoption of new workflows. Also, the company’s organization can also be rigid. These causes are based on mindsets more than anything. And Agile is nothing but a mindset; an outlook if you will.

Thus, traditional top-down waterfall mindsets can be changed to be more agile.

One way to do this is to imitate what a diversified industrial-goods manufacturer has done successfully. They did not treat a litany of required changes to be one big block for a waterfall program to address. These changes, by the way, included organizational structures, IT needs, training needs, and brand new mind-sets.

What they did was choose a C-suite-level program owner and make one person responsible for each change. This became a “portfolio of initiatives” with various project owners. It became more Agile and addressed remaining uncertainties and roadblocks to organizational change incrementally.

Just like them, you can create small teams and progress in small increments. You distribute project ownership and give your employees stakes in their assignments. It gives them more room for creativity and responsibility; not just tasks, jobs, and requirements.

Also, if you want to manage agile teams, you can use Agile-friendly project management platforms.

7. User Portals and Knowledge Bases

Remember that B2B buyers don’t want to interact all the time with a person. So, what you can do to help your customers find relevant information themselves is through the creation of self-service portals and knowledge bases. According to Vanilla, a self-service community portal has the following components:

• FAQ
• Online Community
• Ticketing Service
• Getting Started Guide
• How-To Videos
• User Manuals
• Help Documentation
• A Search Function (to find answers quickly and easily)

One of the benefits of self-service portals is that they allow you to quickly give support (in a somewhat passive way) to your customers (Vanilla Forums, 2020). Moreover, these let you lower your operational costs if you leverage customer support best practices. Many times, people find it annoying to talk to another person for a simple answer. That’s why Google is doing really good. We can just Google things and voila!

Thus, if you want your customers to find easy help online. You have to make sure to answer their questions there and make your self-service portals searchable. To wit, you should also focus on SEO.

73% of customers want to solve product or service issues on their own. This includes customizing products or service packages not just technical issues. Of course, self-service portals and knowledge bases can help out with this.

Also, another way to help them with this is to start using chatbots for online customer service like other companies.  This can work well together with self-service portals. Again, hybrid chat can add a personalized touch to this customer service aspect.

8. Analytics, AI, and Machine Learning

As mentioned earlier, B2B businesses are quite slower than their B2C counterparts in adopting advanced analytics tools. However, more and more B2B companies are investing in such tools nowadays. In 2018, 30% of B2B marketers used AI (Salesforce, 2019). This was an increase of 6 percentage points from 2017. Moreover, 50% of B2B marketers measure success and ROI using marketing analytics.

However, there are still challenges.

35% of B2B marketers report that they have challenges in creating a cohesive customer journey across different channels and devices. Company websites are now revenue streams. Social media accounts are also widely used for advertising. Businesses need a single view of everything that happens in their business scope.

There are no tools more apt for this than analytics, AI, and machine learning. All three are quite similar. However, there are fundamental distinctions. We’ll roughly describe them below.

Analytics is using digital tools to find patterns, assess data, and come up with solutions. AI is the simulation of human intelligence useful for personalization and product recommendations. Think chatbots and recommendation engines. Also, these AI systems can learn through machine learning where systems are trained to solve particular tasks through making their own inferences. Humans study how they do it and trust their inferential decisions to run complex systems such as search engines.

All of these will be used more and more to augment data gathering and decision-making by businesses in the future. This is why there’s now an increasing number of vendors that provide business intelligence tools for small businesses and large corporations alike.

Moreover, it is important to stop lagging on this trend if you are. So, you better keep up with relevant business intelligence facts.

9. Factoring in Millennials and Gen Zers

Millennials and Gen Zers are coming into the fold. Many of them are digital natives. Many expect to be handed digital tools at work in B2B companies or as B2B buyers in other companies. Come to think of it, it may be the influx of new generational cohorts that could drive digitization faster. Thus, more and more B2B firms need to adjust and maybe even adopt an omnichannel approach to dealing with the incoming waves.

Omnichannel Approach and Personalization

As Lenati notes, Millennials have shifted the buying journey (PK Global, 2019). They don’t want to be sold to. They want to buy on their terms. And, they want to buy across different marketing channels. They want personalization wherever they may be; on social media, email, or in-person. This is why it is important to adopt an omnichannel approach to dealing with clients and marketing in general.

What omnichannel does is incorporate all channels into a single hub where you don’t lose the context of every issue with every client. It doesn’t matter if your first touchpoint was a face-to-face conversation or Twitter. You and customer service representatives should have notes handy and handle every case in the appropriate context. There shouldn’t be any trouble with this even when switching mediums.

We must consider that Millennials are part of the technology purchasing processes. 73% of Millennials provide input while 34% are the decision-makers. Here are their general expectations:

• They expect sellers of products and services to tailor their engagement to their individual needs. This means personalization.
• Millennials are comfortable when using a broader variety of channels, devices, and technologies. Also, they expect a consistent experience throughout.
• Immediate real-time communication is a huge preference for Millennials. Moreover, they prefer self-service and self-discovery both before and after purchasing.

Millennials have shifted the B2B industry into more like a B2C one. Customer success is paramount and customer success managers need to understand that they are today’s loyalty marketers as Lenati pointed out.

They need to make brand relationships deeper and turn customers into brand advocates. Moreover, they should take the role of advisors and should be available on whatever channel from SMS to chatbots.

Gen Zers as Consumers and Businessmen (Plus, Their Advocacies)

Gen Zers are 55% more likely to go into business than Millennials (Forbes). Also, by 2026, there will be 82 million Gen Zers. They’d also have a purchasing power of around $44 billion to $200 billion. That said, Gen Zers are poised to be needle movers in the industries that they go into; both as employees and customers (The Advocate, 2019). They too have similarities with Millennials. Here are a few of them:

• They like to give their business to companies that interact with them meaningfully
• Gen Zers want to do business with companies who give to charities or sponsor events they like
• Also, they are open to communicating face to face and even on social media beyond Facebook

Moreover, they are prone to social causes (not that it is a bad thing or their fault). It’s just part of the larger context they are in. Also, maybe this is a good thing.

Gen Zers were born around the time of 9/11. Also, they are immersed in a time where public and social discourse on social media is prevalent everywhere. Thus, Gen Zers are exposed to social advocacies at a very young age (Phone2Action).

This can later mean that they want to do business with companies that put social good and environmental good first before profits. 39% of the generation feel that one measure of success is giving time and money to charity. Moreover, 20% of Gen Zers plan to start charities in the future (Forbes).

When they go into business, we should expect them to carry on with their preferences. We can expect the same things when they choose to work for a company. Thus, we must keep up with the news and trends about these two generations. They’re coming in fast and hot.

10. Performance Marketing

Performance marketing is not just a buzzword. It has always been around. The discipline grew from the tradition of giving out a finder’s fee for sales and from the popularity of affiliate networks (Smart Blogger, 2021). However, it is a broader term with bigger implications. Firstly, it maintains that marketers should only pay for results–for desired outcomes like clicks, lead generation, and sales. Performance marketers don’t like paying upfront to agencies or publishers to get things done. They pay for results and this is something that’s very enticing to business people nowadays.

If you don’t know what performance marketing is, here’s a definition of the term (Performance Marketing Association):

“Performance Marketing is a comprehensive term that refers to online marketing and advertising programs in which advertisers (aka, “retailers” or “merchants”) pay marketing companies (aka, “affiliates” or “publishers”) when a specific action is completed; such as a sale, lead, or click.”

In essence, both merchants and publishers share revenue for their particular investments. The merchants create products that meet some end-user needs. On the other hand, publishers promote the product and redirect prospects to the merchant via some affiliate link for some desired action. The desired actions could be sales, sign-ups, views, and whatnot. It is only when these desired outcomes are met that publishers get paid. Thus, it is safer for the merchant in principle.

A Note on Some Pros and Cons of Performance Marketing

Many have adopted this approach because you just pay for results. It shares the risks of creating campaigns with publishers. Also, merchants are happy to just tap into a sea of publishers vying to help them sell their products. There isn’t a downside to it when viewed this way. Additionally, spending on affiliate marketing is predicted to reach $8.2 billion by 2022 (Business Insider).

Furthermore, it has been reported that 62% of brand and enterprise marketing budgets went towards performance marketing (Tune). Moreover, performance marketers are almost ubiquitous in marketing land. They are mainstream now with 31% working for marketing platforms, 25% working for agencies, and the same amount with brands. Also, 16% of performance marketers are working for networks.

Thus, there is a rosy outlook for performance marketing. There is almost nothing wrong with adopting this approach. However, there may be some scenarios that can be problematic. We can’t discuss them all here.

One of them is when publishers do well enough to sell products in a single campaign that it is now less expensive to have hired them with an upfront payment and retainer free than going performance marketing. When this happens, brands often terminate their campaigns and just go back to good old sponsored content or plugs.

It is different for every firm. Thus, you need to create a marketing mix that incorporates performance marketing into your operations. You know best when it comes to the nuances of your company and market.

Ways to Get Started on Performance Marketing

If you want to join this trend, you should consider Affiliate Networks such as ShareASale and Clickbank. You will find many publishers there that are willing to give your products a go. Moreover, there are performance marketing-related B2B trends social media marketers should consider as well: influencer marketing and native advertising.

Using any of the leading social media monitoring tools, you can track down influencers on various social media networks. These are persons and accounts that pull in engagement. You can reach out with these personalities and give them affiliate links to your products. In this way, they can promote you in a highly personalized way for their very own niches. A B2B company selling SaaS to build websites has been known to market its services via affiliate links. The influencers they choose vary from those in the educational niche as well as those of stand up comedians.

Additionally, you can also go with native advertising. You can sponsor content by giving out free products and services to publishers. Then, publishers can review your product honestly and redirect viewers or readers to their special affiliate links. They can do this via video, short posts, or long post articles. The challenge is finding the right influencers and performance partners.

11. Getting on Amazon

Amazon is bound to get more sellers in the near future (Feedvisor, 2019). Feedvisor predicts that 72% of brands will be on the eCommerce giant in the next 5 years. This is not surprising as 44% of companies that sell on the platform get more than half of their eCommerce sales there. Furthermore, around 80% of B2B buyers in the US use Amazon to research and buy B2B products (eMarketer, 2019). It is the biggest B2B marketplace in the world.

What’s great about Amazon is that it is a user-centric company. In fact, Jeff Bezos stated that  Amazon is obsessed with its customers (Business Insider, 2020). This includes B2B companies.

Thus, it has created a self-service portal for business sellers called Seller Central. On there you can promote your products, sell, and even sign up for the famous Amazon FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon).

There are many ways that you can be a part of the “Amazon family”. You can either be a first-party seller where your products are getting stored, tracked, and shipped by Amazon. Or, you can go for a third-party seller setup where you sell your items yourself. Of course, you can continue managing inventory and deliver yourself, have Amazon handle it, or have a third-party fulfillment service. Thirdly, you can go for a hybrid approach where you choose which products you let Amazon fully handle and which ones you sell third-party.

The lesson is to just get on Amazon as it is a premier marketplace.

You will be losing out on sales and other opportunities such as advertising. If you don’t have an idea about the scale of the company, take a look at this compilation of data on Amazon to get you up to speed.

12. AR and VR

Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) are very exciting technologies that are popular in the B2C world. Think about games and even marketing stunts. However, these immersive technologies are also making their way to the B2B world. This can let you conduct construction site tours and interactive marketing presentations. Also, consider its applications in architecture and design. Users are now able to simulate complex structures and see them in 3D before actually creating physical prototypes. Just imagine the savings this technology can bring.

Companies like Pepsi have used AR to create promotional stunts. These stunts drive engagement and further conversations. Moreover, AR apps can help companies showcase products or experiences digitally. In the B2C realm, cosmetics companies allow prospects to “try out” products such as makeup and lipsticks before purchasing. As marketing and consumer experiences between B2B and B2C firms blend, many firms will find similar uses for AR as well.

13. Marketing and Sales Alignment

In the past decade, experts have emphasized that the marketing and sales departments shouldn’t be in silos anymore. Many heeded such advice. Thus, more marketing and sales teams work together to get to know customers and provide services better. This alignment between the two departments is very apparent in the digital tools that support them.

For example, many sales platforms include marketing support processes and vice versa. Support tools don’t just treat these teams as silos. Software providers understand this and incorporate this concept into their designs. Thus, we see sales, marketing, and customer service features integrated into a single platform.

Of course, there are still problems when it comes to alignment efforts. Research points out that sales teams ignore 80% of marketing leads (Marketo, 2019). Much has yet to be done to improve this. Many are on their way. So, you better not lag in your marketing and sales alignment efforts.

B2B in the Future: Blurring the Lines Between B2B and B2C

Basically, what is happening now in the B2B industry is in some ways catching up to B2C. This is in terms of being customer-centric and digitizing for productivity, cost efficiency, and for the generations to come. B2B business purchasing and selling are inherently more complex today than ever. Thus, we need to augment our own mindsets and capabilities with digital tools to better understand, predict, and react to changes and uncertainties.

Slowly but surely, the B2B industry is catching up and we are likely to see a surge in technology adoption in the next five to ten years. This is especially so as Gen Zers and more Millennials will come into the workforce and become B2B buyers and employees. We are likely to see B2B customer journeys to mimic B2C journeys more. There will be hybrid touchpoints in every step of the way.

Right now, B2B professionals have a choice. To lead, follow, or lag. For more information about where the industry is headed, be sure to take a look at our compilation of the latest B2B facts and figures.

References:

1. Schwartz, S. (2018, August 8). Why airlines are bad at digitization. CIO Dive.
2. McKinsey & Company. (2018, August 8). Digital sales & analytics: Driving above-market growth in B2B. McKinsey.
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By James Anthony

A senior FinancesOnline writer on SaaS and B2B topics, James Anthony passion is keeping abreast of the industry’s cutting-edge practices (other than writing personal blog posts on why Firefly needs to be renewed). He has written extensively on these two subjects, being a firm believer in SaaS to PaaS migration and how this inevitable transition would impact economies of scale. With reviews and analyses spanning a breadth of topics from software to learning models, James is one of FinancesOnline’s most creative resources on and off the office.