Name: Stay Ahead of the Curve: B2B Marketing Trends
Uploaded: 2025-05-14T19:00:54.852Z
Duration: 25 min 8 s
Description: Stay Ahead of the Curve: B2B Marketing Trends

Transcript for "Stay Ahead of the Curve: B2B Marketing Trends": Eric, head of marketing for Future B2B, and I'll be your moderator for today. I'm so excited to have you all join us for what promises to be an insightful and engaging session. Whether you're joining us from the comfort of your own home or office, we're thrilled to have you here. In today's webinar, we'll be diving into the latest trends in b two b marketing, and we have some incredible content lined up for you, which will be presented by our senior editor, Mike Driehorst. We'll also hear from Tom Sykes, global head of sales for SmartBrief. A quick reminder, feel free to ask questions at any time during the session. We want this to be as interactive as possible, so don't hesitate to use the q and a feature. There will be folks on the line answering questions in real time. Before we get started, I'd like to thank you all for taking the time to be here. Let's make the most of this opportunity to learn, grow, and connect. With that, let's dive right in. I'll hand things over now to Mike to kick things off. Mike? Thanks, Shauna. My name is Mike Driehorst. And we're gonna take a look at the five key current marketing trends and maybe a hint of what you can expect down the road. First, no one really likes a long introduction, so let me just keep this brief. Again, my name is Mike Driehorst. I've been with SmartBrief for about six years. I live just about a couple of hours north of Toledo, Ohio, in Michigan. Most of my career after a few years of in journalism, working for some small town newspapers in Ohio, I've been involved in PR, social media, other types of writing and marketing for primarily b to b, firms working in in art and architectural and residential construction, machinery, two and a die, some, on the BDC side as well. So, been involved in both on client and agency roles, mostly on the agency side. So, like, no industry, there's no industry that's not been affected by AI. First, you know, AI made its first mark in marketing with generative AI. While it was pretty good on the copy side, you know, creating rough draft of show social and blog post and content outlines and maybe initial strategies for campaigns. Graphic wise, really wasn't all that good. You know, you would see pictures of people with, like, six or seven fingers on a hand. And I remember an early video of, like, a backyard barbecue, people having fun and joking, and there's a guy had fire coming out of his head. Just really wasn't all that good or realistic. Where AI really made his mark was on the back end. You know, pretty good, you know, analyzing data, looking what worked, looking maybe go forward into what, segments that they should that ad campaign should target, and kinda speeding up the analytics side. As you see here, agencies from Jellyfish and brands like Lendable and Sargento really were able to make their campaigns better, improved ROI. They're making faster. And even like for in Sargento's case here, they're aiming to kinda boost sales in non category areas. Part of the back end nature of AI has been the development of AI agents. These are just programs that are, you know, you have particular inputs to go to perform certain functions. Excuse me. Look at information and then make decisions based on what it finds. If all these little agents working together, I kinda imagine a little people in in the keyboard, and then to to to, you know, I said, make these campaigns better, make them faster, all around. What I mean, I guess, one thing before we go on. You know, all this the speeding up on the campaigns, was a key thing you're gonna see later on where, you know, faster campaigns that are still effective will allow you to pivot messaging. If you see trends in the industry, then you can kind of quickly tweak, copy, or the target, if there are major geopolitical events or or just any times of or you think you get a sense of your customers and prospects who are maybe have a bit of hesitancy, you can change the tone of your campaigns without going through, you know, a a brainstorming process and the committee here and work with the agency. And and just you you can do things in much more condensed time without sacrificing, a good ROI. And of course, all the major, digital advertising platforms from, like, LinkedIn, Google, Meta, even some of the social platforms like Snapchat and TikTok are incorporating these AI agents and and and AI back end into their campaigns. You know, so as I definitely know in in house that you have to create yourself for most of the, advertising campaigns. Now, while this was going on, of course, the generative AI aspects were getting improved. You know, I kinda think of generative AI, especially on graphics, more of Photoshop. When Photoshop came out, you know, there's a lot of concern, you know, you you can make a person, you know, fatter or thinner or you move the retriever, it's not real. Well, people kinda got over that for the sake because you kinda know advertising is not always, %. So but what generative AI on the graphic side has done, you know, the you know, you know animation is animation. But the things that supposed to be real are more realistic. And while this is, more of a consumer y piece on this Coke, video we're gonna watch in a little bit, it shows what, I guess, the strides and the length that, the quality that generative AI has improved. Coca Cola created this totally AI, video. Wasn't part of an ad campaign. More of it just show what it could be done. Came out in November, and let's watch that now. Now what I hope you saw it was, like, you know, the and, of course, the polar bears were were they're were not real. But, like, the scene of the trucks going downtown and the overall image, those look a little more realistic and believable. So I guess, let me maybe keep in mind, there's some examples there of, programs. For what what we read often with SmartBrief, all along the trade magazines like Ad Age, and AdWeek will have kind of, you know, what are the agencies and the brands using now. So those are kind of good type of stories keeping to keep an eye on, excuse me, And find out what programs others are using to see success. Now, SEO is another area where, AI has made us inroads. Now, of course, foundational organic, SEO will always be important. You need you have good content. Don't overstuff them keywords. You have a concise, to the point summary and metadata, into titles and all those things. But what, like and so the growth of AI has led to things like Google's AI overview, and other search engines like perplexity and email chat, GPT, providing a deeper level of results. You know, like with Google's AI overview, they're providing, you know, two, three, four, five, you know, paragraphs to answers a person search search query. And while they provide the link to the source, fewer people are are clicking. So what you need to do is provide your your page content has to kinda answer the questions that, Google and AI overview are, seeking. So you need to go deeper, and here's a couple of tools. Enter the public. Google's people also ask to kinda give you some ideas of what type of deeper content you need to develop. And also have a technical side like site speed and responsiveness, will also help you rank high in these AI search engine results. One thing that just came out, I saw in a SmartBrief newsletter today is that BrightEdge had a study where chat GPT results provided more mentions of brands and their summaries than Google's AI overview. So that's something to keep in mind. You know, you know, like, it it so we I think the same type of of of practice, to get these AI, AI summaries will work across the board. But I guess, you know, whoever does it better will show, you know, of course, more rank higher just like the old foundational SEO. And I think before we go to the next slide, now I'm sure you guys have all seen that emergence of or the merging of b to b and b to c to tactics with, you know, influence on influencers on LinkedIn, you know, like influencer marketing is not just for consumer brands. It's for everybody. What is it? That's generation z. As I've said, they they they are going, driving force between the merging of b to b and b to c to tactics. And I always gotta look this up. Generation z is generally those who were born between 1997 and 02/2012. So that makes them 13 years of age to, like, well, mid to early around the mid twenties. So they're starting to be early in the workforce. And while they may not be making decisions, they're making recommendations for the bosses to decide upon. And they're you're dealing with their bosses. So there's a, you know, maybe a a second degree removed from who you're often working with. You know, they desire personalization, which makes first party data, that much more important for email marketing, text, and chats like WhatsApp. And they also value what price will always be important. They value more than just price. They value more than just the features values and and and, you know, those type of traditional b to b selling items. They wanna know about your company, what it stands for. They want you to be transparent. More of a personal relationship, you know, if you have a good, you know, how about particular charities or sustainability message? Those are things you wanna convey in the messaging to get a better connection. Because, you know, people wanna do business with people like them. And that's what Gen z wants to know. They wanna know who what are the brands out there, the companies out there that are maybe have a similar mindset. In addition, you know, they're when they're looking for products, they'd be more social first. Like, let me look at that. 46% of generation z start their product discovery on social, or they're more open to it on social. For millennials, that drops a bit, but it's still a 35% of millennials search social platforms for for product discoveries and ideas and and and inspiration. Of course, you know, they're using Facebook less. YouTube is big for video consumption. So those are just things that you gotta maybe, you know, you don't need spread yourself too thin, but look at where your customers are and maybe your future customers will be, and go where they're and meet them where they are. So maybe you need to, you know, put some marketing budget onto, types, you know, be more on social. You know, it's a lot a lot a lot to balance, so maybe you gotta this is where you really need to prioritize. I see whenever you get times of economic uncertainty or just a lot of things in flux in society, everybody's gonna be thinking short term. And of late, performance marketing has taken on greater importance over brand building. You know, and that calls for flexibility. You wanna be flexible with your terms and conditions and pricing and commitments with your vendors, and you're gonna ask the same of the people you're selling to. It's it's just more of of of, you know, where you can't really count when things are changing so much in the news the news cycle, you know, it's just natural for people to react that way. And Cams Lines had a survey last week where, you know, two thirds of marketers are thinking short term of 10 percentage points from just two years ago. Of course, the the the kind of the conundrum of that or the juxtaposition. What we talked about earlier is the speed of which you can develop campaigns, switch, messaging for them through the use of AI and AI agents will enable you to to make these quick to be to be flexible, to be to make these quick changes, and using technology can do it so much quicker. What do you mean yeah. I mean, today, we just had a story in a SmartBrief newsletter from, an executive with Quality Meets Agency, said the same thing, that brand building is becoming more important because the performance marketing is much more of a commodity. I mean, it's still important. You still gonna need ROI, but because you can do it faster without sacrificing quality. And so it just kinda means that that that you and and and executives and your company can devote more to, that long term relationships to work with Gen Z, you know, in those in person events. Now, Charles, what's next? Well, you know, just like more people will be getting, using AI, there will always be outliers. You know, while people early on in any, bleeding edge will tell about their use of technology as a more it becomes widespread. People will say, well, we're using the old technology, human, in interaction and interface. We don't set you know, that's how we're more personal. They will sell more on value. They will sell more on their relationship. They're only be outliers. As I mentioned earlier, with Gen z and the younger generation, there will be more social media fragmentation, which will give rise to, making first party data much more valuable. You'll be dealing with maybe still one to many. You'll be dealing with one to a few in your communication, or one on one, depending what the the tactic you use. Something that's kind of out there that I'm thinking, you know, with with, virtual reality, it really hasn't it's caught on in bits and pieces. But combined with the AI fueled, you know, dynamic advertising, I can see a day where, say, you're walking down, a city block, say, it's about 11:30, and either on this coupon you have on your glasses or you're on your phone, there'll be, say a restaurant a block away, an ad for this restaurant will pop up and you'll be able to click on it and get this holographic or immersive image where you can see what it looks like now, are the tables available, what type of atmosphere does it have. You'll be able to click on the menu in this virtual experience and you'll be immersed. You know, I'm not sure when that's gonna happen, but I think I can see more immersive dynamic real time advertising. B two b and b two c, will be coming down the road. Again, this is Mike Driehorst. I hope you've had, you've learned a thing or two during this time. My email is on the, initial slide. It's just mike.driehorst@featurenet.com. If you have any questions, I'll be more than happy to, connect with you afterwards. Shauna, back to you. Thanks, Mike. That was some incredible content you just shared with us all. Now we're gonna hear from Tom, VP of sales with SmartBrief. Tom, over to you. Alright. Hi, everybody. My name is Tom Sykes. I am the global head of sales for b two b at, Future, and a longtime veteran of the SmartBrief team here to talk a little bit about, the SmartBrief business, how it relates to the trends Mike covered, in terms of 2025 marketing, how we're sort of addressing some of those, same trends and considerations, and what, you know, potential, advertising partners would like to know about what we do. The SmartPay business has been, around for coming up now in twenty six years founded in 1999. We are an executive email news network. We publish more than 200 different daily, weekly, occasionally monthly e newsletters across a 80 different association partnerships, and 7,000,000 business executives total primarily, in The US, but globally as well. We operate in every major b two b category. There's about 10 industries listed here. And because of the audiences that we've built in partnership with, the National Retail Federation, the National Restaurant Association, America's health insurance plans, the SmartBrief Network is a sort of one stop shop for daily news for really senior executives, forty nine percent director level, plus and 35% VP level, and above, across, again, pretty much every every major VP sector from business, to finance, to marketing, to health care, and to education. But today, we're really here to talk, about marketing strategy, which is, you know, essentially finding your audience, meeting them where they are with the right content tactics, the right messaging, at the right time. And and circling back on a couple of points that that Mike Driehorst had talked through, that are really interesting to to us and our business. The first one I wanted to to call out was was, the rise of AI and AI optimization for media companies. AI optimization, like any kind of optimization, it it starts with data. Right? And I I I do think good AI execution can be really artful, but the starting ingredients are science. It's about meaningful data, capturing real quality first party data is is a core priority for all SmartBrief media and content services as is using that data to better understand the audience, and coaching our our partners and clients to do the same, whether that's, through detailed performance reporting, through innovating with intent based targeting schemes from from content consumption, or surfacing content consumption trends to help guide messaging strategy based on, what's most important to to your very specific audience right now. The other thing that Mike talked about, which is is top of mind for us, and many others is economic uncertainty. Mike pointed out that for for marketers, economic uncertainty calls for flexibility and contracts, and agreements. And and I think it also calls, for flexibility in the product set. Right? Because if if you're a marketer and you've got a bit less to spend this year, you'd you'd better make sure what you're buying suits your needs exactly. Right? Recently, we've had, for example, a number of of clients who, for whatever reason, had to pull out of, live events that they'd already invested product plans and marketing strategies against. And so instead of missing out on that opportunity entirely when when travel globally can be challenging, instead we're working together on advertising. Right? Content and video campaigns targeted to the same industry audience integrated with content our own editors are producing from the show floor. Once you identify your audience, it's important, I think, to, use a variety of of of formats of of messaging tactics, being in different places so that as time change, you you can still stay, in front of that audience wherever they are. Taking webinars as well, for example, our our strategy in terms of, webinar variety is is to host a bunch of, a bunch of different types of them. We've got at least five, unique flavors of of webinars at SmartBrief and, Future B2B b two b from fully custom exclusive events, to multi client panel conversations, all day summits. Some of those might run to a specific industry, just one. Others might cover multiple industries. And we're happy to do, you know, a % of audience promotion, or 0% of audience promotion will will accommodate your speakers or will draw from our own content staff. I think that's the kind of flexibility, that that is so important as a marketer when when your needs are changing and the best way to get from, a to b is changing that that a a good variety of of content marketing tactics tactics can still get you from from a to b. Economic uncertainty also, like, pointed out tends to drive marketers toward performance based campaigns before brand building, right, with with sometimes shorter term goals. And and he noted that, 63% of marketers currently are focused very much on the short term, which is significantly, more than we're focused on the short term even the same time last year. And and that's natural. Right? But we also know from from an often cited HBR study that something like 90% of b two b buyers already have a short list of the vendors that they want to work with before beginning any formal research for our fee process. And 90% of purchases that those buying teams ultimately make are from that original list of of three vendors in mind or less. So unless you wanna bet on on yourself being sort of the the one in 10, exception, you can't you you can't really just stop, brand building. The good news though in the b to b world, I think, is that you you don't necessarily have to choose one or the other. Your your your real buying audience is small anyway relative to, say, consumer goods. So so once you found them, it doesn't take massive volumes of of advertising to build awareness and to fill, your CRM at the same time. The content marketing recommendations that my team at SmartBrief typically makes to to clients are are built on that premise. For example, you know, we'll partner on a on a blog series around a key topic for awareness, but then we'll convert, that content into a longer form white paper. And then you can go take that and syndicate it through something like targeted email advertising for for lead capture, and then you can even retarget the same readers on their social channels for for ongoing nurturing and and recalls to that. When your sales team actually picks the phone and and calls the leads, they they know who we are, who you are, and and what the story is. I'm so happy that everyone took the time to to listen through this presentation. They wanna thank, my colleague Mike for the the fascinating research that he's done, and and thanks to our team for giving me a few minutes here to, talk about what SmartBrief is doing relative to some of these marketing trends. Thanks everyone for joining today. We had some great questions and some great content. Thanks again for participating. Be on the lookout for an email with a recording, and feel free to follow-up with any questions that you may have. Thanks, everyone, and have a great day.