The past two years sent most marketers on rollercoaster rides, as they sought effective digital marketing strategies to keep businesses afloat.

Digital transformation became a reality as brands scrambled to stay connected to their customers and get new ones.

In the digital space, it’s creativity, innovation, and efficiency that sets some brands ahead of others. So, if you’re seeking a future here, you’ll need to keep up with the latest trends.

Here are five trends to keep an eye on in 2022.

AI Marketing

AI applications are already being used in B2C products like home appliances and children’s toys, so crossing over to B2B marketing was a no-brainer.

No, we’re not talking about machines taking over your life and work, but partnering with artificial intelligence to improve reach, efficiency, and grow revenues.

The complexity of AI’s algorithm means it can look at vast amounts of data and learn the patterns that bring in the best results.

Here are some ways partnering with AI will benefit your business:

  • Lead generation. AI can learn buyer behavior, interests, and preferences and help you identify and attract ideal customers for your products/services.
  • Lead conversion. Having generated leads, artificial intelligence moves on to provide insights into core desires and needs, helping you personalize messages for the highest impact.
  • Enhanced and effective communication. AI-powered communication can engage visitors, answer questions, and send out pre-planned messages. This ensures communication between your business and customers stays open 24/7.
  • Keeping up with evolving customer needs. By analyzing consumer behavior based on present and past behavior, AI will give you the advantage of customizing your offerings to meet changing needs.
  • Simplifying data analysis. Data is only useful if you can analyze it correctly. Artificial intelligence helps collect, interpret, and recommend improvements to ensure your digital marketing efforts are achieving their goals.

Cold Calling

The cold calling strategy began long before the internet was invented and continues to evolve in line with changing buyer behavior.

We no longer shove our products/services in unsuspecting audiences’ faces, but take a more tactical approach.

This approach involves targeting businesses that stand to benefit from our solutions, and building relationships with them to inspire trust and credibility.

According to saleshive.com, a leading B2B cold calling services provider in US, the following are best practices when it comes to cold calling for your business:

  • Get background information on the company you’re targeting. Look up their size, location, values, and industry challenges. Critically analyze your ability to solve their problems.
  • Leverage social media, particularly LinkedIn, to learn more about the contact person. Find a common interest or a recent achievement you can mention in passing to break the ice.
  • Prepare a solid opening line because you only have a few seconds to impress your listener. From your research, identify a key pain point and create a story revolving around it and the solution you offer.
  • Create a calling guide that summarizes the points you want to put across, questions for the prospect, and responses for common objections.
  • Decision-makers are busy people and receiving a cold call is the furthest thing from their minds. Be mindful of the time and length of your call.
  • Practice cold calling manners. Keep distractions aside and ensure you’re polite throughout the call. Notice, we said polite, not timid.
  • Focus on sharing the value you can offer and securing your goal (meeting, second call, demo, etc) rather than making a sale. People don’t like being pushed to buy out of the blues. They may become suspicious of your motives and hang up.

Voice Search Marketing

Most of us are familiar with Google voice search, Siri, or Alexa. You’ve probably used them to search for information, play music or check the weather.

In the US alone, over 100 million people use voice search. A further 51 percent use voice assistance in their online shopping—right from research to tracking packages, leaving reviews, and re-purchasing items.

Savvy B2B marketers are leaning into voice search marketing to improve search rankings and push sales. And so should you.

How?

  • Voice search results are usually pulled from featured snippets. Featured snippets are the brief excerpts that usually appear in search results to provide quick answers to questions. So target snippets relevant to your products/services to cover voice search bases.
  • Target “ask” keywords in your content. Consider the “what,” “why,” “who,” “when,” “where,” and “how” relating your products/services and how adequately you are answering these questions
  • Provide a great mobile user experience by improving load times. The faster your page loads, the more likely search engines will choose you for voice search results.

YouTube Shorts

YouTube Shorts are short formats of YouTube videos typically running for around 15 seconds.

These short-form videos are gaining popularity, attracting over 15 billion views daily.

Why do viewers love them?

Well, they are shorter than most YouTube videos we’re accustomed to, and they speak to our short attention spans.

For a B2B marketer, YouTube Shorts creates opportunities to reach larger audiences and promote products/services through quick punchy videos.

So the question shouldn’t be, “is YouTube Shorts worth it?”, but, “How do I tap into YouTube’s staggeringly large audience with Shorts?”

By creating and sharing straight-to-the-point videos that engage audiences, build trust, and generate leads.

As with normal YouTube videos, Shorts grant you access to analytics so you can measure their performance.

The data will give you an overview of the people who watched your video, for how long, and their demographics. You’ll see your video’s engagement calculated using the clicks, likes, dislikes, and comments.

Personalized Email Marketing

Imagine receiving an email that feels like it’s been specifically written for you, addressing the very challenges you’re experiencing and offering solutions.

You would feel a connection with the sender, kind of like speaking with a friend who understands.

This connection will nudge you to engage the sender to know more about the solutions they offer and how you can purchase them.

That’s the power of personalized email marketing.

And with the amount of data available in the public domain, this level of personalization should happen at every level, only it’s not.

If you’re struggling to personalize your email campaigns, here are some pointers for you.

  • Ask the right questions. It’s likely that your website receives a ton of visitors, but they are not all there for the same reason. By asking visitors the reasons for their visit, you’ll be able to target them with relevant and personalized emails.
  • Use data collected from website behavior and previous history to build customer personas. You can allow visitors to the persona that best fits their profile and personalize their experiences.
  • If you have global audiences, segment your email list according to their time zones to ensure the emails reach them at optimal times. Past open histories can help you know the best time to reach your audiences.
  • Automate behavioral trigger emails for multiple actions including welcome, up-selling, cross-selling, and re-engagement.
  • Personalize your brand. Adopt email addresses that feature staff members’ names over role-based names.