Five Industrial Marketing Trends to Adopt for 2020
Pete Hoelscher, Acting CEO of IEEE GlobalSpec, provides research-based insight as to how trends in the industry will impact B2B marketers in 2020 in a piece entitled, “Five Industrial Marketing Trends that Will Matter in 2020.
2020 is nearly upon us, and with a new year comes a new opportunity to optimize your marketing strategy for maximum results. To plan appropriately for the year ahead, check out some of the most significant trends IEEE GlobalSpec believes will affect B2B marketers in 2020, and consider how to best incorporate them into your own efforts.
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Trend #1: Email marketing continues to evolve.
Email has been part of the industrial marketer’s mix for over two decades. Email gives you the opportunity to connect with your target audience virtually anytime, anywhere, and is highly measurable.
That’s why email marketing remains a popular choice for industrial marketers. According to the most recent IEEE GlobalSpec Industrial Marketing Trends survey, 60 percent of industrial marketers rely on email marketing, and 43 percent expect to spend more on email marketing in the year ahead.
So what’s next for email? In 2020, we expect to see more industrial marketers cut through the clutter by delivering a more personalized email experience to their audience. From connecting to recipients by name, to providing email content based on their preferences and behavior, we anticipate that more marketers will maximize their email marketing investments by creating more sophisticated campaigns.
Trend #2: Marketers will need to take greater advantage of technology.
As online and email marketing in the industrial space becomes more sophisticated, it’s important to continually look for new ways to produce greater results from your marketing efforts.
Research from the IEEE GlobalSpec Industrial Marketing Trends survey indicates that only 37 percent of industrial marketers are using marketing automation software. In the year ahead, we expect to see more B2B marketers investing in platforms that can help segment audiences more precisely and guide prospects through the buy cycle, ensuring that you are delivering the right messages to the right audience at the right time.
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Trend #3: Measuring ROI remains a top priority… and a significant challenge.
As we move into the year ahead, pressure will continue to grow for industrial marketers to illustrate a return on their marketing spend. Marketing budgets in the industrial space continue to remain static, and the c-suite wants to see measurable performance for their investments. And with the metrics that digital media channels have to offer, measuring ROI is now a mandate.
When industrial marketers were asked about the single biggest challenge of their profession as part of the IEEE GlobalSpec Industrial Marketing Trends survey, the most common response was measuring the ROI of their marketing efforts.
Going forward, we expect to see more industrial marketers focus on improving their ROI measurement efforts by going beyond lead generation counts and examine their ability to track all prospect engagement through the sales cycle. Additionally, we anticipate an increase in shared definitions of marketing effectiveness across the organization, so marketers have received collective buy-in on the metrics that matter to the organization.
Trend #4: Quality content will be more critical than ever.
As more content that helps B2B buyers build internal business cases and justify purchasing decisions is made available online, the demand for relevant content continues to grow. It’s a rapidly accelerating cycle that shows no signs of leveling out. This trend makes it imperative that industrial marketers continue to invest in producing quality content.
According to the IEEE GlobalSpec Industrial Marketing Trends survey, content marketing is one of the top three channels currently being utilized by industrial marketers. Furthermore, respondents also indicated that content creation and distribution will be a top area of emphasis for marketing teams over the next five years, though relatively few respondents have a documented content strategy.
Now that more industrial marketers are incorporating content into the marketing mix, companies will now turn their focus to ensuring their efforts are producing the desired results. In 2020, we anticipate that more industrial marketers will begin to create content marketing strategies based on achieving specific, measurable objectives, and produce content designed for specific stages of the purchasing process.
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Trend #5: It’s time to combine the tried-and-true with the new.
Despite the significant shift to online channels by marketers in recent years, many traditional channels remain part of the marketing mix.
For example, two-thirds of respondents from the IEEE GlobalSpec Industrial Marketing Trends survey indicated that they continue to invest in tradeshows as part of their marketing plan, although their overall spend remains steady. And it makes sense – tradeshows offer visibility in a market, an opportunity to meet prospective buyers, and a chance to keep tabs on competitors.
In 2020, we envision seeing traditional marketing tactics like tradeshows woven more tightly with online tactics to generate a positive ROI. More industrial marketers will rely on digital channels before, during and after the show to gain momentum, increase engagement, and build relationships.
