2022 won’t be just another year for a great many people. COVID-19 in its various forms made sure of that. Marketing to businesses in 2022 will require marketers to pull out the stops to step out into the light, entertain audiences, and find new innovative ways to tap into new audiences.

In this article, we set out some of the bigger challenges B2B marketers face in 2022 and offer some predictions on how companies will look to cope with the very different environment of post COVID trading.

b2b marketing list 2022

1. Create an audience beyond LinkedIn and Facebook

Challenge

Facebook is great but, if you’re a B2B player, then LinkedIn is now by far the most influential platform for marketing to your buying audience. However, the effectiveness of LinkedIn has worn away over time as it becomes more of a social media chatroom and less of a focused business community. Many B2B marketers find themselves struggling to increase audience sizes beyond the community already following their company page. This means investments in social content offer diminishing returns because companies re-market to people who already know who they are and what they do.

2022 Prediction

In 2022, expect B2B businesses to be on the lookout for smarter ways and new platforms from which to grow their online audience.

Solution—The hunt for new platforms that offer more reach

In 2022, we will be exploring new platforms like twominutesreads.com that offer B2B content publishers the means to extend their messaging and content broadcasts to new audiences beyond the common crowd of LinkedIn and Facebook.

The Two Minute Reads platform makes it possible for B2B companies to post snippets or summary articles that can be read under 2-minutes and attach other resources like videos, white papers, training courses, or full press releases—in addition to your company profile and other resources. It’s also a clever way of boosting your off-page SEO by linking back to articles on your website. Two Minute Reads is free to use and it only takes a minute to create a business account and start sourcing new followers. Pay a few dollars and you can also take advantage of the platform’s ready-made newswire distribution lists.

2. Get SEO right to bring customers to your website

Challenge

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has never been more important for B2B companies that historically would have sales teams to reach out to potential customers by email or phone. Today, it’s really hard for salespeople to break through the impenetrable wall of voice boxes and spam folders. This places an increased burden on marketers to attract new potential customers to the table.

2022 Prediction

In 2022, we will see B2B sales leaders pushing their marketing leads for more clarity over the make-up of their online audience, and what they get up to. This means identifying the folk visiting your website as soon as possible, knowing where they go, and what they’re looking for. Perhaps, most importantly, marketers will want to track Call To Action (CTA) progress and make sure leads get through to sales teams as soon as possible so that a sales conversation can commence.

Solution—Understanding the world according to Google

Google Analytics and Google Console are excellent tools to understand what Google cares about—and, let’s be honest, that’s become increasingly important. That said, they only go so far. In 2022, we have adopted SE Ranking as our go-to tool to optimize websites. The platform brings with it a comprehensive suite of tools to fine-tune your on-page, off-page, and keyword SEO strategies—all in one tool. Reporting is excellent too, but the most impressive feature is the level of detail provided by the recommendations engine to correct those elements in your SEO that aren’t working quite as they should. Also, if you haven’t already done it, check out tools like Crazy Egg that offer excellent heat maps of where visitors go on your sites, and Zoho Web-Forms or Hubspot Web-Forms so you can quickly progress inquiries directly from your web front end to CRM.

3. Make content richer and more entertaining

Challenge

Yes, people spend much of their time these days snacking on the web and tracking through social media sites, but that doesn’t mean they don’t find much of the content boring. Standing out in the congested digital world means thinking more about the entertainment factor and exploring better ways to produce eye-catching impactful articles, pitches, and posts.

2022 Prediction

With so many people working, hiring and pitching remotely thanks to hybrid and flexible working trends, 2022 will be the year companies move their document and courseware experience online. PowerPoint is no longer ‘the answer’ to producing business content. This longtime go-to solution for electronic document design is showing its age, and in a digital age, your documents need to be digital; employ rich media, be interactive, animated and swishy. B2B businesses will look to use built-for-purpose No-Code design tools that offer rich media blended experiences (combining animated graphics and charts, video snippets, images, text and Call-To-Action links, etc.) in documents delivered online.

Solution—Creating more entertaining (on brand) content, courseware and pitch decks

A new gamut of software tools has entered the market over the last few years that allow non-expert designers to do amazing things with content. Probably the best known is the Australian software company CANVA who provides a helpful toolkit for amateur designers. Then, we have the tools designed for in-house marketing professionals who may or may not have a graphics design background—because these design and publishing platforms are all rich media these days. Products like Encanvas, Page Tiger, CEROS, Visme, and VEV are good examples of the tools B2B marketers are likely to explore in 2022.

Use this simple summary below as a quick guide to capabilities.

4. Become a trusted source by educating on our subject

Challenge

Customers want an easy ride when it comes to understanding your product and service. One way to make life simpler for customers is to make your offerings intuitive. Another is to provide online courses in bite-sized, easy-to-absorb educational content. Rich media publishing offers an easy way to achieve this aim when combined with an ‘ACADEMY’ learning management system.

2022 Prediction

Throughout 2022, B2B companies will be working hard to bring their learning provisioning up to scratch. Gone are the days of classroom courses and hard-to-absorb product technical manuals. Say hello to the era of intuitive UIs, context-sensitive help, AI-driven chatbot trainers, and free-to-air rich media distance learning courses.

Solution —Helping customers to help themselves in acquiring the knowledge they need to use your product or service

In 2022, No-Code rich media publishing software vendor Encanvas will be releasing a ready to deploy white label ‘Academy’ platform that works in consort with its distance learning content design tools. Combined, these two subscription-based services add up to an end-to-end solution for firms looking to build their own branded customer-facing academy.

5. Boost evidence-based marketing with credentials

Challenge

Increasingly, customers want proof they should trust you. In a virtual digital world, many customers are understandably reluctant to trust the marketing promises and pledges of suppliers at face value. They want to hear from individuals or businesses that remind them of themselves (and their own problems and challenges). Ask any CEO or sales leader on the importance of credentials and they will preach chapter and verse on the importance of good case studies. Ask yourself, how many RFPs don’t require at least two or three case studies? … which makes it all the more odd that most businesses don’t see Credentials Management as a process that needs to be managed and supported in their organization!

2022 Prediction

2022 will be the biggest year for evidence-based marketing yet. Companies want to show through their case studies, buyer testimonials, and quotes that they are the best place to go for the product or service they supply.

Solution—Credentials Management Software and Services

This year, Newton Day is launching its Credentials Management service and software platform. We’re providing B2B companies with technical writers and editorial supported by our built-to-fit always on Credentials Management Platform ‘Praise.’ But, if you are in self-help mode and you want to start building up your own credentials, one of the better ways to do it is to start with video testimonials. To do this you can use an app like VideoAsk, Boast.io, Vouchfor, or Vocal Video.

Ian Tomlin

Ian Tomlin

Author

Ian Tomlin is a marketer, entrepreneur, business leader and management consultant. His passion is to help make great ideas happen. Relentlessly optimistic about the potential of technology for good, Ian’s 30+ year career has focused around the intersect of strategy, technology and marketing. He writes on subjects including enterprise computing and organizational design. He also works as a consultant and advisor to the executive teams of PrinSIX Technologies, Answer Pay and INTNT.AI, helping to rethink their marketing in order to tell their brand story.

Ian has founded a series of successful businesses including NDMC Ltd (2003), Encanvas (2006), and Newton Day Ltd (2019). He has written books, articles and guides on brand, digital transformation, enterprise applications, data science, workforce management, and organizational design. He can be reached via LinkedIn or Twitter.