This article covers
What B2B marketing is and how the sales funnel works
The various B2B marketing channels and essential strategies for sales growth
Current B2B marketing trends
How partnering with DHL can support your global ambitions
As the B2B industry rapidly digitalises, the traditional sales model is fast becoming obsolete. In fact, Gartner predicts that 80% of sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur via digital channels by 2025.
In light of this global shift, businesses need to focus on their online strategy if they want to continue reaching customers and stay competitive. To help businesses like yours successfully achieve this, this guide will shed light on the current B2B marketing trends to take note of, and will provide practical tips and ideas to find, engage with and convert global prospects.
What is B2B marketing?
B2B (business-to-business) marketing involves the promotion of products or services from one organisation to another. This area of marketing differs significantly from B2C (business-to-consumer) methods due to its complex nature, with most B2C decisions being faster, smaller in value, and primarily driven by emotional factors or immediate individual preferences.
Meanwhile, effective B2B marketing focuses on building trust over time. This involves educating buyers with useful content, proving expertise with case studies and social proof, and maintaining visibility across professional channels. In essence, the goal is to assure potential buyers that the offered solution will work reliably at scale and that the company will be a long-term partner, not simply a one-off vendor.
How the B2B marketing funnel works
The B2B marketing journey is a long, rational process that can be effectively broken down into five distinct phases:
Step 1: Awareness — The journey starts the moment a prospect realises they have a specific problem and begins searching the internet for solutions. To meet this early demand, a business must use broad B2B marketing strategies such as SEO, educational content marketing, and targeted paid campaigns to increase visibility and offer the necessary initial guidance.
Step 2: Consideration — In this stage, the prospect has identified a range of solutions and is actively engaging in competitor analysis by comparing your business against other brands. To guide this evaluation, targeted content, such as case studies and B2B email marketing, are required to establish credibility and relevance.
Step 3: Evaluation — The evaluation stage is when the buying committee gets serious about the details, focusing on assessing vendor reliability, specific features, and overall cost-effectiveness. The main objective is to move the prospect past simple comparison by proving measurable value and return on investment (ROI) through in-depth data and strong social proof.
Step 4: Decision — The decision stage is when the prospect officially selects your business and becomes a customer. Because the stakes are high, your marketing needs to supply compelling content and definitive product information to help finalise the choice and provide assurance to every stakeholder involved.
Step 5: Post-purchase/loyalty — The final stage is post-purchase/loyalty, or simply retention — it’s all about keeping the relationship strong after the initial sale has been made. Successful B2B marketing experts know the goal is a long-term partnership, so continuous product marketing and regular customer surveys are essential to show ongoing commitment.
The funnel structure is the core engine for content strategy. TOFU (Top-of-Funnel) content — like broad guides and how-to articles — is vital for the awareness stage when buyers are just realising they have a problem and need education.
The bridge is MOFU (Middle-of-Funnel) content; these are high-value assets such as detailed webinars or comparative data reports used to capture contact information and nurture the prospect into the next phase.
Finally, the consideration and decision phases require persuasive BOFU (Bottom-of-Funnel) assets like in-depth case studies and technical specifications to satisfy the rational demands of the B2B buying committee.
Types of B2B marketing channels
Reaching decision-makers today means showing up across all the diverse channels where they look for information and solutions:
B2B content marketing
This is the foundation for building trust, involving high-value assets like insightful blogs, comprehensive guides, and white papers. Creating this content is essential for educating prospects and establishing your business as an industry expert.
B2B email marketing
Email is arguably the most effective nurture engine for B2B marketing, allowing businesses to send highly personalised and segmented messages. It helps guide prospects down the sales funnel with relevant content and is consistently cited as a top channel for revenue generation.
B2B LinkedIn and social media marketing
Platforms like LinkedIn are a natural home for B2B content, where professionals network and consume industry news. Businesses use these channels to share thought-leadership content and engage directly with potential decision-makers.
B2B advertising
B2B advertising is all about targeted paid campaigns — like paid search and paid social — designed to accelerate your sales pipeline. Its key purpose is hyper-targeting specific job titles and company attributes, ensuring your message efficiently reaches the buying committees that are ready to make a decision.
Events and webinars
These avenues provide essential opportunities for deeper, in-person or virtual engagement with high-quality prospects. They’re ideal for demonstrating expertise, launching new products, and generating qualified leads in a focused environment.
Account-based marketing (ABM)
ABM is all about treating your most valuable accounts as individual markets. The strategy involves perfectly tailoring all marketing and sales efforts to address the unique pain points of that select group of companies.
Partner and channel marketing
Partner and channel marketing involves teaming up with other businesses — like non-competing suppliers or resellers — to expand your market reach. This strategy strategically leverages their established relationships and trust to accelerate lead generation in new territories.
B2B marketing strategies to boost your sales
To stay ahead in today's digital landscape, businesses should implement the following strategic B2B marketing approaches to genuinely drive both engagement and sales growth:
Create a strong B2B brand identity
B2B purchasing is complex, and buyers often won't commit until they've had multiple interactions over a long period. Because of this protracted buying journey, businesses must prioritise clear and consistent brand messaging across every channel. This includes B2B email marketing, LinkedIn and social media marketing, and other forms of advertising. This consistency is vital because it constantly reinforces the brand's identity and builds reliability in the buyer's mind.
To begin, marketers need to conduct thorough market research to understand their target audience’s motivations and challenges. Since B2B transactions rely fundamentally on trust and credibility, knowing how the business is currently perceived will also reveal any gaps in that trust. This diagnosis then allows marketers to accurately focus on strengthening the aspects of their brand identity that need the most work.
Prioritise email as your B2B nurture engine
Email marketing is arguably the king of B2B marketing strategies. According to SendX, a remarkable 59% of B2B marketers cite email as their top channel for revenue generation2. Meanwhile, Sopro claims that 73% of B2B buyers prefer to be contacted through email versus any other channel3.
This powerful channel enables personalised experiences, allowing marketers to segment their audiences and create relevant messages that nurture prospects down the B2B marketing funnel. Email marketing is also highly cost-effective, providing measurable results that can be used to optimise future campaigns across all channels, including LinkedIn and other social media platforms.
Use AI to scale and personalise your B2B campaigns
A business can significantly enhance its B2B marketing strategies by enlisting AI-powered automation tools. Their wide range of applications below allows for personalisation at scale, essential in today's digital landscape:
Lead scoring: AI software can automatically score your leads by identifying patterns in prospects’ behaviours and habits. This allows sales teams to allocate their time to the most promising opportunities more accurately.
Customer segmentation: AI can segment audiences based on factors like sales lifecycle stage and likelihood to buy. This enables campaign messaging to be perfectly tailored for the target group, resulting in greater engagement.
Customer service: AI-powered chatbots can automate customer communication, responding to queries quickly and accurately 24/7. They ensure no sales opportunity is ever missed by efficiently qualifying and directing leads to the best resource.
Performance optimisation: AI can track prospects through the sales funnel, identifying points where they encounter friction or drop off. This allows the business to take steps to improve service and increase conversions.
Create value with LinkedIn and thought-leadership content
- Successful B2B marketing relies on creating high-quality content that proves expertise and builds trust. While assets like whitepapers, webinars, and opinion pieces are essential, video content remains key: according to Isoline, 55% of B2B buyers cited videos as the most useful type of content4.
- When it comes to general content distribution, LinkedIn is the natural home, with over 90% of B2B marketers using this platform and reporting up to 20% higher conversion rates than those who don’t5. Additionally, using dedicated tools like LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index (SSI) helps marketers optimise their efforts even further.
- Aside from social media platforms, businesses should also prioritise their own digital real estate. Isoline also reports that 63% of their survey respondents reported going directly to a company’s website when looking for information6. This makes it essential to design a website that’s clearly structured and easily navigable, preventing friction and ensuring high-intent buyers quickly find the specific solutions they need.
Personalise your marketing strategies
Personalisation is a powerful B2B marketing strategy because it delivers content that feels relevant and specific to the prospect's needs. This approach makes the customer feel understood and thus more likely to engage with the brand.
To deliver effective personalised experiences, businesses should focus on these key strategies:
Understand the buyer journey: It’s vital to know when a buyer values a personal touch throughout the sales cycle. Messaging targeted to specific needs is most impactful in the early stages of discovery, while personalisation based on the organisation increases closer to the final purchase and after the sale.
Enlist AI for predictive analytics: Businesses should make use of AI for their predictive analytics needs. The software analyses historical and current customer data to predict future behaviour, identifying a prospect's likely intent so it can serve highly relevant product recommendations while they visit the website.
Segment your email marketing: This strategy goes beyond just addressing the email to the buyer's name. The key is to segment email lists based on the audience’s goals, challenges, and where they are in the sales cycle, ensuring a new lead never receives a message meant for a long-standing customer.
Current B2B marketing trends
The B2B landscape is changing fast, so staying competitive means businesses need to focus on the trends that deliver the biggest impact. To help you prioritise, here are the most essential B2B marketing trends that are happening right now:
AI-driven personalisation at scale
The challenge for businesses is replicating the historic one-to-one relationship with buyers in a digital environment. AI-driven personalisation solves this by enhancing B2B marketing campaigns with powerful automation tools.
For example, AI software can accurately score leads by combing through vast data from various channels to identify patterns in a prospect's behaviour and habits. This ensures the campaign messaging is perfectly tailored for the target group, freeing up sales teams to focus on the most promising opportunities.
The rise of first-party data
Strict global privacy regulations and browser policy changes mean marketers cannot rely on third-party data. This makes the rise of first-party data — information collected directly from a company's owned channels — a critical new trend.
This data is inherently more accurate, reliable, and privacy-compliant, helping to strengthen customer relationships and build trust. By using this data, businesses can achieve next-level personalisation for their ABM campaigns, identify high-intent leads, and significantly increase conversion rates.
Short-form videos for complex B2B messages
Short-form videos are essential for cutting through the digital noise and aligning with today's shrinking attention spans, especially when dealing with complex B2B concepts. The format is deployed across professional channels like LinkedIn and YouTube Shorts to simplify sophisticated solutions into quick, visually engaging explainers. These short, punchy clips deliver value quickly and establish a deeper connection, transforming initial curiosity into qualified leads.
How can DHL help?
B2B interactions have historically been based on carefully nurtured relationships, but as the sector continues to digitalise, the challenge for businesses is replicating this personal connection online.
One of the ways this trust and connection is built digitally is through the promise of a consistent and reliable delivery experience. However, to ensure the physical service lives up to these promises made, a reliable logistics partner like DHL is essential, providing the global network and expert support necessary to ensure supply chain agility, maintain customer loyalty, and secure repeat high-value orders.
To leverage DHL Express’s vast international infrastructure and specialised resources to achieve sustainable B2B business growth, create a DHL Express business account today or contact their customer care team to find out more.
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