Introducing 2030 B2B Marketing Trends

For the past five years, our team here at the B2B Institute has tried to spot the trends in B2B marketing. Every year, we release a new edition of our (beloved!) franchise “B2B Trends.” But this year is different. 2020 has been one of the most difficult periods in modern history. The pandemic has thrown a cloud of uncertainty over the next 6-12 months. So this year, we’ve decided to take a different approach.

This year, we’ve decided to look far ahead...to 2030.

In our new report, we’ll cover three big trends that will define the next 10 years of B2B marketing. These are contrarian approaches to B2B that can give you a competitive edge in the market. We’ve tried to distill everything we’ve learned from working with experts like Les Binet, Peter Field, and Jenni Romaniuk into a single eBook.

Here’s a sneak preview of the three trends in the report:

Trend 1: The War On Brand

Over the past 10 years, the B2B marketing industry has become obsessed with the bottom-of-the-funnel. We invest the vast majority of our time and money in lead generation strategies, competing to capture short-term demand from in-market buyers.

But over the next 10 years, we believe there will be a correction, and the focus will shift to the top-of-the-funnel. Lead generation is valuable, but research suggests that brand building is even more valuable. Famous B2B brands grow faster in the short-term and in the long-term. Famous B2B brands can raise their prices, expand into new categories, acquire and retain top talent, and deter would-be competitors. The benefits of lead generation are quite narrow. The benefits of brand are extremely broad. By 2030, we expect to see much greatest investment in brand.

Trend 2: Blockbuster Marketing

To build a famous B2B brand, you need extraordinary creative that cuts through and wins attention. But what are the principles of extraordinary creative? To answer that question, we’ll examine one of the greatest creative enterprises in business history: Disney. We will show you the method behind Disney’s magic, and how B2B marketers can apply those methods to develop best-in-class creative year after year.

Using Salesforce as an example, we’ll make the case for betting big on recurring content franchises or brand campaigns and investing in distinctive brand assets, like logos and characters. Salesforce does this better than anyone else in B2B, with their splashy “Trailblazers” brand campaign and their weighty “State Of…” Reports.

Trend 3: The Death Of Hyper-Targeting

To build a famous B2B brand, your creative needs to reach every potential buyer in the category. And yet, over the past 10 years, B2B marketers have gone all-in on “hyper-targeting” tactics. In this trend, we will discuss the five limitations of hyper-targeting and suggest a different model, which we call “reach maximalism.” We will attempt to prove that broad targeting, not narrow targeting, is the formula for growth in B2B.

We hope these ideas bring you fame and fortune by 2030.

To read the full report, please click here.