The Hottest B2B Marketing Trends to Look Out for in 2017 in Houston

As B2B marketers approach the beginning of the year 2017, it is the right time to take a comprehensive look at the speedily surfacing B2B marketing trends prevailing in Houston this year.

2017 is expected to observe an enduring evolution of numerous amazing B2B marketing trends and few new concepts that are going to become extremely popular. And as B2B marketers know that the trends become unique practices, these practices become mainstays in Houston.

In the past few decades, there has been a massive emergence of key B2B marketing strategies, techniques and tools which have been speedily growing in popularity. Well, the truth of the moment is that, unique marketing techniques such as digital, social, mobile, marketing technology and content marketing have now become the mainstays and not merely trends. These incredible trends have redefined the digital landscape and have left a gigantic impact on how the B2B marketers approach B2B marketing in Houston. New-age B2B marketers reside in an extremely mobile, digitalized, social and technology-enabled globe which blossoms with the help of content. All these mainstays prolong to grow and stimulate their own trends and there are undoubtedly several new trends which are expected to make their presence widely known in the year 2017.

Unearthing the Hottest B2B Marketing Trends to Look Out for in 2017 in Houston:

1. Client-Oriented Approach:

B2B marketers across Houston reside in the age of the customers and while their B2C counterparts understood it a while ago, B2B companies have also now identified with the importance of customer experience and employing customer-oriented approach for everything to run a B2B business effectively in Houston. The new-age B2B buyers are incredibly influenced through their consumer experiences and are expecting same experiences in their professional lives too. As per the latest stats, the B2B customer experience is expected to go beyond price and product as the primary brand differentiator by the year 2020, which will have massive implications, not merely for how companies promote and sell, but also the approach by which they deliver their offerings and how they foster their existing client relationships. In the year 2017, B2B marketing agencies in Houston are likely to make major inroads with adopting a customer-centric strategy and an internal infrastructure to support it.

2. Account Based Marketing (ABM):

Account Based Marketing (ABM) has been the hottest B2B marketing trend in 2016 and is expected to garner rife adoption in 2017 as well. For B2B agencies having long and intricate sales cycles which often involve numerous stakeholders and are usually high-value in nature, ABM showcases possibly the most effective approach to generate new business in comparison to the inbound approaches for demand generation.  As demand generation processes concentrate on targeting explicit personas or customer types, ABM is hyper-alert on targeting the specific contacts at specific agencies through which an agency desires to run business or is previously engaged into this technique. Latest stats have proven that if B2B marketing companies in Houston leveraged ABM then, it delivered a 285% higher close rate for the targeted business accounts and a 166% higher close rate for the mid-market accounts. Furthermore, at the heart of the ABM strategy is a close alliance with a company’s sales and business development endeavors. The marketing ROI and sales alignment have become the primary drivers of all B2B companies in Houston; more companies will leap on the ABM revolution in the year 2017.

3. Nurturing Content Marketing Plans:

Content marketing is certainly a mainstay of the new-age B2B marketing strategy in Houston. The latest research have proven that around 89% of B2B marketers are making use of the content marketing techniques and around 70% of them plan to generate more content in the year 2017. But despite of the extensive adoption of content marketing techniques, only 22% B2B marketers believe that their company is either not at all or extremely effective at doing it.  But 62% of B2B organizations are very successful with their overall content marketing approach. In the year 2017, the approaches through which several B2B companies leverage content marketing, will take a huge leap forward and grow into much more strategic, sustainable, assessable and successful techniques. Let’s explore few content marketing trends to watch in 2017-

• Obligatory to have a standard and on-paper content marketing strategy.
• Laying more focus on quality rather than quantity and target-specific content.
• Extremely urbane technology infrastructure to support plans.
• Amplifying the dependence on paid augmentation to enhance distribution.
• Incorporate the content marketing strategies into ABM and other sales-centric tactics.
• Huge precedence on demonstrating ROI and addition in the multi-touch attribution assessment.
• Diversification of content formats for encompassing a wider amalgamation of interactive content, more video, podcasts etc.
• Extra attention laid on contributor marketing and native marketing to support program objectives.

4. Videos: 

Video has been all in the rage throughout 2016, but in the year 2017 watch out for it to attain scorching status as B2B marketing companies in Houston already using video will be increased two times more. Video marketing if done perfectly then, can turn out to be extremely engaging and generates huge ROI. Videos are now considered to be the most meticulously guzzled content format. In 2017, more B2B companies will invest in long-form video content such as the formation of video shows and series. And today with the advanced live video streaming tools, B2B marketers can easily broadcast live events and what not which opens up practically infinite possibilities for exhibiting live events, product exhibitions, Q&A panels and behind-the-scenes expeditions.

5. Multi-Touch B2B Marketing Provenance:

Today B2B marketers in Houston are under huge pressure for showcasing their impact on the outcome and delivering analytical insights to protect marketing initiatives. Marketing attribution is basically the procedure of binding specific marketing campaigns and initiatives to certain finalized deals and proceeds. As multi-touch attribution has also been leveraged by the big B2B companies, numerous small and medium sized B2B firms have also had a tough time to make the attribution work. As more B2B firms are building closed-loop, incorporated marketing and sales systems and improved alignment of their teams, these assessments will get quite handy to perform. Be it automated, manual or a blend of the two, watch out for marketing attribution to play a massive role in B2B marketing in 2017.

There are many more B2B marketing trends which will pick up steam in the year 2017, but B2B marketing companies in Houston must look for the prospective practices which are expected to move the needle for their company’s marketing and business development endeavors.