Surfing B2B Marketing Trends in 2024 & beyond

CMOs & Founders guide to the latest B2B Marketing trends 

I know how busy you are, particularly CMOs and company founders, so I used this blog to save you some time by summarizing the trends and patterns in B2B marketing that I've picked up over the last few months. 

I hope you find my analysis of the current B2B marketing trends useful.

Top content platforms for Account-based marketing

Account-based Marketing

Account-based marketing has existed for as long as B2B companies have needed to attract, engage, and close complex sales with enterprise companies.

But over the last five years, Account-based marketing has become a significant trend, as prominent as 'AI'.

There's now an entire infrastructure around it, including numerous ABM platforms like 6sense, Demandbase, and Terminus, CRM and Marketing automation tools like HubSpot, Salesforce, and Marketo, Ad platforms like LinkedIn.

Or organic content platforms like Quora ideally suited to this deep, penetrating, targeted marketing approach.

The great content debate

What does a good 'content funnel' look like? Or can we just secure a new customer with one amazing ad? 

- This seems to be the obsession of quite a few founders, CFOs, and even heads of marketing —could it be a question of money and time? 🤔

And then the 64 billion dollar 💰question (Yes, inflation has affected pricing on this problem, too!): What content is the 'best'—the most likely to quickly convert a key decision maker to a sale?

Here, an organization I've worked with called Netline has some excellent data. And I have to concur with them based on their research of millions of prospects that; 

-  'Webinar fatigue' is bogus. Webinars are still highly effective. 

Virtual Roundtables

Virtual Roundtables were not even on my radar pre-pandemic. What happened? About four years ago, my CMO asked me to create one— around a CPQ solution on Salesforce for publishing executives (a tool to monetize their income). 

It was called 'Working Smarter, not Harder; Surviving and Thriving in the New Age of first-party Data.'

It was a great success: Eight attendees and three new sales opportunities. I continued to run them once every few months. 

But then, at my next company, they had a slick new name: 'Pipeline Acceleration Events,' which the sales team loved. I ran several a month at that company.

Here's my entire campaign, including the roundtable: 

'Working Smarter: Maximizing Productivity and Programmatic success in 2022 and beyond'

Since then, I've continued to run them alongside face-to-face events—particularly the 'Breakfast Event,' which is basically a roundtable but not virtual. 

This has worked well for me, especially when my prospects are time-pressed and not that social (for example, CIOs or IT directors). 

Which channels are the most effective?

I firmly believe in Paid Social media, Email, Google search, and retargeting campaigns for ABM. HubSpot is an inbound expert with extensive data on which channels produce the most significant ROI.

Ebooks, guides, and white papers are still prevalent in the 'C' suite. But recently, there's been a surge in interest in survey-backed reports; 

Who doesn't like to see what their peers are interested in now and where they think opportunities will be over the next few years?

Peer-to-peer content has been a vast, rapidly growing trend in B2B over the last few years. 

In the past, I've managed paid G2 Crowd, Trustpilot, or other company account review sites. Getting good reviews is critical to building good SEO and even closing sales. 

When I worked at the marketing attribution company Visual IQ—Nielsen, we produced a survey-backed CMO report on the State of Marketing attribution.

And here's a guide that it inspired me to produce - looking at the rising video game industry and its corollary in digital advertising: In-game advertising 

We developed a lot of rapport with leaders in the industry, while we built and promoted the surveys.

It's also great for generating high-value, targeted leads who are truly serious about your solutions. We started to get about 100 a month from this report right from the start—from Ad agencies, advertisers, and video game companies.

Typically, those reading large 30-page or more survey-based industry reports are 'in-market', not 'just browsing'.

One issue I've had is working with bland or uninsightful content. B2B content can be dull and repetitive, lacking in vigor and originality. 

Content creators in this field often shy away from the vital risk-taking needed to innovate, and to excite audiences. 

Also, many B2B content strategists and creators kowtow too much to senior management, who are often not content experts. 

It's easy to get steamrolled by someone much more senior into producing work you know is sub-par!

This is similar to the scenario where a rather boring senior or long-time employee constantly speaks at events when the audiences consistently report that this is their least favorite speaker (According to Gartner, 'thought leaders' are much preferred).

What's the point of absolutely 'nailing' your ad campaigns, reaching your ideal buyer persona, at your ICP, and at the perfect time, but then they download your guide, or listen to one of your selected speakers and it's.......................a big letdown?

Your SDRs follow up, and the feedback is invariably:

'The prospect hasn't read the guide yet.'

'They can't remember your talk.'

Or worse - the prospects aren't responding to the SDRs or Sales team at all!

Top Content Challenges 2024 (HubSpot)

You know that they were interested enough to sign up for your white paper on, for example, pick one (of my made-up titles):

1. Cybersecurity

"What's keeping CISOs awake at night: A Comprehensive Guide to Cybersecurity in 2024 and Beyond"

2. Software Development and IT Services

"DevOps and Beyond: Essential Strategies for IT Leaders"

3. Digital Marketing and Marketing Technology (MarTech)

"The Digital Marketing Playbook: Insights for the Modern CMO"

4. Telecommunications and Networking

"Connected Leadership: Navigating Telecommunications and Networking"

You invested heavily in capturing these great leads, so why would you let down your entire marketing process by providing poor-quality guides or white papers?

That's why I first got involved in content strategy and creation as a demand generation leader. 

Netline says that the C-Suite is 21% more likely to want to read a White Paper, than the rest of their B2B audience.

Remember that this is a blog post, so I will keep it succinct. However, I will add one last trend that everyone in B2B marketing is talking about: team development and team building. 

To thrive in 2024 and beyond, you need to attract and retain some of these top marketing skills in your team.

     

Even more importantly, as part of this trend, you need to be aware of, the exponential rise in freelancers and contractors 

In 2023, 52% of Gen Z workers and 43% of Millennials were freelancers. The shift is catching on globally: 

Gartner predicts that independent workers will make up 35% to 40% of the global workforce by 2025, and could be in the majority by 2030.

It's critical to get ahead of this trend to assert a competitive advantage over many companies that don't want to or don't understand how to incorporate freelancers into their marketing teams today.

ABM & Sunk Cost Fallacy: A Billion Dollar Blunder or Comedy of Errors?

Recently, a hiring manager contacted me about a job I'd applied for, which she said I was perfect for. It looked like an excellent fit to me as well. However, the office was far from me.  

I live in Central London. This job, as head of Demand Generation, was in Manchester, which is a 4-5 hour drive, and over 200 miles from my house.

The job was described as 'hybrid.' Given the distance, I assumed this meant being in the office once a week at worst, at best, once a month, or a couple of months.

I had worked in a similar role in Cambridge, about a two-hour drive and 60 miles away, in 2019, pre-COVID, where 'hybrid' meant precisely that.

Right at the start of the interview, I explained that my seventeen-year-old daughter, Charlotte, was struggling with her 'A' levels (the final school exams that determine which university you can attend).

She is also going through some mental health issues; therefore, I wanted to be home for a considerable part of the week to support her (and drive her to school).

However, despite my explanations, this hiring manager insisted I be in the office twice a week. Her reason was that the C suite had just leased an expensive office that 'they now needed to fill.'

Judging by how this hiring manager described it, this company's investment in an office was not going well. Besides, I thought, If management wants people in the office so badly, couldn't they come up with a more compelling reason than to fill an expensive office with bodies? 🤔

The irony was that this was one of the plethora of 'company culture' companies—some of which, unfortunately, don't seem to 'drink their own Kool-aid.'

This company advocates for making the workplace more empathetic, worker-centric, and reasonable. Yet they want me to force their irrational and emotionally tone-deaf decision on me before I have even started working for them!

I suggested taking on the freelancer or contractor role since the hiring manager said she was desperate to fill this role as quickly as possible. 

- I suppose my skillset is in short supply in the local area?

However, this company, devoted to improving corporate culture, couldn't bring itself to consider such a flexible option.

That evening, I was talking with my good friend Professor Orri Stefansson. 

He is a professor of  Philosophy who specializes in decision theory and ethics. His current research focuses on decision-making under extreme uncertainty.

Orri was intrigued by my story. He said, 'This is a perfect example of 'The Sunk Cost Fallacy'! 

You've bought a costly yet unbelievably uncomfortable pair of shoes that you cannot return to the shop for a refund. So you must wear them every day until they are worn out!'*

This story also demonstrates that independent experts within or outside organizations can be invaluable in changing such crazy decisions.

It's one of the reasons why, in the past, I've delighted in hiring accomplished & sometimes maverick freelancers. They tend to be 'straight shooters'.

They are not charming you with flattery just to get ahead. They are typically driven by a passion for the job alone. They are direct and honest in their feedback.

And often, they are your most talented assets.

Besides, it's one of the fastest-growing employment trends, so I might as well get used to hiring contractors & freelancers before they become 50% or more of the workforce!

Here are a few of such 'Sunk Cost Fallacy' situations, drawing from my 20+ years of experience, alongside some more well-known ones:

1. Continuing with a website refresh that had gone wrong and was crashing our SEO traffic. I've seen this happen at two different companies.                       
2. I worked at a company where no one acknowledged that the ABM system was ineffective. This was a different system bought before I started there. Since the company was focused on field marketing, nothing was done to fix it.  
3. The company's founder told his investors they had a fully functioning product. Yet even the head of product said this company did not have 'product fit.' However, the investors continued to support the company until it folded.                                                                                                                                                                                         
4. I worked at a company that sunk a massive amount into CRM and marketing automation implementation, which involved numerous issues. I was brought in to try and fix it. It would have been easier to start again. This story ended positively for me because a few years ago, I got to implement, onboard, and train the company on a (successful) purchase of a HubSpot CRM and marketing automation platform! 
5. A country invades a country and expends immense efforts to win the war, which it can't do. The government has trapped itself in a quagmire. However, it cannot accept defeat since this would mean many of its soldiers would have 'died in vain'.                                                                                 
6. The Sunk Cost fallacy is sometimes called 'The Concord fallacy' because the French and British governments continued funding the doomed supersonic airliner long after it was likely that it would not be commercially viable.

 *My father, Sir Kenneth Parker, commented on Orri's point: Interesting on sunk cost. What might be missing on the shoe analogy is budget constraint. The purchaser might not be able to afford another pair, or money for another pair might earn a better return/more welfare elsewhere. After the War it was commonly said that Germany had an advantage because it was compelled to re-build its factories with state of the art equipment. British industry struggled on with 19th century rubbish because the cost of replacement was high and it was not clear whether the investment would improve net returns. Undoubtedly a mistake in that instance.

Escaping the black hole of b2b Marketing: Identifying & enticing new customers

I can't believe it - in my last marketing campaign, I broke my own rules. I fell into a plethora of cognitive biases. I know this stuff so well, both on an academic and practical level, and yet I screwed up!

It shows how hard this job is that despite all my training, expertise, and dedication, I still made rookie mistakes during my last marketing campaign.

There are so many 'experts' out there who seem to have all the answers yet, so obviously, don't.

If they are so great at marketing business to business, then why does their company only have one employee?

Why do they even have to to sell us on this stuff? 

Surely they should be luxuriating on their yacht as all their dedicated workers carry out their instructions using all their marketing 'secret sauces'?

So yeah, I'll admit I still have a lot to learn. And I'm certainly not saying I have all the answers. 

I don't run the best business-to-business marketing agency in the world. I haven't even given up my marketing day job! Nor am I a multimillionaire yet.

What I do have is plenty of experience and training in b2b marketing which I'm passionate about sharing.

I am happy to share my mistakes and failures with you. Hopefully, you will find them useful and even entertaining!

Let's face it—what story is better?

—the fantastic holiday in the Caribbean where everything went perfectly?

- or the one where your plane was delayed, the hire car broke down, your hotel was a dump, and you were two miles from the beach? 

Isn't failure so entertaining and relatable?

So, with that in mind, let me share my failure. More importantly, I want to know why I failed.

During my career, I have built a tried-and-tested model for creating high-quality sales opportunities. You can look at a successful version of this—the sales team told me they liked this infographic a lot—so hopefully, you will find it useful, too. Simply click on the image to enlarge it. 

I'm not worried about sharing this stuff, because as Steve Jobs, the Apple founder, put it so well 'don't worry about sharing your 'great idea'. Great ideas are a dime a dozen. It's all in the execution'. 

Also, I am aware that prospects are human beings and don't simply follow arrows and a chart. But the picture is a loose picture of a general buyer journey.

But sure, if any of you CMOs or founders want me to come in and execute my best B2B campaigns, I'm happy to do that for you!

I know how it works - you start with a shallow engagement piece of content. Let's say it's an ebook guide 'ten steps to selecting the right cyber security provider/martech provider for your business'

You have to make sure this guide is good—that's why I started hiring content strategists and designers. 

There is no point in creating killer ads and copy and spending tens of thousands on ads, getting great, perfectly targeted leads that are 'in market' right now—only for them to read your guide and decide it's garbage. 

Then, your prospects will never engage with you again. They won't be interested in your emails or any great future campaigns you have; and most importantly, they won't want to talk to your SDRs or Sales reps. 

The second step is to invite them to a webinar. Again, you have to focus on quality. The sales team will push you to have salespeople pitch the company and ask your prospects all manner of sales questions. 

But you must always consider the prospect's perspective: 'Why should I attend this webinar? What's in it for me?'

• Great speakers
• A customer who can describe the buyer journey
• Brilliant topics - do your research
• Well executed with military precision.

You need to get sales involved only after the webinar is complete and we have the numbers—let's say 400 signed up and 200 attended.

They can look through the list and decide who the hottest leads are —the ones most likely to buy from you.

At that point, sure, have a salesperson run a ten-minute pitch at the end of the roundtable. But again, the roundtable has to provide real value to the prospect. This is my tried and tested format:

Amazing topic - a roundtable I ran in the publishing sector was - how to thrive and survive after the demise of third party cookies.'

Great speakers and good attendees (prospects must be 'hot' for sales, but there must also be a good mixture to make the discussion dynamic and interesting).

It's only at this stage, after the roundtable, that sales and SDRs will follow up. If you have eight attendees on a roundtable, you should get three or four sales opportunities. 

But of course, you also have maybe a thousand leads that you can continue to nurture to create more sales with more webinars and roundtables.

Now, what did I do wrong in my campaign, I hear you ask? Isn't failure great to read about? 

I started with an unknown brand (mine - Rudy learning about startups). Neither Damien nor I am a big-name thought leader (yet!), though we are building a good following as micro-influencers. Of course big names and big company brands do draw larger audiences.

Then, on top of all those handicaps, I made the cardinal error of ignoring my entire content funnel and jumping straight to the roundtable before my prospects had warmed to us, my message, or my brand.

The result—miraculously, I got 28 attendees signed up, spending under $1000 (Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn ads, some email blasts). However, only a handful showed up for the event. I was aiming for 15! 

What are the traps I fell into?

Overconfidence bias: Hey, I know my content strategist is fantastic, and I have a lot of good stories, and we have a great rapport. So you'll instantly think that, too, right? Nope! 

I would also add - 28 prospects signed up, so at least 14 should show up, right? - wrong! 

False consensus bias: My colleague and I both thought this was a great idea, as did a couple of my other marketing colleagues (who weren't invested in the project). So, I have at least four experts who agree that it can't fail, right? Wrong!

Halo effect: I have great feelings about how my colleague and I work (I still do), but of course, why do I assume others feel the same way? Especially when they barely know me.

Confirmation bias: I have run many campaigns like this over the years, and the success rate has been incredibly high. But I have generally followed my own guide of building out a content funnel. However the few times I didn't do that, I still had some success. I was lucky. 

Yes, you heard it right. In the past, I was fortunate. 

But this time I wasn't so lucky! However, I learned from my errors and identified 95% of the problems. So I can go forward confidently in my next campaign.

If you are interested in marketing strategies for the business-to-business market. If you want to learn more about how to generate business leads, and how to get the best ROI from your marketing, I hope you continue to read about my adventures in b2b marketing. 

I aim to escape the black hole of B2B marketing with accurate buyer-level intent data and 1st party lead generation.

I'm looking to accelerate sales dialogue with real-time insights into "who" is actively expressing intent in an account, "what" actions that person is taking, "when" those actions took place, and uniquely "where" those actions occurred.

I'm searching for ways to translate content into business outcomes and sales revenue. 

Buyers are out there—you just need to find them, communicate with them, and entice them, all at the right time. So, I will continue to share my stories as I learn more about startup marketing.

Yes, it is hard, very hard. But I continue to enjoy writing about it. 

How to create a culture that scales with your company

There are successful companies with good cultures and successful companies with terrible cultures. I've read the excellent Elon Musk and Steve Jobs biographies written by Walter Isaacson. 

Some of it is genuinely eye-watering. If you look at Apple under Steve Jobs, many today will argue that the company had a terrible culture. 

• When he fired people at Pixar, he made their notice period 'retroactive.' 
• In interviews, he'd ask incredibly inappropriate questions like 'How old were you when you lost your virginity?' or 'How many times have you taken LSD?'
• Steve Jobs fired the employee in charge of MobileMe in front of a group of employees.
• He regularly screamed aggressive aphorisms at staff, such as 'We only want 'A' players at Apple. You aren't good enough to be a 'B' player!'

Similarly, Elon Musk has received considerable criticism for axing 6,000 employees, or 80% of X's workforce. Then, he told his advertisers that 'he didn't care what they think'—this is the base that generates Twitter's revenue. 

The Share price of X has collapsed since then. Sales have fallen for Tesla for the first year, and its share price has also plummeted. 

Founders tend to have a set of characteristics that can make them unbeatable initially. Still, eventually, those characteristics can hold the company back from growth (think about Apple's new CEO Tim Cook's empathetic management style versus its founder Steve Jobs' aggressive and emotionally tone-deaf approach).

Of course, a healthy work culture is more likely to foster a sustainable, successful company. There is now abundant research showing that companies with happy employees perform, on average, better than those with miserable employees. 

There are plenty of companies out there with good work cultures. I've worked at numerous companies, and most of my time there, I was given free rein to develop marketing ideas unhindered by micromanagement. Some of those companies are worth billions of dollars now. 

My wife, Catherine, worked at Akamai Technologies, and for most of her 12 years there, the culture was exceptional. Akamai treated her with great respect and valued her ideas and contributions. 

She developed considerably at this company, starting as a contract recruiter and managing a team of 25 recruiters as head of EMEA Talent Acquisition. So, we both also know about good company cultures........and bad ones!

Values & Culture

• It's not what you put up on your wall, coffee cups, or even necessarily what a CEO says about its culture at events.
• It's how your employees feel on a Sunday night thinking about work the next day. 
• It's what two employees who are good friends say about your company when they're having a couple of beers at the end of the day, or while having lunch together.
• It's what people write about you on social media and employee review sites (although some well-known review sites are no longer transparent or reliable indicators of company culture - more to follow!)
• It's how many referrals you get from existing employees.

Culture is a living, breathing entity, an animal spirit. In my experience, it develops top-down. So, no matter what management says about the values, your company culture will be how the C-level conducts themselves.

If the C level manages by intimidation, bullying, and fear, then that is how everyone in the organization will behave. If the C level is managed by positive affirmation (five times more effective than negative) and creating psychological safety, then that is also how the company will turn out. 

When scaling a startup, all of these ideas are even more pertinent. Since you are creating the base of your culture from the first few employees you hire, just adding a few employees will make a big difference. 

If you are a company of twenty employees and hire five new employees from Microsoft, your culture will shift somewhat to Microsoft's values and culture.

In the last decade, HR departments have moved away from talking about 'culture fit' (very traditionally 'corporate') to 'culture add' (more inclusive). Every employee in a startup will alter your culture since your numbers are still small.

Moving to remote work and the increased demand for a values-driven company are other essential aspects of effectively scaling a good culture at your startup.

When I first joined the workforce, we worked five days a week at the company offices. Office life was almost exclusively inside the building (think the UK or the US show Office). Even six or seven years before the pandemic, many of us started working remotely, albeit usually just one day a week. 

But since the pandemic, the world of work has been revolutionized. Many employees are fully remote, and the rest are typically hybrid. Heads of HR and the C level have struggled to maintain a strong culture when employees rarely connect in person. 

Secondly, the new generations of workers care much more about the culture. They scour the internet and review sites for indications of how a company works. They have become incredibly cynical about corporate life. 

For example, 60% of Gen Z's will regularly 'ghost' recruiters since it makes this generation feel 'empowered.' 70% of Gen Zs would only work for a company whose values align with theirs. So, make sure the culture your company intends to scale with is appealing.