Although B2B marketers are increasingly concerned with automating their marketing processes, it appears that their focus is still primarily on people. This focus is also known as Human-to-Human marketing (H2H).
With Human-to-Human marketing, you emphasize relevant and personal customer contact. This communication should not be complicated, but simple and sincere. The reader should feel understood and have the confidence that you have the solution to the problem they are experiencing.
The growing focus on Human-to-Human comes from the vast amount of data available to organizations. B2B marketers want to use the data they collect through their Web sites, for example, for marketing purposes. But the focus is no longer just on collecting more data. Instead, it is now about the insights gained from the data so that service and customer relationships can be optimized. That's more important to achieving your marketing goals than collecting even more data.
The General Data Protection Regulation also plays a role in existing data. Because of the new legislation you have to be more critical with the data. As a result, B2B marketers are getting more out of existing data and putting a little less focus on collecting new data.
Despite the growing focus on Human-to-Human marketing, optimizing content marketing remains the main focus point for B2B marketers. Content marketing can be approached in a variety of ways. It is important to match the right content to the customer and test the effect of the content. Content with little but relevant text and a nice photo does well. This also explains the success of Instagram. The same goes for videos: short but powerful.
For blogs, this is different. These are search engine results. Blogs are found in search results as soon as someone looks for answers. If your blog provides a good answer to the question, it doesn't matter how long the blog is, the blog is read and inspires trust.
How organizations distribute their content, though, is much again Human-to-Human focused. LinkedIn is the most popular social media channel among B2B marketers, but that doesn't mean they don't use the other channels such as Instagram and Facebook. They tailor their content on those channels to the target audience there. As a result, the distinction in social media between B2B and B2C is also becoming smaller and more Human-to-Human.
The focus on Human-to-Human is also reflected in the focus B2B marketers are adding to the customer journey. Using existing data, the customer journey is optimized.
Less data and technology, and more Human-to-Human makes for more relevant, personal and better customer contact which positively impacts your business. In marketing automation, you can very easily track a lead's behavior and personalize emails based on this behavior so that they receive the right content at the right time in the customer journey.
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