A new year will always bring new opportunities, and B2B tech marketing is no different. If your marketing team isn’t innovating, you risk being left in the past. 2024, in particular, holds an array of new opportunities for tech companies. With the rise of generative AI in the past year and a larger focus on sustainable tech, among other trends, there’s much to get excited about.
Ready to start innovating? Explore our marketing checklist to prepare your B2B tech organization for success in the upcoming year:
Really Get to Know Your Audience
You think you have your target audience down to a T, but do you truly know them inside and out? Moreover, have their preferences changed since the last time you checked? Are you being surgical enough in your selection to hone in on the customers that can make a difference to your numbers in 2024?
A successful B2B tech marketing strategy should always start with getting to know your audience as intimately as possible. A keen look at your ideal customer profile (ICP) will help you create a golden marketing strategy for future success. If you can gather your audience’s demographics, pain points, and preferences, you’ll be able to craft personalized, laser-focused content that wins them over time and time again.
Deep analysis of your audience insights is key to understanding what your audience truly wants—instead of what you think they want. It also allows you to keep your strategies up-to-date, adjust your messaging to meet marketing demands, and innovate your products and services to better connect with your buyers.
Evaluate & Enhance Your Content
You may have adequate marketing materials, but how can you ensure they will continue to resonate with your audience in the year ahead?
B2B tech organizations must analyze and strengthen their content strategy at least once a year. A thorough review of your content from the year prior can reveal successful trends and areas for improvement for the year to come. Studying your rates of engagement, amount of shares/likes, and conversion rate can help you figure out what types of content your audience likes.
After deep diving into your results from the year prior, we recommend creating a clear content calendar for the full year that includes a variety of content types. Going to market with a mix of blog posts, infographics, podcasts, webinars, and more will help you identify the needs and desires of your different audiences. For example, the surge in engagement from an interactive webinar series could indicate your audience’s preference for real-time, interactive content.
As a TL;DR, create engaging, informative, and insightful content year-round, and be sure to scrutinize your content along the way to improve your strategies for the future.
Optimize Your SEO to Reach Buyers
To continue from the subject prior—you may be confident that your website and subsequent content are informed and customized for your industry, but are you certain your target audience is finding it?
Starting 2024 with an optimized SEO strategy can help you improve your 2023 numbers. Get a head start on the competition by keeping an eye on future trends within your industry, and the terms that will be used to describe it, through thorough keyword research. An in-depth investigation may show how well intent-driven keywords work or how effective long-tail keywords are in a certain niche.
Next, strategically incorporate these keywords into your content to help increase your visibility on search engines. Along with keyword optimization, your website’s meta descriptions, titles, and alt tags should be regularly updated to improve indexing and boost click-through rates. By adding compelling, short summaries that accurately reflect the content to meta descriptions, for example, you can make search results much more visible and get more clicks. To improve your rankings and organic traffic, ensure each element matches the content it’s tagged to.
Adapt Your Social Media Strategy
Sure, you’re on social media, but are your social posts truly helping improve your bottom line?
Keeping up with the pace of digital change requires you to constantly revisit and adapt your social media strategy. Aligning with the latest trends and algorithm changes—such as shifting focus to short-form video content or exploring the impact of social commerce—can greatly influence your overall engagement and reach on your social media channels.
Want to see if carousel ads on LinkedIn or Reels on Instagram get more engagement? Give it a go—taking advantage of a social media channel’s newer features is always great for improving your engagement metrics. As a result of your continued efforts, you’ll be rewarded with more meaningful interactions and a more involved and devoted community—and, more importantly, overall brand awareness, recognition, and a positive impact on your bottom line.
Refine Email Marketing
It is important to push impactful content to your contacts via email, but are you sending it to the right leads at the right time?
There’s no better time than the new year to clean up shop! Start by pruning your email list to be sure it’s clean and redundancy-free. Then, divide your list into groups so that you can send more personalized and targeted emails to each group. For instance, segmenting based on previous purchase behavior, specific interests, or markets can lead to more tailored and effective campaigns.
Crafting personalized and compelling email content involves a deeper understanding of your audience’s preferences and pain points (see checklist item 1 for more information on this topic). Once you’ve gathered the full picture of your audience, you can work to significantly improve open rates and conversions by implementing dynamic content or personalized recommendations based on user behavior or past interactions. Another great tactic for continual optimization of your email marketing strategy is to A/B test subject lines, content formats, and CTAs.
Whatever combination of email marketing tactics you adopt for the new year, be sure it’s informed and strategically crafted to speak to your audience’s pain points.
Embrace New Technologies
Are you taking advantage of the new year to try new marketing capabilities?
Keeping a close eye on emerging technologies pertinent to your industry is crucial. Think about how these technologies could change the face of your advertising. For instance, adopting AI-driven tools for chatbots to enhance customer service or employing automation for email workflows can significantly streamline processes and improve the user experience. You can provide your target audience with more immersive and engaging marketing experiences by investigating the possibility of incorporating AR/VR technology into your campaigns. Evaluating the impact of such technologies through pilot programs or limited releases can provide insights into their effectiveness.
Enhance Team Collaboration
Are you living in silos or tapping into the superpower of sales and marketing synergy?
Making sure that your sales and marketing teams work together will help you get more leads and convert them into customers. Help your sales teams improve their overall strategies by sharing in-depth insights from your marketing efforts, including data on leads that have converted well or customer preferences realized from a market research exercise.
Both teams should work synchronously to craft content that speaks to your audience throughout the buyer journey so that there are smooth transitions and a consistent brand experience from beginning to end. For instance, a more tactile way to close sales is to align marketing content with sales enablement materials. This helps with lead nurturing. Regular communication and joint goal setting between these departments foster a cohesive approach to enhancing the overall customer journey.
Get Ready to Tackle Your 2024 B2B Tech Marketing Checklist
For B2B tech marketers, the new year brings an equal amount of possibilities and risks. Our comprehensive B2B tech marketing checklist will help you enhance your marketing strategies, adapt to market changes, and maximize your results in 2024. All in all, it’s important to be flexible, think outside the box, and establish genuine connections with your target demographic. When you’re ready to turn your 2024 marketing plans into action, reach out to Yeager to help you keep everything on track.