With the loss of physical events and sales appointments, B2B marketers had to quickly adjust their plans last year. I was curious about their intentions for 2021. That’s why I asked a number of customers and relations what the impact of the corona crisis is on their marketing activities and what their expectations are for this year.
Our Lead Generation Benchmark Survey B2B Marketing shows that more than three quarters of B2B Marketers adjusted their marketing plan last year due to the saudi arabia phone number library corona crisis. 167 Marketers from ICT companies participated in this survey. What has changed since March last year and what are the expectations for this year? The following customers and relations share their experiences and plans:
Hanneke van Leeuwen (Marketing Director at SAP Concur)
Laura Bakker(Channel Marketeer at Uniserver)
Paul Honout (Business Group Lead Devices at Microsoft)
Richard Bordes(B2B Marketing Strategist, Self-employed)
Ruben Cornelissen(Marketing Manager at IT creation)
Impact of the corona crisis on B2B marketing
It will come as no surprise that there has been a how to avoid being deceived shift from off- to online since last year. The biggest impact of the pandemic for B2B marketers is the loss of physical contact. Sales is still unable to go to customers, so face-to-face contact is not possible. Appointments are therefore taking place online. This also applies to events. Events, trade fairs and congresses are normally used by many marketers to generate leads and new business opportunities. Now that this has disappeared, the focus has shifted to the online channel.
There was already a major shift from physical to online marketing, but the crisis has forced the digital era to accelerate. It is now common sense and the basis to be digitally aligned and able to operate. Ruben Cornelissen of IT creation agrees: “Digitalization has become more of a priority due to the digital way of working. The whole situation has accelerated things and made them more necessary. A future situation has now become a reality sooner.”
Digital events, webinars and Digital Round Tables B2B Marketing
Paul Honout explains that Microsoft focused more on webinars and digital events last year: “The loss of physical events means that you have to challenge yourself in school email list what way you are going to reach your customers. You don’t do that with yet another e-mailing. The webinar phenomenon exploded for us last year. We try to make them increasingly interesting and interactive. From Microsoft HQ we have very large events every year. In 2020, these all took place digitally. There were entire parts of the day with digital content. We also did that locally, with central tracks and specific interest tracks. That’s how we make it interactive. From Surface we regularly organize Teams events ourselves to communicate with customers and present things. In addition, we of course still use modern digital marketing tools. That will simply continue.”
