Today's marketing is constantly changing, with new tools, technology, and opportunities. One of the latest trends in B2B marketing is to get inspiration from B2C marketing.

"The reason is that ultimately, it's the people in the company who buy the services," says Emilie Nøss Wangen, COO of the Pearl Group- and Try-owned TRY Pearl.

The complete customer picture is getting clearer

First and foremost: What exactly is the difference between B2B marketing and B2C marketing?

In short, B2C marketing is the communication from businesses to customers, while B2B marketing is communication between businesses. In the latter, the purchase processes last longer, there are more stakeholders and much bigger purchases.

Andreas Landmark, Senior Consultant at Pearl Group, says that they see an increased demand in B2B marketing for solutions that facilitate more collaboration across departments that were previously more separate – especially sales and marketing.

"Data from customers' digital movements is increasingly becoming a part of the complete customer picture that the salespeople have, and vice versa: The insights the sellers gain are shared with the marketing department so that they can target their message better and deliver more relevant content."

"This is more and more similar to how the largest and most professional B2C retailers work with marketing," Landmark explains.

Identify the dream customer

Another thing that strengthens this interaction across departments is Account-based marketing: Finding out who the dream customers are and planning how to reach them.

"Account-based marketing changes up the traditional funnel in content marketing. Instead of trying to attract many companies, we identify a few specific dream customers for the company. The marketing strategy is then based on these customers," says Wangen.

With technological advances, the collaboration between the marketing, sales, and service departments has become closer, and the Account-based marketing strategy also helps break down the silos. This makes it easier to point out which customers you think are best for your business.

"That way, you fish with a spear, and not with a net," Wangen explains.

We have to stop talking about ourselves

Wangen points out that the customer journey is more emphasized in B2B marketing than before. She believes that businesses should keep in mind that more people from Generation Z are starting to come into decision-making positions.

"Generation Z is not as loyal to brands as the generations before them. In addition, they want a seamless experience from A to Z," she explains.

According to Wangen, content is also relevant and essential to the customer journey.

"We have to stop talking about ourselves. Forget what we want to show off. Talk about what the target group wants to know instead.

Never before have there been more marketing surfaces to fill. Pål Schultz, advisor for digital marketing in TRY Opt, also believes that several disciplines will work more integrated with marketing in the future.

"Most B2B customers check several sites before making a purchase. Visibility in search engines, websites, and social profiles has to play well together," he says.

Stricter guidelines

In the past, targeted digital advertising has been blurry. Today, some of the power is back with the users, in that you can choose whether, for example, Facebook should be able to use digital tracks in targeted advertising.

"In response to the death of cookies and pressure from the authorities to maintain stricter guidelines for digital targeted advertising, contextual marketing is getting an even bigger boost," says Schultz.

By identifying keywords and phrases in articles, one can link the advertising to various topics in news articles rather than using personal data.

Another trend concerns insight and recruiting new customers through media monitoring. Businesses can identify public conversations about their brand or service from, for example, Twitter or social media comments.

"This way, you can learn something about the target group and what they expect, and also identify potential customers," Schultz explains.