The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a potentially permanent shift in B2B consumer needs, and marketers are faced with an unclear view of how shifting pain points will affect future buyer behavior. It’s crucial for marketing leaders, with freshly cut budgets and rapidly changing priorities, to establish a proactive and personalized strategy to efficiently reach audiences along their new purchase journey.
Use data to identify current customer need
B2B marketers must develop strategies that fit their audiences' new purchasing climate and behavior. But with limited marketing budgets and evolving needs, “delivering the personalized experiences that customers expect on a finite budget is unmanageable if brands try to address all customers and all needs.” It’s more important than ever to efficiently create a marketing message that reaches your audience in their adapted purchase journey, but how can you plan outreach around uncharted behavior?
Examine your existing buyer data and emerging B2B consumer data from third-party sources to indicate the future behavior of your buyers. Use that information to identify what your current B2B customer — and their industry — needs and create an adaptive strategy that meets your buyers wherever they are in their new purchase journey. Successful marketers will find clarity from experience and win using “their knowledge of the customer and the competitive environment to stretch how the enterprise thinks, looking beyond the probable so that hard realities seem easier,” according to Gartner (full report available to Gartner clients).