What are the SEO trends to watch in 2018? As we count down to the close of the year, let’s take a look at some of the developments in SEO that are going to have a big impact.

According to research company Forrester, the buying behavior of B2B customers has changed. For 74% of prospects, fully half of the research process is now conducted online, before a purchase is made. That means there’s a lot more riding on your website and content. Interaction with your sales reps comes a lot later in the process, meaning your content has to do much of the heavy lifting when it comes to presenting your products and company. To push the pressure even higher, B2B buyers expect the same kind of ‘experiences’ in interacting with you online that they get with consumer offerings.

We’re closing in on the end of the year, and that means it’s time to take a look forward at some of the digital marketing topics and trends that are going to have a big impact in 2018. We picked 7 top trends to explore in this post.

If you’re a B2B marketer working in 2017, you’ve likely switched over to an inbound marketing approach, based on the three stages in the buyer’s journey: awareness, consideration, and decision. But has your sales team made the same switch in how they sell your product or solution?

Is your primary B2B marketing goal to drive sales? Probably – but unless you define it more specifically, it may be hard to achieve. Eighty-five percent of B2B marketers cite lead generation as their most critical marketing goal. But to choose the goals that are most relevant for your organization – whether it’s B2B lead generation, closing sales, or improving customer satisfaction - you need to start from an in-depth understanding of your organization and the environment in which you’re operating.

If you’re a B2B marketer, you already know the most important thing about setting goals – it looks easy but it’s really quite hard. Anyone can toss out a random number – for leads, sales, website visitors, followers or any other metric – but unless it’s based on relevant, specific information, it’s just that – a random number.

You’ve launched your customer reference program, and created several reference cases – now how do you measure the results? Just like all your other initiatives, you need to be able to measure the return on your marketing investment. There are many different measures that you can use to gauge the impact of your customer reference program (CRP). Here are a few examples:

Customer reference programs are one of the most powerful tools in the B2B marketing toolkit. Whether you call them success stories, testimonials, reference stories, or advocate marketing, these profiles of your customers and their experiences with your company and product are extremely influential.

Unlike in secondary school, likes on your B2B Facebook page aren’t just about how popular you are. Instead, they’re a key metric in your Facebook marketing strategy. When somebody likes your B2B Facebook page, they’re initiating a relationship with your company and signaling an interest in doing business with you. So how do you keep increasing your Facebook likes and strengthen your engagement?