“Hey Alexa, how should I update my 2019 B2B marketing plan?” Well, Alexa may not be able to guide us just yet, but voice search is definitely one of the developments that will have an impact on B2B marketing in 2019. In this blogpost, we look at the growth of voice search, along with visual search and AI/machine learning, and how these technology trends are going to affect B2B digital marketing plans.

As we get ready to close the books on 2018, let’s take a moment and think about the year to come. What B2B marketing evolutions and trends will have an impact in 2019?

Will content (marketing) still be king in 2019? Well, there is going to be an uprising. But it isn’t another platform or tool that’s threatening to disrupt content’s reign. The threat is actually from too much content. The sheer volume of content that is being created is making it increasingly difficult to reach your targets. Marketer Mark Schaefer coined the term “Content Shock” to describe this phenomenon, where the amount of available content vastly exceeds our ability to consume it. For B2B marketers, this means that your content has to be powerful enough to break through the noise and draw your prospects to it, offering them true value. So given today’s crowded marketplace and ever-increasing amounts of content, how can you ensure that your content reaches your desired audiences?

Whether you’ve decided to start with sustainability reporting because your company is required to, or because you simply want to share your sustainability story, a good first step is to make sure you understand the regulations that apply to your company, and how they are currently being addressed.

Are there any B2B companies today who aren’t using social media? Probably not very many. But while most B2B organizations are using social media, many are still not using it as effectively as they could be. In many cases, beliefs that their customers aren’t using social, or even concerns about risk and compliance are holding some B2B companies back. And even for those B2B marketers who are actively using social, calculating the marketing ROI for social media programs can still be a challenge.

If you’re a B2B marketer, just about everything you do now falls under the umbrella of ‘digital marketing’. Your marketing strategies have evolved into digital marketing strategies, which in turn guide your digital marketing plan. And in today’s world, you’ve got to have a great inbound strategy to reach your prospects – and you’d better be optimized for mobile, because that’s where and how your targets are searching.

Want to know more about the pros and cons of marketing automation for B2B? Read our marketing automation FAQs to learn more.

The days of the email blast are over. Once one of the key tools in the B2B marketer’s toolkit, the general email blast has, thanks to marketing automation, gone the way of the fax machine. It’s been replaced by customized and personalized interactions, tailored directly to your prospects’ information needs and buying stage – and presumably delivering more valuable leads than any generated through an email blast approach.

There’s a big difference between content publishing and content marketing. Content publishing is more or less just putting content up on your website or social media channels, and hoping it will be of interest to somebody. The goal of content marketing, on the other hand, is to get your prospects to do something, to alter their behavior as it relates to your company and product.