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.

If your business identity is the “personality” of your organization, your visual identity is the graphic dimension that communicates that personality to your audiences. And if there’s a mismatch between your visual identity and your brand or business, your customers and prospects may feel a subtle sense of discord – and possibly even confusion.

Why is a strong brand one of the most valuable assets that your organization can possess? Because purchasers are willing to pay a premium for a known quantity. Visual branding is everything for consumer products, or B2C – just consider Coke vs. Pepsi. There isn’t much of a difference between these products, but consumers tend to align fiercely with one or the other.

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?

Are today’s B2B customers empowered? Or are they overwhelmed? For the purchasers of complex solutions, such as enterprise software applications, high-end industrial equipment, or medical technology, information overload can bog down even the most enthusiastic prospect, even at the beginning of their customer journey.

Why is it so hard to measure ROI for B2B marketing activities? Because it is hard – B2B marketing is complex, it involves multiple parts of your organization, and it takes place over a long period of time. In comparison, measuring return on investment for B2C marketing initiatives is easy. You run an ad, you observe the impact on sales. Or you monitor the path from first contact with your website to an online order. It’s a simple action/reaction model, with the measurement metric built right in.

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.