The end of the year is approaching, which means it’s time to take a look forward, and consider which B2B marketing developments are going to have a big impact in 2020. These are three marketing trends you’ll want to keep on your radar for the coming year.

Even with new technologies, new platforms and new apps launching at warp speed, email marketing is still one of the most successful and cost-effective tools for healthcare marketers. While it might not be as glamorous as Instagram, Facebook or even Snapchat, email retains a higher level of trust and authority, compared to social media. And it’s the preferred medium for healthcare professionals, who would rather receive information by email than via an in-person visit or a phone call.

There are tens of thousands of health communities online, ranging from the most-visited health websites (WebMD, Drugs.com, National Institutes of Health, etc.), to user-run sites focussed on a single topic or disease. Whether they’re big commercial endeavors or small sites providing support and information to a specific group, members and visitors to these online health communities want the same things: relevant, credible information and a way to connect with other people with similar questions or conditions.

In our previous blogpost, we looked at the reasons why the best marketing strategies now are digital, and how to shift to an inbound focus with your marketing programs. In this post, we drill down into best practices for your key digital marketing tools – website, online content, social media and email programs – with specific suggestions on how you can apply these best practices to your marketing strategies.

Let’s face it, in 2019 the best marketing strategies for B2B are digital marketing strategies. In the past, the marketing plans we created might have included a small section on digital, outlining how we’d manage our website and maybe try some social media, in addition to all the traditional marketing tools. Now, our marketing strategies are primarily digital, with maybe a few traditional tools (like brochures, trade show booths, flags and banners, etc.) included in the mix.

Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram en Google pakten in juli en augustus opnieuw uit met een hele reeks updates. Ze zetten de deur open voor nieuwe mogelijkheden in je digitalestrategieplan. Ontdek ze hier.

Once you’ve signed off on your marketing plan, how often should you review and revise it? If you typically write your plan annually at budget time and then stick it on a shelf (either literally or figuratively), you may be making your work as a marketer more difficult. The truth is that, rather than serving as a static guide that directs your marketing activities over a fixed 12-month span, your marketing plan needs to act as a living, breathing framework, able to adapt quickly to any and all changes – whether they’re due to evolutions in the market, your products, new challengers or even new governments.

If you’re a healthcare marketer looking to energize your marketing programs, agile marketing offers a more reactive, responsive approach that can significantly improve your results and ROI. Instead of the top-down, traditional waterfall model, where an agency is briefed by the business, goes away, and comes back with a comprehensive communications campaign, agile marketing is about creating content that is timely, relevant and useful to communicate with customers in any phase of their journey. Agile processes and execution are the keys to succeeding with agile marketing.

Do you feel calmer when you’re in a room with walls that are painted blue? If you do, you’re not alone – studies show that blue is a calming color, and can even lower our heart rate and blood pressure. Do red walls energize you? That response is common, too. Whether it happens consciously or unconsciously, color can have a psychological impact on our moods and behaviors. Color plays an especially important role for people living with dementia or Alzheimer’s in care homes or hospitals. From encouraging a calmer mood to helping residents find their way independently to the dining or recreation room, the color of walls, floors and other elements can have a big impact on quality of life and comfort in these types of settings.