Do you provide your customers with a way to interact with each other and find helpful insights? Whether you offer an “official” branded community, or your customers are actively seeking information on your company and products via forums like reddit or Quora, your customers know that often the best source of information is another user. When it comes to complex technology solutions, nothing compares to peer-to-peer insights and perspectives.

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?

You’ve done all the hard work that’s involved in creating your B2B brand strategy, including defining all of your graphic elements, from font to colors, and creating brand guides to ensure consistency across all formats and vehicles. You’ve defined your value proposition, and you’ve developed your buyer personas.

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.

How would you describe your social media strategy? Is it simply an add-on to your marketing campaigns, or do you have a social media marketing plan? Social media used to be seen as more relevant to B2C – but not anymore. Today, B2B marketers are increasingly using social media to generate leads, build brands and reputation, and even help with recruiting. To answer the question: social media is certainly relevant in B2B marketing!