Yesterday morning saw the launch of Displaying Ads Enterprise, our new B2B online marketing division, at a breakfast briefing with Matt Adams, Managing Director of Displaying Ads UK. He was joined by partners LinkedIn and Google who presented exclusive new research on the changing profile of the B2B decision maker. Following their presentations Maxine Marshall, editor of B2B Marketing magazine, moderated a panel discussion with Jennifer Brett, Head of EMEA Insights for Marketing Solutions at LinkedIn, David Liu, Industry Head at Google, Gavin Taylor, Head of Displaying Ads Enterprise and Stuart Giddings, Global Managing Director of Carat Enterprise. The morning revealed some great insights on the road to unlocking the scale of opportunities for the B2B marketer and how, strategically, we can best engage with them.
According to Google’s research, “The average B2B customer now goes 57% of the way towards a purchase without calling a vendor”. Digital has made a huge impact over the years, but this statistic reveals a rather interesting and not altogether surprising behaviour of the B2B consumer. With so much information at the click of a button, it’s easy for everyone to logon and Google the information they are looking for.
As Matt Adam’s rightly pointed out in his presentation, “B2B, has been traditionally high-value, high-touch personal engagements with the consumer. However, this is fast becoming the engagement of the past as B2B customers go over half way through a purchase journey without ever speaking to a vendor”.
As a brand, you need to ensure that you are present and adding value and utility to that purchase journey in a relevant way through the content that you are producing.
The role of content was a key discussion point throughout all the presentations and throughout the panel discussion, as was the importance of mobile. With “10 pieces of content consumed before purchase decision” and 80% of people consuming content through mobile devices, it’s important that you’re not just online, but optimising your channels for the right devices and ensuring alignment.
This is the beauty of Displaying Ads Enterprise in that it can shine the light on the ever more broken digital path of brands. Our integrated service allows you to create relevant content, whilst bringing together the best of all worlds into one simple, integrated offering and therefore connecting the B2B messaging across all online and offline touch points.
With mobile becoming increasingly more important in the B2B journey, we’re also starting to see a higher level of millennials appearing in the B2B sector, with 48% being younger than 45 years old.
Hand in hand with these two insights, we can also see an increase in online purchases happening on mobile. This gives us a clear indication of the purchase funnels available in today’s digital world and the future.
By leveraging our key B2B Relationships with Media, Research and Tech partners (Google, LinkedIn, Forrester, Marketo, Eloqua) we’re able to deliver fast, effective decision-making through our bespoke reporting solutions which ultimately helps optimise processes and enables real-time decision-making. This puts your brand at the forefront of the B2B market space and ahead of your competitors.
If you would like to see and hear more from us around B2B marketing, follow us on our social media channels, where we will be releasing more video footage of the event; with insights from the Content Marketing Association’s Clare Hill and panelist Gavin Taylor, Head of Displaying Ads Enterprise. A more in-depth write-up, highlighting key findings from both LinkedIn and Google’s research will be released in the coming week. To be up-to-date on all of our future communications please register your interest at [email protected], join us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
