How to focus B2B marketing spend in a recession

With a recession looking likely during 2023, it’s important for B2B organisations to become savvy about where to direct their marketing spend. Looking at the latest B2B buying trends we’ve written some dos and don’ts on where to focus your budget.

Do:

Facilitate Self-Service – research by TrustRadius found that virtually 100% of buyers want to self-serve part or all of their buying journey. Make sure your pricing information, product specs and customer use cases are readily available on your site.

Enable try before you buy – free trials, self-guided product demos and online product tours should be easily available. Today’s buyers want to try before they buy and they want vendors to make it happen.

Encourage reviews – third-party reviews are valued much more by buyers (particularly tech buyers) than claims made by vendors.

Provide easily shareable resources – purchase decisions are now more commonly being made by buying groups rather than individuals. And with the rise in remote working, collaboration among the buying committee can be highly unstructured. This means resources need to be aimed at a broader audience and be easily shareable and discoverable.

Bring marketing and sales into closer alignment – today’s customers are not buying in a linear fashion, meaning there’s no handoff from marketing to sales, or digital to in-person. Sales and marketing need to operate in parallel to meet the needs of customers as they loop around their buying journey using both digital and in-person channels.

Don’t:

Cold call – customers don’t want to receive cold outreach anymore. A TrustRadius survey found that only 11% of respondents indicated outreach from salespeople as a reason they’d be more likely to buy. Contrast that with a startling 64% who stated cold calls as the number one reason they’d cross a vendor off their short list. 

Focus on sales reps – with today’s customers valuing self-service it’s important to put the power into your customers hands. Make sure access to sales reps is just one part of a self-service journey. The ability to schedule a sales meeting or call, and on-demand messaging with the sales team or chatbot, should be easily available on your website.

Create generic marketing campaigns – since todays buyers are likely to be committees rather than individuals, marketing materials should be designed to meet customers where they are in their buying journey.

The most important aspect of putting your business in the best position for recession success is to rethink traditional marketing solutions in the face of today’s Gen Z influenced buyer mindset. For help with transforming your B2B ecommerce platform to make self-service easy, get in touch. You could also save up to £5,000 with Help to Grow Digital.