We've seen some notable changes in B2B Over the past year. Like all industries, last year was challenging for B2B marketers. Businesses will have to undergo a digital transformation, not only a digital strategy but also a digital execution. When speaking to clients about digital transformation their first thought is changing their website. But in actuality, it is deeper than that and starts with a digital mind-shift. Like the martial arts phenom, Bruce Lee would say “ Be like water”. As marketers, we must be like water in evolving our digital strategies to adapt to the new digital behaviors of users. The three ways to drive successful B2B digital transformation are through Insights, Being Agile, and Measurement. 

Insights Lead

Data shows the buyer journeys are changing the purchase journey. The journey is becoming more complex. This creates a plethora of new customer data throughout the path to purchase. This new behavior often poses as contradictory to our historical data on the path to purchase journey. Insight Lead marketers to realize they need to move much further upstream to reach buyers earlier in their journey, rather than focusing on the last click alone. Try Applying a test and learn approach to understanding business impact to maximize efficiency. Then use automated bidding to optimize towards a target CPA. 

Be Agile 

While the insights lead is the first step you need to be agile and putting insights into action. This requires breaking down current organizational silos between marketing, sales, brand, and performance. Breaking down these silos will show results across the business. Using Google's automation and machine learning tools can help you harness the full capability of your data to drive results to increase ROI. 

Investing in Measurement

Finally, you need to be data-driven by investing in measurement. With the recent increase in a push for privacy, you will have to optimize your marketing across channels that respect web users’ choices and protect their data. Successful measurement will allow you to understand where your ads are working hardest and where you can eliminate waste. Try using offline conversion tracking to better project revenues to clicks, then combine this with smart bidding. The return on ad spend is a key to success. Be sure to import customer lifetime value data into Google ads, through offline conversion tracking to better attribute projected revenues to clicks, then combined with smart bidding this approach will improve return on ad spend. 

Moving forward it looks like the pandemic has produced a new buying behavior in all industries and this is no exception to B2B. As expert marketers, it is our responsibility to meet the customers where they are, not meet them where they used to be. With the right insights, data and preparation, we can stay ready for any change in the buyer’s journey.