Changing demographics shift B2B marketing to more emotional, interactive content
Business to business marketing has become more personal, emotive and engaging thanks to new technologies and platforms, according to Ogilvy PR and Health CEO Richard Brett.
Speaking at Mumbrella’s CommsCon on Thursday, Brett said B2B purchasing behaviours and demographics are shifting and the type of marketing has also evolved to keep up with the changes.
Ogilvy PR and Health CEO Richard Brett
He added B2B buyers are favouring interactive content over static, and now also want the purchasing experience to be more social and entertaining.
Technologies like chatbots and newer social media platforms like TikTok, as well as interactive content like quizzes, questionnaires and games, have been driving some of that change.
Citing research from Demand Gen Report, Brett said interactive content was more effective at educating buyers than static content by a margin of 23%. It also found 75% of marketers believe interactive content actually improves their lead nurturing, and that it is also twice as effective in driving conversion and sales in B2B marketing.
He cited data that found B2B buyers want purchasing to be more social and entertaining, particularly among younger audiences.
“Gen Z, who are now coming into the workforce and making B2B decisions, and millennials, are much more engaged with more socially inspired B2B content that is more emotional,” he said.
Brett added that quizzes and questionnaires have evolved from the more entertaining and lighthearted variants from sites like Buzzfeed, and can now be useful for B2B audiences through more personalised content to help develop campaigns.
“You can then draw a prospective buyer to a quiz and then basically tell them what this particular product or feature means for them,” he said.
“While we’re seeing this shift of more emotional content, we can then use that more emotional storytelling to take people to a piece of content that is more focused on products and features. It’s really about bringing people into the customer journey for B2B marketing.”
Chatbots meanwhile have also evolved from those found on customer service platforms to the arrival of large language models, renewing interest in the technology and now becoming part of marketing efforts.
“Searches for chatbots have jumped 354% in the B2B space, so people are now looking at how to integrate chatbots into B2B marketing,” Brett said.
Brett also noted the rise of social media platform Tiktok as a B2B platform. “Perhaps surprising, perhaps not surprising, [Tiktok] is all about authenticity, creativity and emotion,” he said. “When we did our research with YouGov, one of the things that struck us was the power of Tiktok as an effective tool for B2B marketers.”
He cited major companies like Adobe, Grammarly and Sage, which have used TikTok in their marketing efforts.
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