Top 5 Marketing Trends for B2B SaaS Companies in 2022

Changing technology and consumer behavior significantly influences the prevailing SaaS marketing trends.

B2B SaaS brands have to keep in touch with industry developments and changing consumer behaviors to give them an edge over their competition. In this article, we cover some of the trends that are making headlines in the B2B SaaS marketing space. You can adopt one or more of these strategies in your SaaS marketing strategy to see how it works for your company.

Here are the top 5 marketing trends for B2B SaaS Companies:

1. Native Advertising is the future of marketing
2. AI will take personalization to the next level
3. Don't ignore the power of video marketing
4. Feature Marketing: The new way to upsell
5. Customer-centric marketing pays off

1. Native Advertising is the Future of Marketing

In a study, the Content Marketing Institute indicated that more than 53% of those who used native advertising found it to be an effective marketing strategy in building an audience, enhancing content marketing efforts, and driving actions such as signing up for a SaaS subscription.

As ads become more intrusive, consumers increasingly use ad blockers when browsing the internet.

While this means that users can enjoy content without disruption from ads, it also means that marketers have to find creative ways to reach potential users.

Native ads are a way for B2B SaaS marketers to inform, engage and convert potential users into buyers by providing relevant and engaging content that sets their brand apart from others with similar offerings.

While native ads are not new, B2B SaaS marketers are adopting more native advertisements in 2022. These ads are designed to fit seamlessly with existing content, making them less disruptive for users. Native ads are not simply ads – they are a combination of valuable, educational, and engaging content for the target audience.

Your goal with native ads is to connect with your target audience without feeling like you are trying to make a sale.

Some of the tips to keep in mind when creating native ads include:

• Identify your target audience.
• Develop content that appeals to your audience. This content should first engage the users and encourage them to interact with the brand. Include compelling images in your content.
• Take advantage of multiple platforms to post native ads.
• Measure your results and optimize your system.
• Keep implementing what works for your company.

2. AI will take personalization to the next level

Developments in AI are making it highly sought after in the B2B SaaS marketing space. Marketers will increasingly use AI in marketing in 2022 to take personalization to the next level.

AI has already been used extensively in creating personalized adverts and product recommendations, as with big tech players such as Amazon and Netflix.

However, even without the large budget of the big wigs, you can incorporate AI into your SaaS marketing strategy using:

• Conversational AI chatbots for automating customer support to build stronger relationships at every stage of the customer's journey. Chatbots continue to become an essential part of today's customer experience efforts as more consumers become more comfortable interacting with these virtual agents.
• Predictive analytics and insights. Having data is an integral part of marketing. It lets you know which of your campaigns are working and which ones need to be reworked or dripped. Marketers are tapping into the predictive power of AI to anticipate and respond to changing customer behavior. AI-derived insights can optimize ad budgets, ensuring you get the most of each dollar you spend on marketing.
• AI has also been used to identify and pursue different marketing opportunities.
• Marketers also use AI for social listening and sentiment analysis to understand what their customers say about your company and its services.

While AI is important in simplifying your marketing efforts, it should be used at the proper stages of the marketing process. For example, you should have a strategy for transferring a customer from a chatbot to an actual sales agent.

3. Don't Ignore the Power of Video Marketing

56% of senior executives would rather watch a video than read an article during the buying process. 82% of buyers are also more likely to take action after watching a video.

These are significant figures for B2B SaaS marketers not to ignore. Video marketing has been on the rise in the past few years and will continue to be a significant trend in 2022.

Videos continue to work because they are:

• Easier to watch
• More interactive compared to text
• They can be used to target customers at any point in the sales funnel
• You can create high-quality videos on a low budget

Video content is interactive and highly visual, which is engaging for audiences. However, different B2B buyers will interact differently with your video content based on their position in the B2B SaaS sales funnel.

This means that you need to adopt different video marketing techniques for each segment of your sales funnel.

Here are steps to follow when incorporating video content into your B2B marketing strategy:

• Determine who your audience is and where they are in your sales funnel.
• Showcase your SaaS products and services through demo videos, how-to videos, testimonials, storytelling videos, expert interview videos, FAQs, and personalized videos.
• Share your experience, such as behind the scene product development.
• Choose the platforms on which you will publish your video content. This could be your brand website, email newsletter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or YouTube.

4. Feature Marketing: The New Way to Upsell

In addition to changing consumer behavior, SaaS products and services are also evolving with advancements in technology. This means that features are being added to applications and tools.

As more features are developed, it becomes vital for businesses to create awareness of these features and their benefits.

Feature marketing will be an ongoing trend in 2022 and beyond. Feature marketing is an excellent strategy for upselling, especially in the SaaS space. In this space, products or services are priced in tiers based on the features/tools/functionalities a user gets. When your company adds extra features to an existing SaaS offering, it also creates a chance for feature marketing.

Feature marketing works because:

• It creates awareness about your product to new users
• It gives users a reason to buy more from your brand
• It encourages the loyalty of existing customers

5. Customer-Centric Marketing Pays Off

It is much easier and cheaper to keep a customer than to attract a new one. This is more important in today's world, where consumers have a wider choice of products and software to choose from.

In response to the growing need to retain customers, marketers are focusing on customer-centric marketing. 

Customer-centric marketing involves providing customers with a positive experience before and after the sale. This drives customer engagement, loyalty, and repeat business from the customer. This is critical in the B2B space, where the typical buying journey is much longer and more deliberate than B2C. Therefore, creating long-term relationships with buyers is more rewarding in the B2B space instead of constantly generating new one-time users.

How can you adopt a customer-centric marketing strategy for your company? 

• Understand your customers' needs, wants, and pain points. You can do this through one-on-one interviews, using the data your company already has, or using social media monitoring tools and surveys.
• Incorporate infrastructure that supports the customer's journey. This could include an optimized design to make it easier to browse your site and provide support and education resources around your products.
• Provide content that your customers need and want to read
• Gather feedback and measure results
• Keep implementing what works.

Salesforce is a great tool to manage your company's relationship with potential and existing customers.

Bringing it all Together

Marketing is only important for a business if it brings in the desired results.

The executive team in your company wants proof that the strategies you have in place are working and driving the business closer to its revenue growth and ROI.

To prove that any of the marketing strategies you adopt work, you must have the tools to track and document:

• The relationships you build with customers, prospects, and partners
• The needs of customers
• The results from the marketing campaigns you use (including sales, engagement

The Kudoz.io Salesforce App is a solution designed to ensure that you reap the maximum gains from your marketing efforts.

The app maximizes the potential of your marketing efforts by simplifying your B2B marketing reporting needs. The tool will compile and analyze all the data you collect in your marketing efforts and organize it into a cohesive package that you can make sense of.

This will let you know whether your marketing strategies are working and how effective they are. You can also use these reports to deliver better data-backed insights for improved data-driven decision-making in the organization.

Key Takeaways

Adaptability is the hallmark of any B2B SaaS company that wants to rise above its competitors and achieve growth. Changing technology and consumer behavior significantly influences the prevailing SaaS marketing trends.

The key is to develop a flexible marketing strategy that can adapt to changes sooner than later.

It's also important to measure and track the performance of each marketing strategy you adopt to demonstrate the effectiveness of your marketing efforts in driving business growth.