What B2B Marketers Are Including In Their 2021 Strategy

When Sagefrog Marketing surveyed B2B marketers late last year about their 2021 plans, they found many things remained much the same—most have a formal marketing plan, the majority use a combination of in-house and out-sourced resources, and the most common tactics remained similar to the past. But they also saw the impacts of 2020’s economic upheaval in priorities.

On the heels of economic shutdowns and stay-at-home orders that closed office buildings and sent many, if not most, of the nation’s business leaders and knowledge workers to home offices, website development tops the list of areas in which marketers are targeting their 2021 budgets.

Just over half of all B2B marketers cited website development as an area of top spending for 2021, followed by 44 percent who cited digital marketing. “It shouldn’t come as a surprise that digital marketing and website development have taken the lead as the top areas of marketing spend,” the report’s authors write. “However, what we couldn’t predict was how COVID-19 fast-tracked the use of digital marketing and websites in industries that are historically slow to modernize.”

While spending tells one story, the survey results also spell out the most commonly used tactics, which have changed little and remain led by email, social media, blogging and content marketing, and SEO.

Check out more of the survey results below.

What are your priorities for this year’s marketing program? Whether you are targeting website development and improvement, refining your email marketing, or investing in additional content marketing, you’ll find useful tips in the blog posts below.

Website development:

• Your 2020 Guide To Web Strategy & the State of Marketing
• How To Audit Your Existing Website (free template)

Email marketing:

• Your 2020 Email Marketing Strategy Guide & The State Of Content Marketing
• Email For Inbound: Do This, Not That

Content marketing & business blogs

• Your 2020 Guide To Content Marketing Strategy & The State Of Content Marketing
• How To Plan Complete Integrated Marketing & PR Campaigns (video)

What will you include in your 2021 marketing mix? If you need extra help to make your strategy happen, let’s chat about how JONES can fill in the gaps. Schedule a time on my calendar here to talk.