Future Gazing

What do B2B marketers need to think about in 2021?

The Return of F2F - What does this next 'new norm' look like?

Insight 1: Hybrid is the future: We all need to be prepared, upskill and ascertain what's best in class in this new realm.

A significant 46% of Media Providers surveyed are planning for F2F events to return to their portfolio in Q3 of 2021 and 86% will be considering a hybrid model moving forward. What is clear is that F2F may look very different to the pre-Covid era. With the offerings from event suppliers set to look very different and the virtual channel continuing to play a significant role in these offerings, marketers must take a central role in ensuring the business is prepared, educated and has a solid understanding of the new environment and how to leverage it for success. How can we be match ready?

Upskilling is essential not only for the marketing team but business stakeholders. This involves being digitally savvy to adeptly navigate tech platforms, be able to present well in both digital and physical environments, and to be socially savvy.
Acceleration of an end to end integrated digital approach as well as between digital, physical and social mediums. The physical and virtual experience of a company's brand must be seamless.
The onus will be on the marketing team to utilise data analytics available from virtual platforms and make it useful for the business., by feeding into Martech. MQL's will play a vital role in the new sales environment feeding into the ABM strategy,
Digital Marketing teams are now, more than ever before seen as integral to the events team, playing a central role in stewarding the move to hybrid, and ensuring an end to end digital approach.

It takes courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new

Lasting Changes for 2021 and Beyond:

With the absence of F2F events, media suppliers have developed different revenue models. From an events perspective, the mantra is 'smaller and leaner'; suppliers have lower revenues and lower costs in the virtual setting so marketers should be able to do more with less.
Marketers must think like a publisher – building loyal audiences for the virtual channel takes time and there is therefore an argument to sprint start by working with an external provider, truly leveraging the power of partnerships.
There will be ongoing conversations around whether a live engagement is a must versus a nice to have; in many cases, virtual engagement will make more sense, particularly where it drives costs down and allows time pressed business stakeholders to engage remotely.
With virtual and digital strategy playing an ever increasing role, Immersive experiences will form an integral part of this change across content delivery, ad units, events, LinkedIn live and social channels, all serving to boost engagement.

Digital experience is here to stay - Marketing Qualified leads strategies will be a core part of our plans.

There will be a mix of in person and digital - it is not one or the other. The pandemic has made us rethink our strategy.

Importance of advocacy and digital / social skills among business stakeholders (i.e. when they can't rely on face-to-face are they equipped to build their brand/network digitally).

Our conference and sponsorship strategy will be 100% virtual, and will most likely always have some virtual component to it. And as a result of that, we are able to redeploy those dollars into advertising.

No virtual trade shows for H1. More intimate events, but with few providers. More customer 'delighter' events using wine tasting etc to support business updates into ABM plans.