Who can predict the future of 2025 with certainty? All we can say at this stage is that the world has never been so unstable. This has repercussions on companies' prospects. Despite this, you have to find a way to navigate and generate business.

However, 2024 confirmed the widespread use of AI, the possibilities of which have not yet been fully identified, but marketing and communication practices are becoming more refined for companies in BtoB sectors.

Even if the tools are changing (digitalisation, AI, automation, etc.), a number of principles remain the foundation of any effective BtoB marketing and communication strategy. The challenge is therefore to adapt these fundamentals to new channels and buyer behaviour.

Strengthen your awareness and give your offers visibility

Buyers are increasingly well informed. Competition is fierce.
So selling happens less and less through prospecting, and starts much further upstream of the act of purchase.
In addition, in times of uncertainty, buying cycles are often longer.

One of the essential fundamentals is to give your brand and your offers visibility at every point of contact with your customers. No one will consider a product or service if its brand is unknown or if the technology, however innovative, isn't understood. So you need to generate awareness and educate people about your solutions to give them competitive advantages and stop them joining the long list of commodities.

Focus on the quality of your content

To ensure this visibility, and to interest, attract and convince, you need to generate expert content. There is a glut of basic content, often generated by AI. It's a safe bet that Google will end up penalising this kind of content in favour of more specialised content. So beware of content automation.

Your content is the key to the online and offline funnel that will bring your salespeople to make proposals on well-prepared ground. Producing this content is good for your awareness and your position in your market. Don't hesitate to humanise it. Credibility often comes from the backing a human being gives to content: videos, podcasts and signed content are all ways of giving credit to what you say.

Get other people talking about you

Engage your audiences and interact with the press: this is a lever that also vouches for your expertise and your brand. Social networks, and LinkedIn above all, are powerful vehicles for BtoB communication. Your content production must therefore feed these networks and bring users to your platforms.

Know your targets to attract them better

Your database is essential; it's also a fundamental point of BtoB communication and marketing for business. AI now makes it possible to find much more information about your markets and potential customers. This first requires a good knowledge of your market. We have to go back to studying markets, which doesn't mean “market research”, which is often biased, but business intelligence and a deep understanding of behaviour in your market. This is where field teams and customer exchanges are essential. When it comes to communication, personalise your messages. Without going as far as an ABM (Account-Based Marketing) process, keep in mind that there is message inflation, so you have to use the right argument for the right target segment.

Communicate by diversifying your channels

Launch communication actions, but bear in mind that communication and marketing acquisition channels are changing. Diversify your actions and, above all, analyse the feedback. For example, we can't ban emailing on the grounds that we receive a lot of poorly targeted messages by email. An emailing sent to a well-studied audience that knows your brand will be looked on favourably. Adopt a multi-touch approach suited to your market.

In these troubled times, our analysis is to capitalise on the fundamentals of marketing while being flexible and responsive to the innovations disrupting our business, which offer new prospects.