Buzzworthy B2B: The Latest News & Trends From March 2022

Top 5 Takeaways 

March flew by and April hit us harder than... well, you can guess where I’m going with this punchline.  

... 

...I had to do it. 

1. In personal news, the Demand Gen Report team is so excited to announce that registration is now open for the 2022 Campaign Optimization Series (#COSeries) — and it’s free!  “Omnichannel Coverage, Account Prioritization & You: The Convergence Of Intent & Targeting To Engage Key Buyers At The Right Accounts” features five days of real-world examples and expert advice on creating and optimizing campaigns that will drive measurable results in 2022 and beyond. 
2. With Google planning to sunset Universal Analytics (UA) by July 2023, marketers should start adopting UA’s replacement, Google Analytics 4, to experiment with new strategies and campaigns while they still have a safety net to fall back on. 
3. Content preferences are evolving, and buyers are prioritizing different assets across all stages of the buyer’s journey. New research revealed that the most popular content formats for early-stage research were infographics (62%), blogs (58%) and podcasts (56%); assessments (49%), webinars (48%) and case studies (44%) dominated the mid-stage; and buyers cited user reviews (29%), third-party analyst reports (29%) and ROI calculators (26%) as the most useful in later stages. 
4. Changing preferences go deeper than just content, though. As marketers keep pace with evolving privacy restrictions and implement replacements for third-party cookies, they also must wrestle with the increase in buying committees. Marketers must provide all committee members with content and messaging that resonates with them and accelerates their buying process. 
5. Forrester's latest report suggests that every department — human resources to IT — should work together to make sales reps’ jobs easier. All departments are indirectly related to sales, meaning seeing sales succeed enables the entire organization to succeed. 

Content, Collaboration & Customer Experience 

Do we already have the 3 C’s of B2B marketing? No? Well, we do now. Content, collaboration and customer experiences are three key focuses of campaigns... so here are some new technologies and workflow processes to help. 

• Phrasee, a brand language optimization platform, released an AI technology designed to help brands personalize the language each customer receives in real-time. To support the release, the company also launched a Language Insights suite designed to help identify customer preferences on language, sentiment, diversity and tone. 
• Bynder, a digital asset management (DAM) platform, acquired GatherContent, a content operations platform, to add collaborative workflow and editorial processes to enhance its platform’s content creation capabilities. 
• Vidyard, a video messaging platform for businesses, is teaming up with Gong, a revenue intelligence platform for B2B sales teams, to provide sales teams with greater visibility and automated insights into how their customers engage with personalized video messages and on-demand demo videos. 
• PFL, a hybrid experience company, teamed up with Iterable, a customer experience platform, to provide users with the tools needed to orchestrate omnichannel direct mail campaigns. 

Software & Solutions 

One of the best things about marketing is the constant innovation, whether it’s campaign evolution or new technologies that streamline time-consuming tasks — or even aids with tasks you didn’t know needed help. 

• ZoomInfo, a go-to-market software, data and intelligence provider, enhanced its SalesOS platform with Tracker, a new automation feature that monitors and follows key buyers and accounts when they make career changes.
• Invoca, a conversation intelligence platform for revenue teams, launched its no-code integrations library to help enterprises and multi-location businesses activate conversation intelligence data in their digital marketing and sales platforms. 
• Drift, a provider of conversational marketing and sales tools, released a new product, Conversation Cloud, designed to personalize the customer’s online experience by combining its core products into one suite of tools. 
• Contentstack, a content experience platform, released its Contentstack Marketplace, a hub for partners and customers designed to help clients adopt new functionality with lower investment and reduced risk. 
• SalesboxAI, a Conversational ABM platform, announced the release of its new Demand Unit-centric system for B2B and ABM marketers. Operating AI-powered assistants, SalesboxAI discovers active, in-market demand units by reaching buying groups across its advertising network.  

Partnerships, Integrations & Acquisitions 

As I sit here and try to think of a clever description, all that’s coming to mind is the closing number from Grease. So, I’ll let Sandy, Danny and gang do the heavy lifting here.  

• Salesloft, a sales engagement platform, partnered with Google to enter its Cloud Marketplace and enable Google Cloud customers to procure Salesloft’s Modern Revenue Workspace. The partnership seeks to enable Salesloft customers to retire committed cloud spend while benefiting from deeper product integrations and unified billing. 
• ON24, a digital experience platform, released the ON24 Partner Network, featuring more than 40 sales and marketing agencies, solutions integrators and software companies, to help mutual customers advance their digital-first strategies. 
• Mediafly, a revenue enablement and intelligence platform, released its complete Revenue360 suite, which consists of four solutions designed to serve as a “command center” that enables revenue teams to coach, assess, predict and interact with audiences more effectively at every stage of the buyer journey. 
• BuySellAds (BSA), a mutually beneficial ecosystem for publishers and advertisers, is joining forces with OneScreen.ai, a SaaS-enabled B2B marketplace provider for out-of-home (OOH) advertising, to offer OOH advertising opportunities to its clients. 
• TrustRadius, a research and review platform, integrated with Demandbase One, a go-to-market (GTM) platform, to enable B2B marketers and sellers to reach, target and engage in-market buyers who are actively researching them and their competitors on TrustRadius.