B2B Marketing News: B2B Content Marketing Credibility Study, LinkedIn’s New Company Engagement Report, Global Social Trends & Microsoft’s Free UX Tool

Both B2B Marketers and Buyers Increasingly Sold on Conversational Marketing
B2B marketing professionals have found email, online live chat, social media, and chatbots have all seen increased usage in 2020, while phone and video call use has fallen by more than 10 percent, according to recently-released B2B buyer communication survey data of interest to digital marketers. MarketingCharts

B2B Tech Firms Cut Marketing Budgets Due To Pandemic: Study
Despite an overall drop in marketing spending due to the global health crisis, budgeting for digital and content marketing are the most likely to see increased spending, while some 60 percent of B2B technology firm executives say that their key performance indicators (KPIs) haven’t undergone change. MediaPost

Subject Matter Expertise A Growing Factor for B2B Buyers When Evaluating Vendors
In 2020 over 32 percent of B2B and professional services buyers see subject matter expertise and industry knowledge as the top attribute when evaluating firms, a rate over 11 percent higher than 2018 figures, with client service flexibility the only other element that became more important during the past two years — two of several statistics of interest to online marketers in recently-released survey data. MarketingCharts

7 ways COVID-19 has changed B2B customer experience forever
The pandemic has blurred the lines between B2B and B2C marketing, brought more intelligent automation to customer experience (CX), and made trust a more important factor, and Adobe has taken a look at how these changes will play out in 2021 and beyond. Adobe (client)

Linked Rolls Out Company Engagement Report
LinkedIn (client) has launched a Company Engagement Report offering new insights for B2B marketers, especially those using account based marketing (ABM), featuring a variety of organic and ad engagement metrics, the Microsoft-owned professional social platform recently announced. Adweek

Facebook Once Again Experiments with Up and Down Votes for Comments to Optimize Engagement
Facebook has begun limited testing of Reddit-like upvoting and downvoting options among certain Facebook Groups, with an eye towards boosting relevant content and engagement levels, recent observations of the social media giant have shown. Social Media Today

Google’s Working on a New Process Which Would Convert Static Website Assets into Video Content
Google has launched URL2Video, a new prototype utility that incorporates some of Google’s AI systems to turn static website digital assets into video content, in a move that could lead to new digital marketing opportunities, the search giant recently announced. Social Media Today

Social Media Trends 2021 Global Report
Content remixing, memetic media, and nostalgia marketing are among the trends marketers are likely to see more of during 2021, according to recently-released global social media survey trend data from HubSpot and Talkwalker. Talkwalker

Microsoft Clarity, the company’s tool for visualizing user experience, is out of beta
Microsoft has widely released Clarity, a free service offering a variety of user engagement and other metrics using site JavaScript, previously available only in beta form, the firm recently announced. Marketing Land

B2B Content Marketers Getting More Successful in Building Credibility
B2B content marketers say they have found creating brand awareness, educating audiences, and building credibility and trust as the top three benefits of B2B content marketing over the past year, followed by lead generation and building loyalty with existing customers, according to recently-released survey data of interest to digital marketers. MarketingCharts

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE:

A lighthearted look at “CX is more than a department” by Marketoonist Tom Fishburne — Marketoonist

New Photo Filter Shows What You Would Look Like in Facial-Recognition Database — The Hard Times/a>

TOPRANK MARKETING & CLIENTS IN THE NEWS:

• Lee Odden — #TimTalk – The Business of B2B Influence with Lee Odden — Timothy Hughes
• Lane R. Ellis — 10 Tips for Prioritizing Tasks to Make the Most of Limited Small Business Resources — Small Business Trends
• Lee Odden — 40 Marketing Quotes to Provoke Thought and Inspire — Visitor Queue

Have you found your own top B2B marketing stories from the past week of industry news? Please let us know in the comments below.

Thanks for taking the time to join us for our weekly B2B marketing news, and we hope that you’ll return again next Friday for another examination of the most relevant B2B and digital marketing industry news. In the meantime, you can follow us at @toprank on Twitter for even more timely daily news.

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