B2B Marketing News: Trust Tops Brand Marketer Study, Top Email Engagement Day Shifts, YouTube’s New Comparative Data, & Ad Prices Rise

Brand marketers stick to trust-building strategies forged in 2020’s fires, study finds
91 percent of brand marketers will keep focusing on the strategies aimed at building trust they developed in 2020 as a response to the pandemic, according to recently-released survey data of interest to digital marketers. Marketing Dive

Ad Prices Forecast To Inflate 3% This Year
Digital display ad price inflation for 2021 is expected to be 3.4 percent, with digital video slightly higher at 3.6 percent, while this year is expected to hold some recovery from the impact of the pandemic in 2020, according to newly-released forecast data. MediaPost

In Engagement Shift, Friday Proves Top Day for Email Response Rates in 2020
With an 18.9 percent click-to-open (CTO) rate, marketing emails sent on Friday lead the way when it comes to engagement levels, according to recently-released survey data, with Saturday coming in as having the lowest engagement rates. MarketingCharts

YouTube Adds New Comparative Data Tools in YouTube Studio, and Info on Other Channels Your Audience Watches
Google’s YouTube platform has launched new features that allow digital marketers to compare the performance of their video content from between 24 hours up to 28 days, offering a new glimpse into a variety of performance metrics, the video giant recently announced. Social Media Today

Nielsen Launches Identity Sync, New Global Attribution System
Nielsen has rolled out a new global attribution system, Identity Sync, the firm’s identity-backed solution to the loss of cookie-based tracking systems, the firm recently announced. MediaPost

LinkedIn’s Developing a New Freelance Marketplace Platform to Facilitate New Opportunities
LinkedIn has been testing features which could expand on the platform’s existing ProFinder tool, adding enhanced professional freelancer connection functionality, according to an industry report. Social Media Today

How IT Buyers’ Researching Behaviors Changed in 2020
More than 54 percent of information technology buyers spent more time researching solutions during the second half of 2020, with some 24 percent reporting research time staying flat — two of several findings of interest to digital marketers in recently-released survey data. MarketingProfs

3 Steps to Better Virtual Meetings
A clear definition of the behaviors an organization is trying to encourage will help forge more productive virtual meetings, as will finding and overcoming behavioral blockers, according to The Harvard Business Review, which recently took a look at how to make today’s online meetings more collaborative and engaging. Harvard Business Review

The Most Important Email Marketing Optimizations [Survey]
43 percent of marketers consider personalization the top characteristic to improve when it comes to email optimization, followed by data quality at 39 percent and email design at 34 percent, according to recently-released survey data. MarketingProfs

ANA Finds Half Of Ad Execs Have No Plans To Travel/Attend In-Person Events In 2021
Just 2.5 percent of advertising executives have said that they’re willing to fly for business in 2021, according to newly-released Association of National Advertisers (ANA) survey data of interest to online marketers. MediaPost

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE:

A lighthearted look at “finding your brand purpose” by Marketoonist Tom Fishburne — Marketoonist

YouTube Reveals 2020 US Bumper Ads Leaderboard of Top 6-Second Ads — Adweek

TOPRANK MARKETING & CLIENTS IN THE NEWS:

• Lee Odden — What’s Trending: Revamping Content Marketing — LinkedIn (client)
• LinkedIn / TopRank Marketing — Debunking Full-Funnel Myths that Send Marketing Strategies Off Course — LinkedIn (client)
• Joshua Nite — What Should Be Your First Steps When Starting a Business? Consider These 10 Tips — Small Business Trends
• Lee Odden — 50 Quotes That Will Change The Way You Do SEO — SERPed

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

Thanks for joining us for the weekly TopRank Marketing B2B marketing news, and we hope that you will return next Friday for more 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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