B2B marketing trends are already clearly visible on the horizon. We are almost in the middle of 2023, and it is common for marketers to focus on the following year. Especially now that we are crawling out of a problematic post-coronavirus period, it is no wonder we prefer to focus on 2024 already. Some new terms are coming up, like Neuromarketing, for example.

Have you heard of it before? 

Today, we will be discussing three major movements that will impact the effectiveness of B2B marketing and also, of course, B2B affiliate marketing trends.

Neuromarketing is the basis for marketing strategy

Whether it is B2B or B2C; Marketing is a game of influencing behavior, and for that, you have to get to people’s brains. 

The neuromarketing B2B field focuses on the systems and processes in the human brain that lead to decision-making.

Neuromarketing studies provide interesting facts and methods for organizing B2B marketing more effectively and efficiently.

Neuromarketing is a field that has research and data as its foundation. B2B marketers will increasingly turn to data foundations to make decisions. These concern themes such as:

How do I…

  • Develop products and services that are even more relevant?
  • Ensure the message and timing that makes an impact?
  • Improve my website, email marketing, and newsletters to generate more effect?

Through neuromarketing insights, you get concrete handles for the type of word use, sentence structure, UX and UI structure, and channel choices to increase the effect. 

With the enormous knowledge available on this subject and the more handy access to neuromarketing research, this will play a major role in B2B in 2024.

Neuromarketing: What You Need to Know?

“Neuromarketing” loosely relates to analyzing physiological and neural signals. This is done to obtain insight into consumers’ motives, choices, and judgments, which can help form creative advertisements, product improvement, pricing, and other shopping areas. 

Neuromarketing - 5 Trends In B2B Marketing You Cannot Ignore In 2022

So should companies invest in neuromarketing—whether through brain scans or cheaper techniques? Some already have: NBC and TimeWarner have operated neuromarketing units for years; technology companies such as Microsoft, Google, and Facebook have recently formed units. Karmarkar says that in-house neuro-capability is still out of reach for most organizations simply because of the expense, but that smaller companies can look to partner with specialist consulting firms.

Harvard Business Review
neuromarketing - How To Get Started With Affiliate Marketing?

Brain scans, which measure neurological activity, and physiological tracking, which also tracks eye movement and other elements for that activity, are the most popular analysis methods.

Influencer marketing in B2B

Okay, we have to differentiate this. As we know in the B2C business, influencer marketing doesn’t blow over to B2B. What we do see, however, is a growing use of marketing through experts and blogs.

A common form of influencer marketing in B2B is collaboration with knowledge leaders. 

Specialists and experienced professionals are deployed to recommend a service or product. 

You see this more and more in the SaaS world. Then products more often than not get recommended by successful people.

You also see certain collaborations arise between industry leaders and brands and the development of joint ventures. Thinking of organizing a webinar or masterclass together. An alternative could be an online magazine or blog that takes advantage of the other’s network. For example, more and more B2B marketing companies choose to place guest blogs or use sponsored posts or interviews on an online authority website.

Customer-Centered Content Marketing

When it comes to content marketing, one of the most common mistakes that B2B companies make is not putting their customers first. Following customer-focused content marketing trends will be critical in 2024 since it addresses their wants and needs while determining the best solution for them.

To optimize your website for 2024, follow these B2B marketing trends.

There are various digital B2B marketing trends to keep in mind when improving your website design:

Create Content for a Specific Audience

Addressing your target audience is always a sustainable B2B marketing trend that grabs and maintains user attention, regardless of the digital marketing method you choose. A company must first determine its target demographic before embarking on a B2B lead generation plan, whether digital marketing or cold calling.

Once you’ve identified your target demographic, it’s critical to conduct market research so you can generate content that mimics how they speak and your SDRs can pitch items or services that are most appealing to them.

User Intent and Experience Should Be Prioritized

After you’ve identified your target audience, consider how they’ll interact with your material. How do you want your audience to see your company? What benefits does this content provide them?

Understanding user intent and experience is a long-term B2B marketing trend. When creating content, there are three sorts of user intents to consider:

  • When a user desires to buy, download, or register something, this is referred to as a transaction.
  • When a user enters terms into a search engine to locate specific information on an industry product or service, this is referred to as navigation.
  • Content that is focused on conveying information about industry-specific products or services is referred to as informational.
scaleo affiliate software that allows you to automate routine tasks and make data driven decisions

When developing content, consider its goal and what you want the user to do with the information you’ve provided.

Increase SEO Value by Using Trending Keywords

SEO is a B2B marketing strategy that has been around for a while and isn’t going away anytime soon. In reality, it has only recently begun.

There are several methods for locating trending keywords for your digital marketing material. While you can just search for trending terms in a search engine, the results will not be as customized to your unique market. Keywords provide SEO-rich content, which propels your pages to the top of search engines and makes your site the first thing consumers see when they type those keywords into the search bar.

Premium Content Marketing

A third pillar that forms the basis for all channels is very good content marketing with a focus on quality. 

In 2024 it is still relevant to score high in Google and be findable for your target keywords. To achieve that and capture disoriented Google visitors, you need to offer compelling content.

That means: deliver depth, creativity, and value. 

This can also mean that your blog is no longer sufficient for your industry, and you can score with video marketing. YouTube still has a lot of space and prime time for eager content consumers.

Brand Personalization

With the expansion of B2B companies, having a distinct brand voice is more important than ever. Brand customization allows your company to stand out from the crowd and is a big B2B marketing trend for the year.

When personalizing your brand, make sure that it reflects the voice of your target audience. You have a better chance of capturing your target audience’s attention and connecting with them on a deeper level if you reflect their voice. A brand voice humanizes your engagement with your target audience. A brand voice, rather than merely a name and a logo, allows B2B enterprises to connect with potential consumers on a more human level.

Understanding your target market’s brand persona is critical for closing commercial deals. When creating a brand voice, make sure you understand how they communicate and what they are looking for in a B2B partner. 

Above all, your brand voice should be consistent across all sales and marketing channels. This includes your B2B appointment-making activities such as cold calling, as well as your website, blog articles, social media profiles, and marketing collateral. Consistency in brand voice is critical for earning and retaining the trust of potential and present customers; without it, you risk losing company credibility.

Examples of Neuromarketing in Action

Neuromarketing is taking the world by storm and has been used in some capacity by nearly every major corporation and university. Despite its enormous influence in the marketing industry, many people are unaware of what Neuromarketing is or how to apply it effectively. The articles that follow provide 15 fascinating examples of neuromarketing in action.

1. The Value of Eye Gaze

It is common knowledge that advertisements that incorporate people are far more effective than those that do not. Images and movies featuring newborns, in particular, tend to elicit longer and more concentrated attention from potential customers. Advertisers have long attempted to improve sales of infant products by displaying close-ups of attractive infant faces; however, eye-tracking technology has revealed that this alone is insufficient.

Researchers noticed that viewers’ attention is drawn to the baby’s face when the infant stares directly at the camera rather than the ad content. However, if the infant’s gaze is directed onto the product or text, the viewer will be drawn to the advertising content.

TIP: As a result of these findings, advertisers have realized that, while baby faces are popular with consumers, they must also ensure that the baby is gazing at what they want the customer to buy. More information regarding the study may be found here.

2. Making Use of Effective Packaging

We’ve all been drawn to particularly eye-catching or appealing packaging. Advertisers have long known that it is not necessarily what counts outside, but neuroimaging has taken this to a whole new level.

Neuroimaging has been utilized by brands such as Campbell’s and Frito-Lay to reinvent their packaging. Customers were shown packaging in studies, and their reactions were recorded as good, negative, or neutral. In addition, they were carefully interrogated about color, text, and images.

According to the findings of this response, customers had a negative response to shiny packaging, but not too matte packaging. Frito-Lay then ditched the flashy packaging in favor of the new, matte design.

TIP: Neuromarketing approaches are widely used in the redesign of packaging and appearance. Check out this link to read more about the study mentioned above (as well as some other intriguing studies).

3. Color is Important

Keep in mind that when you choose colors, you may be impacting how potential customers feel. Color may elicit a wide spectrum of emotions, with research regularly demonstrating a link between specific colors and specific emotions.

Color can be a potent marketing tool when used effectively. Coca-pervasive Cola’s use of the color red is one of the most well-known instances, but many other firms have employed the color to great effect. Color and advertising neuromarketing professionals have split colors into subgroups as a reference to how they might be used effectively. For example, if you want to attract experts, cool blues are the go-to color.

4. Ad Effectiveness

For many years, brain imaging was solely the domain of academics and scientists. On the other hand, Neuromarketing has used the extraordinary power of fMRI imaging to provide insights into human behavior and consumer behavior.

One application of fMRI in Neuromarketing is to compare advertising campaigns before releasing them to the broader population. Participants in one study saw three distinct ads for the National Cancer Institute’s telephone hotline. The ad campaign that aroused the most brain activity in a specific region resulted in significantly more calls to the helpline. 

This revolutionary methodology opens up new possibilities for identifying marketing campaigns that will actually engage the public.

TIP: fMRI has enormous promise to improve marketing strategy, increase engagement, and drive action.

5. Indecisiveness

Sometimes consumer behavior research contradicts what we previously assumed. According to a Columbia University study, having too many choices may actually be a disincentive to potential customers. They found that displays with a wide range of alternatives were less likely to cause customers to stop using various settings.

TIP: Less is more, and too many choices might overwhelm customers. Are you curious about decision paralysis and what you can do about it? Take a look at this fantastic piece.

6. Assessing Satisfaction

Emotion Response Analysis (ERA) employs EEG imaging to determine an individual’s emotional response to a product, advertisement, or another stimulus.

The advertiser values our level of engagement or emotional arousal in relation to a product. If, for example, the consumer expresses a high level of irritation in response to your product, there is clearly a usability issue that you should fix. EEG can be used to assess customer satisfaction. EEG was utilized in one study to assess satisfaction with dermatological therapy. They found a link between consumer satisfaction and activation in the brain circuits involved in judging facial appearance.

TIP: EEG, like fMRI, can give insights on the most efficient advertising methods (amongst other uses). Check out this link to learn more about how EEG can be used in conjunction with iMotions software.

7. Fear of Loss

One intriguing discovery of neuromarketing is that people do not want to lose out. People are just as concerned about what they might lose as they are about what they might get. For one reason, “but before it’s gone” techniques are extremely effective.

Consumers are far more likely to buy when the alternative option is presented as a loss. For this reason, a concept known as “framing” is crucial in neuromarketing. Advertisers use this method to offer consumers decisions to make them more likely to spend money.

TIP: consumers despise the feeling of missing out on a good deal, thus making it clear they are about to miss out.

8. Anchoring

The initial piece of information that your customer receives is critical. It might serve as the foundation for any later decisions and set the tone for their shopping pattern. Neuroscientists have found a defect in the way the mind works and makes judgments. Individuals rarely judge the worth of something based on its intrinsic worth but rather compare it to the alternatives.

Taking advantage of this “anchoring effect” is thus a valuable use of neuromarketing. If you have a choice between two hotel rooms that are priced similarly, but one of them includes free coffee in the morning, you are considerably more likely to choose the one with the free coffee. You are unlikely to investigate the quality of the rooms available or any specific features.

Advertisers frequently take advantage of this when comparing bundle packages or promotions. As a result, we may frequently find ourselves accepting contracts or committing to a year-long commitment.

TIP: Anchoring can assist you in swinging the offer in the right direction. This excellent article discusses how anchoring tactics can be beneficial to organizations.

9. The Desire for Speed

Neuromarketing can be used to identify customer trends. While businesses frequently strive to project a sense of safety and security, customers may be more interested in speed and efficiency. PayPal uncovered this by performing a study in which it was observed that the promise of ease stimulated the brain more than the promise of security. They used this data to attract additional customers to their online payment service by emphasizing their quick payment mechanism.

TIP: While it may appear that emphasizing a product’s safety and security will win customers over, you may instead want to convey the impression that your product is speedy and efficient.

10. Exposing Hidden Reactions

Cheetos employed focus groups and EEGs to measure consumer response to new advertisements.

In this advertisement, a woman pranks her friend by loading her white load of laundry with orange Cheetos. The ad was disliked in focus groups, but when an EEG study was conducted with the same participants, it was discovered that they actually enjoyed it. Participants in the focus group were reluctant to say they found the ad hilarious for fear of offending other members. Neuromarketing can thus disclose hidden thoughts and desires.

The bottom line is that neuromarketing approaches can disclose concealed responses. Check out the IAT to read about another intriguing methodology capable of uncovering our mental processes.

11. Rewards and Penalties

Even video game design has begun to include psychological ideas into the product development process, notably integrating reward and punishment to make compelling games that keep people playing them. The action may enhance dopamine (a neurotransmitter) levels in the brain by boosting the reward provided by the game. This neurotransmitter is linked to pleasure and good connections, which can increase the desire to continue playing.

Game designers are now hiring psychologists to assist with game creation, with psychological aspects being built directly into the game mechanics.

TIP: Provide a joyful experience for consumers to keep them engaged to and returning to your product.

12. Prototype Evaluation

While marketing is undoubtedly important in influencing consumer behavior, product design can also play a role.

Hyundai employed EEG to assess prototypes in a well-known neuromarketing example. They examined brain activity in response to various design characteristics and investigated which type of stimulation was most likely to result in a purchase.

The study’s findings prompted Hyundai to alter the exterior design of its vehicles.

TIP: The rise of neuromarketing has the potential to change the world we live in.

13. Setting the Appropriate Price

A long-running and challenging issue is how to price items to entice consumers. We’re all aware that charging $9.99 instead of $10 for anything is an advertising ploy, but does it work?

A slew of fresh findings is throwing light on this age-old subject. According to this fascinating new piece of knowledge used by neuromarketers, rounded figures are more likely to work alongside emotional decision-making, but more complex figures work better when the logical brain is active. This is due to the fact that complicated numbers make the brain work harder, maybe convincing it that the more complexly priced product is the more rational choice.

TIP: When determining your price, use the neuromarketing method.

14. Website Design

Neuromarketing approaches are also being used to inform the design of websites.

Neuromarketers are delving into our website preferences, including color schemes, layouts, text size, and more. There are now some hard and fast regulations when it comes to developing websites. Using certifications, testimonials, and social widgets, for example, is bound to attract more customers than those who do not.

Another intriguing discovery is that contemporary, horizontal website layouts are less effective than classic vertical ones. This is because reading web pages from top to bottom activates the brain and encourages visitors to keep scrolling.

TIP: Incorporate science into your website design. Check out this link for 15 more strategies to engage web traffic.

15. Catchy Headlines

Because headlines are one of the first things a viewer sees, they must stand out and be noticed.

As a result, they have received much attention, and a new neuromarketing approach is known as “Hippocampal Headlines” has been coined. What exactly does this mean? University College London researchers found that when a familiar sentence is slightly tweaked, our hippocampus is activated, and our attention is pricked. Many bloggers have used Patron and their marketing slogan “Practice Makes Patron” as examples of this.

TIP: Your advertising strategy will be far more effective if you surprise the brain.

This post covers the B2B marketing trends 2024 will lay before us. Whichever way you shape it, it will become a foundation for marketing tactics for most businesses. However, this can be a major challenge for many companies; generating good content is an investment and will not yield immediate returns.

However, if you have enough content, profit from it, and see the turnover increase, you are guaranteed to have sustainable, long-lasting marketing results. You can’t ignore certain aspects of B2B marketing in 2024, and we will cover more topics in our B2B marketing insider category.

In the coming weeks, we will post more blog posts in the run-up to 2024. Stay tuned and subscribe to our blog to avoid missing an upcoming post. 

Neuromarketing FAQ

Best Neuromarketing Tools?

The word “neuromarketing” refers to measuring physiological and neural signals to obtain insight into customer motivations, preferences, and decisions, which can assist inform creative advertising, product development, pricing, and other marketing sectors. The most prevalent measurement methods are brain scanning, which measures neural activity, and physiological monitoring, which measures eye movement and other activity.

The two most common methods for scanning the brain are fMRI and EEG. The first (functional magnetic resonance imaging) uses strong magnetic fields to track changes in blood flow across the brain and is performed while the patient is lying inside a machine that collects continuous measurements over time.
An EEG (electroencephalogram) measures brain-cell activity using sensors put on the subject’s scalp; it can track changes in activity in fractions of a second, but it is ineffective at pinpointing the exact location of the activity or measuring it in deep, subcortical parts of the brain (where a lot of interesting activity takes place). An fMRI can see deep into the brain, but it is time-consuming and only measures activity for a few seconds so that it may miss brief neural occurrences. (In addition, fMRI machines are several times more expensive than EEG equipment, often costing over $5 million with heavy overhead against around $20,000.)

Tools for measuring physiological proxies for brain activity are becoming more inexpensive and user-friendly. Eye-tracking can assess both attention and arousal (through pupil dilation); facial-expression coding (sensing the minute movement of muscles in the face) can assess emotional reactions; and heart rate, breathing rate, and skin conductivity can measure arousal.

Consumer neuroscience exploded in popularity in the mid-2000s, when business school researchers demonstrated that advertising, branding, and other marketing practices could have measurable effects on the brain.

Emory University researchers served Coca-Cola and Pepsi to subjects in an fMRI machine in 2004. The researchers observed a consistent neural response when the drinks were not identified. However, when subjects were able to view the brand, their limbic structures (brain areas linked with emotions, memories, and unconscious processing) showed increased activity, indicating that brand information impacted how the brain evaluated the beverage. Four years later, a team led by Hilke Plassmann of INSEAD examined the brains of test subjects as they drank three wines of varying prices; their brains registered the wines differently, with neural signals showing a preference for the most costly wine.

In reality, all three wines were identical. In another academic study, fMRI found that when consumers perceive a price, their mental computation of value changes: When the price was displayed before exposure to the product, the neural data differed from when it was displayed after exposure, implying two separate mental calculations:
“Is that product worth the price?” when the price first came, and
“Do I enjoy this product?” when the product first came

Last Updated on December 1, 2023

Author

Elizabeth is a Senior Content Manager at Scaleo. Currently enjoying the life in Prague and sharing professional affiliate marketing tips. She's been in the online marketing business since 2006 and gladly shares all her insights and ideas on this blog.