B2B and B2C Marketing: Trends for Resumption

Greater focus on project execution (56%), budget reallocation (52%) and content change (51%) are the priorities of marketing executives for the next six months.
The data are from the Research Trends and Marketing Behavior in 2020, conducted by LinkedIn with 300 marketing professionals from Brazil who work in companies with business strategies B2B (150), B2C (100) and mixed (50).
Over the next three months, concerns are different between B2B and B2C companies. For business-focused campaigns, reduction of the work team (11%), lack of collaboration (9%) and greater focus on tactics (9%) are the main challenges. In the case of those who deal with the final consumer, cut in the budget (15%), reduction of media investment (10%) and change from physical to virtual (9%) are the concerns.
In addition, b2b and mixed business professionals believe that virtual events will remain as effective as face-to-face events. However, for 53% of B2C professionals, this will not be the reality.
Despite the challenges at hand, a margin of between 40% and 52% of respondents feel optimistic about aspects such as a rapid recovery and the feeling that the recession will be brief; the possibility of maintaining the use of technology and virtual work; the opportunity to redefine roles in the business and be able to redirect the business to what matters. More than half of the sample (55%) believes that these changes will continue and change the way marketers will work in the future, but believe the impact will be short-term.
The main challenge faced by marketing executives in this pandemic period was the budget cut (73%), followed by a reduction in the team (58%) and reduction of investment in advertising and the replanning of activities (53%). On the other hand, work at home (55%), new resources (51%) and the acceleration of digital transformation (51%) positive results generated from the measures adopted.
"It's a crisis that requires brands from all countries in the world, of all sectors and sizes, to adapt their messages, content and tone. Long-term planning has changed to the short term to exactly be as customized as possible. Marketers, if they didn't already, began to think much more about dialogue and how to respond to the target audience in a digital world. Even advertising that was not performance, began to have its results monitored more closely with reductions in teams and budgets", analyzes Ana Moisés, linkedin marketing solutions executive for Latin America.