The rise of the digital era and especially, digital natives has revolutionized the way we communicate with each other and also, the way we do business.
Why would B2B marketing be any different?
With digital, B2B marketing can be more targeted and savvy marketers are improving their ROI on their marketing plans. However, to be successful in this digital age, B2B marketers need to constantly update themselves on the latest trends, technologies and most importantly, hunt for what will make their business grow.
Leverage these cutting-edge trends, shed old wasteful practices and ride these trends for growth in your B2B business.  Have you incorporated these trends in your marketing arsenal?
B2B Researchers are Millennials
While the traditional B2B model was about targeting the B2B buyers and purchase managers, the reality is that today any B2B prospect employs younger managers who research online. Typically millennials, they are digital savvy and they look up the vendor’s digital assets to develop a clear picture of the vendor’s offering.
Hence, you as B2B Marketer, if you are talking the researcher’s digital language and making it easier for them to search and give value upfront, then you will rank high in the consideration list of the B2B buyer.
As a B2B marketer, you know that the one who provides the value most has the highest likelihood of getting the sale. Provide the value upfront to the B2B researcher and you have got your foot in the door.
To give this value, you need to go where the millennial researcher is always present: Mobile.
Mobile First
Today everyone is on the mobile. You get up in the morning and the first thing you check is the mobile for mails and social media.
Why should your B2B buyer be in any different?
B2B researchers, which we saw, earlier are mobile natives and the chances of them checking your digital assets on mobile are exceptionally high. Over 42% of B2B prospects use a mobile device at some point during their mobile journey. 84% of millennial B2B buyers believe mobile devices are essential to work. What impression would you give of your website and business if the site is not responsive and hence takes forever to load and then has very poor UX?
Making your website responsive is the first step. Having “mobile first” as your thinking is the critical shift in thinking. E.g. Are your videos in vertical format? Do they have subtitles?
These are basic but fundamental items you need to check in your marketing. Being mobile also means being savvy in social media.
Social Media
You may say “Facebook is for vacation pictures and LinkedIn is for job search, which I am not.”
That is an accurate description of 2016.
A study reveals that 53% of B2B prospects say that social media played a role in their buying decision. Facebook is the leading tool for marketers while LinkedIn is the number one social media of choice for top B2B marketers.
Why Facebook? Because your B2B buyer and researcher are on this platform every day. It's like meeting them at their home vs. their office. If you can meet them as a “friend” (no, don’t send a friend request as yet) you will build trust over a period.
LinkedIn especially with its exploding video usage helps you position your business as someone who offers value upfront. 66% of the Top B2B marketers find LinkedIn very effective.
What will leverage the power of social media is the right, targeted content.
Content Marketing
Wait, isn’t Content Marketing what B2C marketers do? Yes but here are stats for B2B.
According to the 2018 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends, 90% of B2B organizations use content marketing, and 38% of those companies are planning to increase their budget in 2018.
Content marketing is embraced by more and more B2B marketers and why not?
Going back to the first trend, B2B researchers are searching the net for information which makes their decision better. By providing relevant content which helps them make an informed decision, you position yourself as a “trusted partner” Wouldn’t you want that?
What is important is to have a written content marketing plan and not a fly by the seat of pants approach. 62% of content marketers who document their content marketing strategy outperforms 16% of those who do not. While Social media posts (94%) are the dominant form of content marketing, case studies and white papers (71%) are a close third. Third? What happened to the second? That’s the next trend
Video Explosion
Yup, video!
72% of B2B Marketers use video as their content marketing tool. Still not convinced? Check these stats-
The Web Video Marketing Council research shows that 96% of B2B respondents are engaged in video content marketing and 73% confirm that video has positively impacted marketing results.  Video is one of the dominant reasons why LinkedIn is also growing fast right now – LinkedIn is the number one social media of choice for B2B marketers Video on your website is the least you can do. Then, understand how you can bring video to every content page that you have.
Embrace these trends and emerge as a winner in the keenly fought battleground of B2B marketing.

It’s May the fourth, which for Star Wars fans means yet another excuse to re-watchThe Force Awakens and try to come up with more outlandish theories about Rey’s parentage, where Maz Kanata got Luke’s lightsaber from, and why Han had to die. (Oh yes – spoiler alert. Sorry.) In all the thousands of words written about the new film, however, there’s one area that has been unfairly neglected, or so we think: the implications of the First Order’s poor information security and management system processes. May the fourth be with you…

In case you’ve forgotten (or muddled it with Episode IV, whose plot it mirrors), Episode VII relates the tale of a former sanitation operative on the dark side’s new big gun planet, Starkiller Base, who didn’t really enjoy the violence inherent in his new job role and quit on his first day as a Stormtrooper, having failed to fire a single shot. Like many a disgruntled employee, he left a certain amount of destruction in his wake: he helped an important prisoner escape, nicked a TIE fighter, crashed on a nearby planet, befriended a girl and a droid with whom he nicked another, bigger, ship, met a walking carpet and a wisecracking smuggler who took him to a bar where had a fight with some ex-colleagues he ran into, and then remembered that he had a lot of information about his former employers with which he could help his new friends blow up his old workplace. Or something like that.

But what would it have been like if Supreme Leader Snoke had insisted that General Hux implement a risk-based information security management system at the First Order’s base?

For starters, privileged access management policies would have prevented a former cleaner from having vital security information about the organisation’s most important assets in the first place, and a formal leaver’s policy would have ensured that the moment FN-2187 lay down his blaster and became Finn, all access to First Order security systems would have been revoked.

More important than this, a proper attitude to patch management and software updates would have ensured that the legacy systems left over from the Death Star would have been retired and replaced by suitable modern alternatives. Furthermore, a business continuity management system (BCMS) would have enabled the First Order to prepare for unforeseen incidents and return to normal operations as soon as possible after a disaster.

Meanwhile, on Earth…

Picking over plot details is obviously silly – it’s just a film – but the implications of poor information security are damaging enough in the real world. Fail to keep on top of your security systems, and you leave yourself vulnerable to attack. Subscribe to our Daily Sentinel email for the latest information security stories and to see how you can protect your organisation.

With the risk of a cyber attack now being classed as the top threat to organisations, it’s vital to have the right cyber security measures in place to protect your organisation from an attack. It’s not just an organisation’s reputation that can be damaged by a data breach – the financial costs can often have a more severe effect.

Lloyd’s of London has estimated the global cost of a serious cyber attack to be more than $120 billion (£92 billion). It believes the most likely scenario to lead to this sort of cost is a criminal hacker targeting a Cloud service provider, taking it down in the process.

PwC’s Global State of Information Security Survey 2018 found that “the average total financial cost of incidents [was] £857,000”. However, this figure is based on only 14% of respondents that reported their direct financial losses.

Ponemon’s 2017 Cost of Cyber Crime Study revealed alarming figures with regard to the costs of a cyber attack and how much these have risen. Over the last five years, the average cost has risen by 62% and in the past year alone, this figure was 27.4%.

One of the main factors behind the rise in the cost of a cyber attack is the number of days it can take to resolve it – the longer it takes, the more expensive it gets.

On average, the cost for the UK and the number of days it takes to resolve a cyber attack per type are as follows:

Malware: £1.57 million – 6.4 days

Web-based attacks: £1.52 million – 22.4 days

Denial-of-service (DoS) attacks: £1.31 million – 16.8 days

Malicious insiders: £960,000 – 50 days

Malicious code: £960,000 – 55.2 days

Phishing and social engineering: £960,000 – 20 days

Stolen devices: £700,000 – 14.6 days

Ransomware: £520,000 – 23.1 days

Botnets: £260,000 – 2.5 days

The severity and cost of a cyber attack is increasing with detrimental effects on organisations. It’s crucial that an organisation has strong cyber security defences in place to ensure its protection.

Cyber Incident Response Management

Cyber Incident response management can help reduce the risk of a cyber attack. An incident response framework will enable your organisation to identify breaches, prevent unauthorised access to data stores, prevent malware infection, remediate threats, and control your risk and exposure during an attack.

With an incident response planning strategy from IT Governance, you will gain access to an experienced, dedicated technical group of people that can carry out sophisticated cyber security incident investigations quickly and effectively, helping you to identify, detect and contain incidents faster.