B2B Marketplace Continues Shift Toward Millennial Generation

In a recent survey conducted by Millward Brown Digital and Google, data showed that approximately 46 percent of potential B2B buyers in 2014 were millennials (ages 18-34), a notable increase from 27 percent in 2012.

“By the time millennials joined the workforce, half of all Americans were using email regularly, BlackBerrys had been on the market for several years and search engines were already a part of daily life,” wrote Kelsey Snyder and Pashmeena Hilal of Google. “In other words, millennials are digital natives. If you’re not marketing to this group, you need to reevaluate your strategy, taking into account millennials’ familiarity with digital and how this influences the kind of content and media channels they are using.”

The data also showed that young B2B buyers are using different kinds of technology to help them make purchases. Nearly 49 percent of respondents said that they use their mobile devices to do product research at work. About 91 percent of them use smartphones throughout the path to purchase.

Despite these findings, a majority of marketers are still neglecting the value of mobile channels.

Mobile and B2B Marketing

A survey conducted by Capterra looked at how B2B marketers intend to address mobile marketing in 2015. A total of 41 percent said that they did not have a mobile plan in place for the next 12 months. This is despite the fact that mobile use exceeded PC Internet usage for the first time in history in 2014, according to data published by ComScore.

Additionally, Google released statistics in 2013 that showed that 90 percent of executives use their smartphones to research business purchases. Approximately 66 percent of executives said that a mobile site was more likely to make them engage with a vendor.

About 29 percent of marketers said that they don’t know how their mobile usage of software has changed because they don’t know how to measure it.