The Impact of Digital Strategies on Business-to-Business Marketing and Sales: The Past, Present, and Future

With the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in March of 2020, the world has learned to adapt to a new normal, which has largely centered around building relationships, learning, and conducting business with others in ways that could not be done in person. As marketing students, we wanted to see how this impacted the way Business-to-Business marketing and sales were conducted. Digital strategies have been on the rise prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, but were forced to grow at a much faster rate when technology became the leader in allowing us to engage and communicate with others. Despite the pressure to introduce digital strategies across the Business-to-Business market, many firms have been hesitant to do so, since they are so comfortable with the way in which they practice their business now. Previous research in this area has primarily focused on traditional marketing strategies and how technology has affected them, but we aim to study how the advancements in technology and the incorporation of digital marketing and sales strategies has ultimately impacted the relationships and efficiency of business within the B2B market. We are looking to gain insight through our research and speaking with members of the industry to understand where the future of B2B Marketing and Sales is heading now that it has evolved at such a rapid pace. We will conduct mixed methods of research within this thesis, incorporating both quantitative and qualitative data from our primary and secondary resources of reliable online sources/studies as well as our one-on-one interviews with industry leaders. Our studies will characterize the past and present of marketing and sales strategies utilized in the B2B industry, as well as aim to predict what the future holds. The results prove that despite the widespread push toward utilizing digital strategies within the B2B market, marketing and sales will never be successful without the in-person element. Ultimately, we found that B2B firms will utilize digital strategies as a means of maintaining customer relationships once they have been established via traditional methods.