COVID-19 was a transformative force in all sectors. For B2B organizations, the challenges and opportunities spurred by the pandemic meant making a myriad of changes—a shift toward digital sales chief among them.

B2B marketing has traditionally had a slower uptake than B2C because of the size, complexity, and pace of most B2B transactions, and the general confidence buyers have in field sales models for larger purchase decisions.

But when the pandemic accelerated digital uptake, the results were more positive than anyone expected. More than 75% of buyers and sellers are now reporting a preference for digital self-service and remote engagement in place of face-to-face sales processes. Even more notably, a full 70% of B2B buyers are open to making purchases in excess of $50,000 without in-person interaction.

Alongside the success of B2B sales, the digital shift has made it easier for sales organizations to extend their reach and lower their cost per interaction. Such virtual strategies will likely be fundamental in the market from now on.

On LinkedIn, where B2B marketers find about 80% of their social media leads, users posted 900% more articles between February and April 2020 than they did those same months in 2019.

In fact, B2B companies have been much more successful at crafting a rewarding digital customer experience compared with their B2C counterparts, research from McKinsey & Co showed. Its findings scored B2C companies below 50%: i.e., more than half of their customers said they came away dissatisfied with their online interactions.

Furthermore, customer experience has overtaken price and product as a brand differentiator, the same research found. Of people who had a subpar sales interaction, only 13% said they would return to the same company.

But it's important for marketing teams not to conflate the success of virtual sales with the need for a virtual-only strategy. As every company ups their investment in digital marketing materials, the virtual world is growing more and more saturated. Attention is a highly sought commodity in the digital sphere, and digital-only strategies can go only so far.

In short, the growing popularity of digital sales is not a reason to move all marketing efforts online.

To avoid losing repeat sales, marketers should focus on mastering the B2B customer experience and reaching their clients through more memorable, meaningful experiences—whether virtual or in-person, or both.

Here are a few places to focus on as the post-pandemic marketplace begins to take shape.

The Power of Hybrid Offerings

B2B buyers make complex, time-consuming, highly consequential decisions. The sale itself might take place online, but the task of building trust and fostering engagement is a long and winding road that's best walked, at least in part, in person.

To that end, hybrid experiences are perfectly designed to extend beyond the screen and engage clients in more immersive, trust-building ways.

Hybrid offerings are also being elevated to an entirely new level by a strategy that uses extended reality (XR). XR refers to the considered combination of virtual reality (VR), artificial reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR) technologies that help marketers translate on-screen campaigns to in-person experiences.