Digital marketing for B2B organizations:

structured literature review and

future research directions
Neeraj Pandey, Preeti Nayal and Abhijeet Singh Rathore
Department of Marketing, National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai, India

Abstract
Purpose – This study aims to analyze the available literature on the use of digital marketing in a business-to-business (B2B) context. It identifies
gaps in the current research knowledge and proposes a research agenda for scholars and practitioners.
Design/methodology/approach – A systematic literature review has been conducted on B2B digital marketing. The various themes have been
identified on the basis of the comprehensive analysis of extant literature. Also, semi-structured interviews with B2B marketing experts were also
conducted to further refine the emerged digital marketing themes.
Findings – Although some B2B firms use digital marketing, most are unable to leverage its full benefits because of the dearth of comprehensive
research on the subject. This review provides an insight into the emerging themes by developing a collaborative conceptual framework. The review
highlights that few areas such as digital marketing communication and sales management have witnessed steady development while decision
support systems, critical success factors, electronic marketing orientation (EMO), etc., were lesser explored. Furthermore, it identifies research gaps
and highlights the emerging research themes for future researchers.
Practical implications – The collaborative framework will help organizations to align their digital marketing activities as per the changing market
dynamics such as the focus on building social media capability, EMO and value co-creation.
Originality/value – Research on the use of digital marketing by B2B firms is still at the embryonic stage. This study is a pioneering effort to review
the use of digital marketing in B2B organizations and identify research priorities for scholars and practitioners.
Keywords Literature review, Insights, Digital marketing, B2B marketing, Martech
Paper type Literature review

1. Introduction perception. Organizations have come to realize that digital

Many business-to-business (B2B) organizations are turning to
digital marketing to boost their customer acquisition. Apart
from interactive strategies to connect with consumers (Kotler
and Armstrong, 2009), digital marketing offers precise
targeting of prospective customers (Pandey and Gudipudi,
2019). For example, the B2B marketing executives are able to
bypass multiple layers and connect to the user department
executives using LinkedIn. This helps B2B executive optimize
their sales productivity. It also helps track B2B consumer
engagement and sales conversions in real-time. It also allows
the dynamic creation of content that suits a prospective
customer’s viewing habits.
Although digital marketing has been added to the marketing
strategies of B2B firms, research on this subject is still at a
nascent stage. In fact, until recently, many organizations
believed that digital marketing is useful only to B2C
organizations (Lacka and Chong, 2016). However, digital
marketing success stories from B2B firms such as Cisco and
IBM (Venkatesh et al., 2019) have gradually changed this
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on
Emerald Insight at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/0885-8624.htm
marketing in the B2B space enhances flow of information and
trust among customers (Krishna and Singh, 2018; Pandey,
2015). Many organizations lack comprehensive knowledge
about the best B2B digital marketing practices, which impacts
their return on investment (RoI) (Wertime and Fenwick,
2011). Further, digital marketing adoption demands continued
research as this domain is fast evolving because of constant
influx of new technologies (Shaltoni, 2017). From the World
Wide Web in 1990s to internet of things, the web has
undergone a massive evolution so far.
Today because of digital media, B2B customers have access
to information on various products and services, which was
traditionally not readily available to buyers. Such information
helps B2B customers make informed decisions. B2B
organizations should maintain a credible online presence,
either through websites or blogs on online business
communities or through social media platforms (Pandey and
Shinde, 2019). Managing customer relationships is also
important to B2B organizations across all channels, including
online. The present study aims to explore this emerging issue
by focusing on the key question-how much research has been
done so far in digital marketing usage in B2B domain and what
are the potential research scope for future.

Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing Received 9 June 2019

35/7 (2020) 1191–1204 Revised 23 October 2019
© Emerald Publishing Limited [ISSN 0885-8624] 29 December 2019
[DOI 10.1108/JBIM-06-2019-0283] Accepted 29 December 2019

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The structure of the paper is as follows: first, the followed by the identification of emerging thematic areas and
methodology section describes the search criteria and initial future directions were reported.
data. The next section describes eight themes identified from a
comprehensive literature analysis along with a collaborative 3. Descriptive results
framework built on these themes. This is followed by semi-
structured interview with the B2B marketing experts. The 3.1 Keyword statistics
literature review analysis and expert interviews help to identify To identify the most commonly used research keywords, we
gaps and propose future research directions. The conclusions, shortlisted the keywords (extracted from abstracts) of all the
which include academic implications, are presented in the final 155 research papers. The shortlisted keywords were analyzed.
“
section. B2B” ispapers,
the highest used keyword,
research closely followed bypresent in 143and
“marketing” of the 155
“social
media,” which were present in 97 and 68 research papers,
2. Methodology
respectively. “Internet,” “marketing communication,”
The present study followed a structured literature review (SLR) “e-commerce” and “relationship management” were also often
and semi-structured as a research methodology. SLR followed repeated terms (Figure 1).
a three-step approach as suggested by Tranfield et al. (2003),
namely, review protocol was planned as per the requirement of 3.2 Key authors
the research review was conducted by identifying, selecting and The number of research papers published by each author on
analyzing the relevant papers and dissemination of the results in digital marketing for B2B organizations were analyzed. The
the form of descriptive results and thematic reporting. authors having three or more research papers on the selected
In the initial stage, the review was planned to keep in mind theme were only considered. Table I lists the most influential
the void in the B2B market with respect to the usage of digital authors in the field along with the number of papers published
marketing. Many authors have stated that the usage of digital by them. Heikki Karjaluoto is the most prominent researcher
marketing is still at the embryonic stage in the B2B domain with eight publications to his name. He is followed by Kunal
although many developments were happening in the area.
Swani with four publications. Interestingly, Kunal Swani, Brian
Further, the review protocol was developed with inclusion and
P. Brown and George R. Milne have co-authored many articles
exclusion criteria. Both qualitative and quantitative studies in
the field of B2B digital marketing were included in the SLR
together. About one-third of the studies were qualitative in
nature.
exercise.
The present study defined digital marketing as the use of
internet technologies or activities, which includes internet Figure 1 Abstract keyword analysis
marketing, digital channels, e-commerce, social media
marketing and mobile marketing to achieve the company’s 12 7
12
objective (Roberts and Zahay, 2012; Strauss and Frost, 2014). 15
12
The digital marketing helps in better marketing
communication, efficient online selling, lower search cost, easy 20
143
price comparison, dissemination of user reviews, brand
16
differentiation and better customer relationship management
(Chaffey et al., 2009; Strauss and Frost, 2014). Also, the brand 14
value can further be enhanced by developing creative and
engaging content and broadcasting it using social media 16
channels (Lipiäinen and Karjaluoto, 2015). Therefore, all the
research papers, which covered above internet-related domains 18
were included in this study.
The exclusion and inclusion criteria were finalized based on 19
the above criteria. Databases such as EBSCO, Emerald Insight,
Proquest, ABI Inform, Science Direct and Google Scholar 26
were used for accessing the research papers. The following
keywords were searched for papers for inclusion: B2B 97
marketing, industrial marketing, business marketing, B2B
68
social media, B2B online media, B2B digital media, B2B digital
marketing, B2B internet marketing, e-commerce marketing
and combinations thereof. We included articles published
between 2000 and 2018 – a span of 18 years during, which the B2B Markeng Social Media

internet gained global acceptance. Books, monographs and Internet Communicaon E-commerce
conference papers were excluded from the analysis. A total of Relaonship Managemnet Online Sales
155 relevant papers were selected, categorized by keyword Digital Markeng Branding Analycs
searches and themes, and the abstracts of each research paper Digital Media Websites Business Networks
was read for further categorization. A descriptive analysis

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Table I Influential authors Table II Leading journals in B2B digital marketing

S. no Authors No. of publications Source N (%)
1 Heikki Karjaluoto 8 Industrial Marketing Management 55 36
2 Kunal Swani 4 Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing 25 16
3 Brian P. Brown 3 Marketing Intelligence & Planning 6 4
4 George Christodoulides 3 Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing 4 3
5 George R. Milne 3 Practice
6 Joel Järvinen 3 Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing 4 3
7 Leyland Pitt 3 Information & Management 3 2
8 Raj Agnihotri 3 Journal of Customer Behavior 3 2
9 Shan Wang 3 Procedia Computer Science 3 2
10 Sheena Leek 3 Decision Support Systems 2 1
Independent Journal of Management & Production 2 1
Internet Research 2 1
Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice 2 1
Figure 2 Spatial distribution of research on B2B digital marketing
Journal of Targeting, Measurement and Analysis for 2 1
45 Marketing
40 Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 2 1
35 Others 40 26
30 Total 155 100
25

20

15
Table III Institutions leading the research on B2B digital marketing
10

5 S. no Institutes No. of publications

0
1 University of Jyväskylä 9
2 University of Birmingham 5
Countries
3 University of Massachusetts 4
4 Edith Cowan University 3
5 Florida Atlantic University 3
3.3 Spatial distribution of research 6 Oxford Brookes University 3
Figure 2 shows the spatial distribution of research studies on 7 Renmin University 3
digital marketing for B2B organizations. Most of the research 8 Virginia Commonwealth University 3
has been carried out in the USA, followed closely by the UK. 9 Wright State University 3
The analysis showed that most of the research were conducted
in developed countries, including Australia and EU nations.
Among the developing countries, China had published the the University of Jyväskylä in Finland. Interestingly, Heikki
most articles on the topic. Contributions from other developing Karjaluoto is affiliated with the School of Business and
countries have been poor. Economics at the University of Jyväskylä. The next in the list
are the University of Birmingham and the University of
Massachusetts, which account for five and four publications,
3.4 Leading journals
Industrial Marketing Management is the leading journal: it has respectively.
featured 55 papers (36 per cent) on digital marketing among
B2B organizations. This is followed by the Journal of Business & 3.6 Research trends over the years
Figure 3 shows that the year 2000 marked the beginning of
Industrial Marketing with 25 papers and Marketing Intelligence &
research on social marketing in the B2B sector – a trend that
Planning (6 papers). These three journals account for more
has only become stronger over the years. The number of papers
than 50 per cent of the total research published on the topic
increased from 18 in 2000-2005 to 24 in 2006-2010. This was
over the past 18 years. Interestingly, there were quite few
followed by a dramatic jump to 60 papers in 2011-2015 and 53
research papers on digital marketing for B2B organizations in
papers from 2016 to date. Thus, after 2011, research on social
the Journal of Marketing Research or Marketing Science
media marketing in the B2B industry has attracted a lot of
(Table II).
attention. Further, marketing communication has remained a
dominant theme across all the four-year blocks.
3.5 Leading institutes
We also examined the institutional affiliations of scholars who
published these research articles. Table III shows leading 4. Themes in the literature review
institutes in research on digital marketing in B2B organizations. We identified eight major themes from our review of literature
Only institutions contributing three or more articles were on digital marketing in the B2B sector. All the identified themes
considered. The maximum number of publications are from critically evaluate the digital marketing concepts and methods

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Figure 3 Trend in research themes over the years long-term and healthy relationship with the sales force (Wang
et al., 2017).
Brennan and Croft (2012) found that B2B companies used
multiple social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter,
2000-2005 2006-2010 LinkedIn and blogs but those organizations did not derive
Marketing Communication 10
Technology Innovation 4 benefits from these sites equally. Wang et al. (2016) found that
Relationship marketing 6 social media apps can be used for business communication and
Relationship Management 5 Internet Marketing 3
Internet Auctions
performance. Their results indicated that communication
1
Marketing Strategies 2 performance improved business performance by taking care of
Decision-Support System 1
Performance Management
Branding Positioning 2 innovation, marketing and collaboration. Cisco is leveraging
1 Others 7 the power of blogs to create thought leadership in emerging
technologies and broadcasting it to stakeholders using its
“Cisco speaks” blog series (blogs.cisco.com).
2011-2015 2016-till date
Marketing Communication 15 Marketing Communication 9
Relationship marketing 8 Sales Management 5 4.2 Sales management
Branding positioning 4
Technology Innovation 6 Content Marketing 4 The topics that have dominated the sales management
Branding positioning 5
Sales Management
Relationship management 4 literature over the past two decades are channel management,
5 Social Media adoption 4
Social Media adoption 3 Social Media Capability 3
relationship management, buyer-supplier relationship and
Web Analytics 3 Value-co creation 3 supply chain management. Rapid technological advancements
15 Others 17
Others in recent years have transformed sales and the role of the sales
force. Sales operations and activities require much more effort
than they did a decade ago because of higher customer
used in B2B marketing. The themes obtained from the expectations and buying power (Cuevas, 2018). Guesalaga
literature review were used to match and contrast the finding (2016) found that the commitment and competence of an
from the semi-structured interview with B2B marketing organization toward social media along with customer
executives. Below is the detailed description of each emerged engagement were essential determinants for the infusion of
theme from literature review. social media in sales. He used interactional psychology theory
to build the model on social media usage for sales.
4.1 Digital marketing communication The key drivers of change in professional B2B selling are
The majority of studies on the use of digital marketing changing buyer behavior, rising customer expectations and the
communication (DMC) in B2B organizations focus on infusion of innovative technologies (Pandey, 2015). Edelmann
communication using digital marketing tools. DMC is the use and Singer (2015) asserted that in the digital age not only
of the latest technologies or tools to disseminate integrated, selling a product is important but also managing the customer
concise and measurable communication to establish a good journey is crucial. It required four capabilities to drive it,
relationship with customers (Mulhern, 2009). This topic namely, automation, personalization, contextual interaction
consisted of four categories, namely, branding, advertising, and journey innovation. Rollins et al. (2014) gathered data
content marketing and interactivity. Brands drive business from blogs written by B2B sales executives to cumulatively
performance by influencing the market perception of a learn from their experience. This study suggested that user
company’s product and services; thus, they make consumers feedback would provide customer insights to the sales
pay a premium for the perceived value (Pandey et al., 2017; organization and must be used as a sales learning tool in B2B
Simoes et al., 2015). Popular brands have loyal consumers, organizations. Adamson et al. (2012) suggested that the era of
high profits and good sales and market presence (Keller et al., solutions selling in B2B space was over. The sales
2008). However, most studies on branding have studied B2C representatives must leverage the power of digital marketing to
products and services; not many have examined the B2B reach out to customer advocates who had the “go-getters” and
perspective. Very recently, some studies have explored “climbers” approach in organizations. These executives in the
customer and stakeholder engagement and their effects on firm purchasing organization own the project and displayed a
performance in the B2B sector (Kumar and Pansari, 2016). positive mindset in their online communication.
The organizations were using social networking sites for
acquiring new clients, maintaining long-term relationships with 4.3 Technology adoption and technological
consumers and increasing brand awareness (Michaelidou et al., advancements
2011; Pandey and Singh, 2012). Further, their study confirms Technology adoption is the third major theme present in
that the content available on social networking websites is studies on digital marketing. The areas related to technology
crucial to building advertising strategies. adoption are social media adoption, mobile technology
B2B content marketing aims to create, distribute and share adoption, internet auction, technology readiness, technological
relevant and timely content to engage with consumers during innovation and crowdsourcing. Various technology adoption
their purchasing decisions (Holliman and Rowley, 2014). theories have been used to explain the adoption of new
Further, researchers have found that effective social media technologies in the B2B industry such as mobile, e-commerce,
strategies call for content, that is, valuable, appealing, relevant e-mail and social media sites (Srite and Karahanna, 2006;
and timely. It should focus on aiding rather than selling the Yoon, 2009). Literature suggests that digital marketing
concept. Ultimately, content marketing helps to maintain a adoption is mainly explained by technological organizational

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Neeraj Pandey, Preeti Nayal and Abhijeet Singh Rathore
environment (TOE) framework (Tornatzky et al., 1990),
diffusion of innovation (Shaltoni, 2017) and technology
adoption model (TAM) (Veldeman et al., 2017; Lacka and
Chong, 2016). The TOE framework explains the relationship
between company’s adoption of technological advancements
and the factors associated with the environmental context,
company’s context and technical context.
A study based on TAM showed that perceived usefulness
and perceived ease of use are the major drivers of new
technology adoption. B2B firms adopt social media to
strengthen their customer base, offerings and profits
(Michaelidou et al., 2011). Further, social media also helps
boost brand loyalty, which is directly related to revenue and
greater returns on investment for B2B organizations (Rapp
et al., 2013). Paulsen (2011) concluded that companies adopt
social media mainly to strengthen their brand awareness and
brand-building efforts. Social media also enhances customer
engagement and gives more visibility to B2B products in the
target markets. Lee and Park (2008) argued that TAM does not
explain the adoption of mobile technology in B2B market
performance and its own set of limitations. They proposed the
B2B technology satisfaction model (TSM), by adding the
perceived loss of control as a crucial variable for the adoption.
The results confirmed that integrating user satisfaction and
perceived loss of control to the TAM framework would better
explain the B2B market performance model.
4.4 Decision support system
A decision support system, the fourth theme, covers analytics
and performance measurement.
Organizations usually set high goals to achieve through
digital marketing. However, the organizations seldom measure
the results in regard to the set goals. The organizations can
measure their digital marketing performances through two
tools, namely, Web analytics and, social media monitoring
(SMM) (Järvinen et al., 2012). Web analytics is used to
measure the performance of customer interactions on various
social networking sites worldwide (Järvinen and Karjaluoto,
2015). The high adoption rate of Web analytics tools is because
of the availability of some free and effective tools such as
Google Analytics and so on.
SMM allows automatic analysis and tracking of the user’s
pattern of using the internet. SMM helps companies to monitor
and analyze the opinions on the particular product through
tracking the user’s review on social media. However, Web
analytics and SMM have not been used for strategic decision-
making by B2B companies and the benefits of using it remain
unclear (Järvinen et al., 2012). Further, Järvinen and
Karjaluoto (2015) suggested that it is crucial for the
organization to develop the appropriate metrics system to use
these tools effectively. This can be achieved by identifying
the correct business key performance indicators (KPIs) for the
organization with respect to crucial digital marketing goals. The
key issues to adopt these tools are:
organizations not being able to set appropriate metrics to
measure business impact;
limited understanding of digital marketing and
performance measurement by senior management; and
lack of monitoring and responsibility (Järvinen and
Karjaluoto, 2015).
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4.5 Social media capability
Social media capability is another theme that emerged from
SLR, though it is under-explored in extant literature. The sub-
themes under this topic were resource capability, organization
capabilities and information technology (IT) capabilities.
Social media capability is a function of dynamic organizational
capability, which has four levels, namely, technological,
operational, managed and strategic. Dynamic organizational
capability is a specific feature for the conceptualization of social
media capability. It focuses on organization capability to adapt,
integrate and restructure the company’s assets (Trainor et al.,
2011). Social media is categorized as a dynamic capability for
three reasons:
1 social media is continuously evolving because of fast-
paced technological changes and ever-changing user
behavior (Kane et al., 2014);
2 social media may undergo continuous change to align it
with B2B marketing strategy, which is key to competitive
advantage (Bolat et al., 2016); and
3 social media revolves around the individual behavior,
internet-based platforms and interaction between these
two, which is continuously evolving (Ngai et al., 2015).
Therefore, it is important to understand the dynamic
perspective of social media and behaviors (Leonardi,
2014).
The social media capability maturity model (SMCMM) was
proposed on the basis of social media capability dynamics for
B2B marketing. It helps an organization manage its social
media presence and sustain its competitive advantage (Wang
et al., 2017). SMCMM consists of four levels and suggest that
the organization should start building from developing dynamic
technological capabilities first to be able to use the benefits of
social media, and then move to develop operational capability
to analyze daily level routines such as content of posts,
frequency of posting, where to post, and how to post. It should
be backed by an iterative approach, followed by the
development of the managed capability to monitor adoption,
maintenance and evaluation, and finally, development of the
strategic level of capability to develop a culture of re-learning
and flexible decision-making. It should finally ingrain social
media capability within the organization by the development of
internal alignment and cross-functional collaboration, and a
chance to networking-based paradigm and community-focused
culture (Wang et al., 2017). Further, these four levels should be
aligned with each other for the organization to derive maximum
benefit.
The B2B sector is yet to fully leverage social media capability
like it is being used in the B2C industry. There needs to be
more research in evolving traditional intra-organizational
communication tools such as Yammer, Jive, Facebook
workplace and electronic data interchange systems. There is a
need to identify and leverage effective B2B social media tools
and customizing social media strategy for B2B marketing
besides the need for developing the right KPIs for adoption and
evaluation for B2B social media tools.
4.6 Value co-creation
Value co-creation is the sixth theme identified in the research
review. Traditionally, value creation has been understood as
 Digital marketing for B2B organizations
Neeraj Pandey, Preeti Nayal and Abhijeet Singh Rathore
suppliers creating value for their B2B customers. The
customers then examine and value the offerings (Ulaga, 2003).
However, recently, with the advent of the service-dominant
logic (Vargo and Lusch, 2010, 2008), the concept has been
redefined. Organizations are now competing on the basis of
their value chains and not just their core competencies. The
service-dominant logic also recommends creating value in
partnership with both suppliers and customers (Lusch and
Vargo, 2014). Again, not much is known about how and why
customers participate in value co-creation with the service
provider in the B2B context (MacDonald et al., 2011).
Generally, such B2B collaboration helps companies create
superior value through their product and service offerings, and
hence, it is advisable that B2B organizations consider this from
the perspective of long-term, gains (Ghosh and John, 1999).
Thomke and Von Hippel (2002) highlighted that co-creation
with customers may also happen after the initial prototype. The
customers suggest modifications after use of the product online
or offline and iterations in product design should be
accordingly carried out to make it more user-friendly.
Andersson and Axelsson (2018) mentioned that B2B
markets act as “networks” of actors, activities and resources.
This view was different from the traditional “markets-as-
markets” perspective. The connected relationship and
exchanges with networks lead to value co-creation (Vargo and
Lusch, 2010). The coordination and communication using the
latest technology would help in reaping the full benefits of such
B2B market networks.
4.7 Electronic marketing orientation
Every company has a unique approach toward e-marketing
adoption as per their business model and differentiation
strategy. For example, a company like Apple is innovation-
oriented, therefore, they focus on inventing unique products.
On the other hand, companies like Amazon are customer-
oriented, therefore, they focus on delighting the customers
(Berthon et al., 1999). Andersson and Axelsson (2018)
suggested developing and posting of content on relevant
discussion forums by B2B organizations for generating leads.
The electronic marketing orientation (EMO) helps in receiving
real time feedback of supplier and buyer and provides agility in
decision-making to the B2B organizations. This hold true for
small and medium enterprises (SMEs) also (Lancastre and
Lages, 2006). In the view of above, it can be concluded that
organization orientation helps to understand the variation of
adoption in the e-marketing approach among various types of
companies.
Shaltoni and West (2010) defined EMO as an organizational-
wide adoption phenomenon of adoption of web and related
technologies for interfacing with the customers. It consisted of
the philosophical and behavioral orientation of employees. The
philosophical level involved organizational orientation of looking
at customer processes and interaction with an e-marketing
approach. The behavioral orientation would involve the initiation
and implementation of e-marketing ideas. The EMO framework
consists of four components, namely, philosophical, initiation,
implementation and adaptation. Each component assists in
implementing social media applications (Habibi et al., 2015).
Further, the framework has been developed specifically for the
B2B industry; hence, it can explain marketing issues better.
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Shaltoni and West (2010) conceptualized and measured the
EMO of organizations to help B2B marketers benchmark their
social media adoption and realign their efforts and resources
toward the company’s long-term goals.
4.8 Critical success factors
Successful organizations focus on a set of factors that are
critical to their company to sustain and be competitive in this
fast-paced environment. Those factors are called critical
success factors (CSFs) and have been studied in the literature
by various authors (Huotari and Wilson, 2001). CSFs is also a
dominant research theme in the use of digital marketing by B2B
firms. Numerous studies have investigated the CSFs of brick
and mortar industries (Al-Mashari et al., 2006). However, there
is a dearth of research on the CSFs of online firms (Johnson,
2013). Eid et al. (2002) presented 21 CSFs for online B2B
marketing, grouped into five categories, namely, website, global
competitiveness, marketing strategy, internal and external.
4.8.1 Semi-structured interviews with experts
In the next phase, a semi-structured interview was conducted
with B2B marketing experts. The interview was conducted to
have first-hand information about B2B marketing issues,
particularly related to digital marketing aspects. It was ensured
that various industries were covered to get an overall view of
digital marketing issues in the B2B domain. Each interview
lasted for 45 6 15 min. It consisted of 11 B2B marketing
executives from diverse industries such as steel, tire, cloud
services, semiconductor and so on, and three marketing
academicians. The average experience of industry executives
was eight years, whereas the average experience of
academicians was 12 years. The interview had a question
emerged theme from literature review analysis, namely,
marketing communication, sales management, technology
adoption, decision support system, social media capability,
value co-creation, electronic market orientation and CSFs in
digital marketing for B2B organizations. The subtopics were
also taken as an aid for discussion wherever required. These
subtopics were used to nudge the respondent to talk more
about the issue. A sample of responses and building up of
themes from the semi-structured interview process is shown in
Table IV.
The key words obtained from the semi-structured interview
of B2B marketing executives were clubbed together. In the next
stage, similar keywords were collated in different groups. In the
last step, the emerging theme from these collated groups were
identified. The underlying focus of this semi-structured
interview was to identify the emerging themes in digital
marketing from B2B marketing executive perspective.
The majority of the B2B marketing executives informed that
infusion of digital technologies was increasing in their business
operations. It has not only helped them reduce manpower but
also brought enhanced accuracy in targeting clients and their
requirements. Some respondents informed that their
organization was already using machine learning and artificial
intelligence in their various functions such as marketing and
supply chain management. There were frequent mentions of
successful B2B organizations such as Rivigo, Indiamart,
Alibaba and Amazon Business; who have leveraged digital
technology to scale their business and deliver better and cost-
 Digital marketing for B2B organizations Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing
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Table IV Themes from semi-structured interviews

Grouping of key words (sr. no. source in
S. no Quote by respondent Keywords bracket) Theme
1 “Social media is going to be in-thing in digital Social media, digital Artificial intelligence, machine learning, online Machine
marketing in B2B firms in coming years” marketing and B2B firms purchasing, predict, organization buying learning
2 “My organization is now trying to bypass channel Bypass channel partners, patterns, machine learning, big data, B2B technologies
partners and connect to end consumers by using connect to end consumers, marketing trends, mining, leveraging analytics
artificial intelligence and machine learning” artificial intelligence and and artificial intelligence
machine learning
3 “Open Innovation is the key for B2B organization Open innovation, spur in
which is going to see spur in online selling and online selling and online
purchasing” purchasing
4 “Today choosing the right social media tool is key to Right social media tool, Social media, digital marketing, B2B firms, Social media
acquisition and retention of B2B clients” acquisition, retention and bypass channel partners, connect to end technologies
B2B clients consumers, analyze blogs, LinkedIn data,
5 “The B2B companies should be able to predict the Predict, organization buying research, social media, social media, listen to
organizational buying patterns using machine patterns, machine learning, end consumer and social media
learning and big data” big data
6 “The B2B organization should use the right social Right social media tool,
media tool to analyze the customer and market data” analyze, customer data and
market data
7 “My company relies on Buffer and Google Analytics Buffer, Google Analytics and Open innovation, spur in online selling, Open innovation
for analyzing the B2B marketing trends” B2B marketing trends empowering employees, innovate, external in a buyer–
8 “My organization mines and analyzes blog and Mining, analyzes blogs, agency and consortiums supplier
LinkedIn data for industry and customer insights” LinkedIn data, industry relationship
insights and customer
insights
9 “The mapping of social media tools with relevant Mapping, social media B2B clients, comprehensive case and Need for
B2B data and problems is missing in organizations” tools, B2B data and B2B comprehensive study comprehensive
problems studies
10 “Digital marketing in B2B companies is often a Digital marketing,
phenomenon seen in developed countries. I am yet to developed countries,
see it picking up in emerging economies like India” emerging economies and
India
11 “There is lesser research on social media marketing Research, social media, Right social media tool, acquisition, retention, Mapping of
being used in B2B firms in India and other developing India and developing right social media tool, acquisition, retention, social media
countries” countries buffer, industry insights, customer insights, tools
12 “Empowering employees to innovate using social Empowering employees, google analytics, mapping, social media tools,
media, external agency and consortiums is mantra of innovate, social media, B2B data and B2B problems
success in my company” external agency and
consortiums
13 “The digital marketing in B2B firms still in nascent Comprehensive case and Digital marketing, developed countries, Emerging
stage. I am not seen many comprehensive cases or comprehensive study emerging economies, India and developing economies
studies on it” countries and India context
14 “The B2B organizations of tomorrow have to listen to Listen to end consumer,
end consumers using social media by leveraging social media, leveraging
analytics, and artificial intelligence” analytics and artificial
intelligence

effective services. Few of the respondents talked about conflict
between online channel and offline channel within the same
organizations. Organizations were trying to take help of
technology to minimize this channel conflict.
5. Discussion and conclusions
A collaborative framework has been developed on the basis of
themes emerged from the existing research done on B2B digital
marketing. Figure 4 sums up the existing research, expert
interviews summarized (Table IV) and emerged themes from
literature review (Table V). The organizations target to achieve
higher sales productivity through digital marketing usage by
improving buyer-seller relationship, branding and higher RoI.
Organizations need to align their digital marketing activities
with EMO of the organization.
The term “collaborative” signifies the synergistic efforts of
the different teams within an organization to achieve business

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Neeraj Pandey, Preeti Nayal and Abhijeet Singh Rathore
Figure 4 A Collaborative framework from the existing research and
their linkages
Digital
Marketing
Capability
Social media
capability
Content
marketing
Advertising
Blogging
Electronic
Marketing
Analytics and Orientation
Technology
Adoption
Web analytics
Social media
monitoring
Machine
learning
Mobile Environmental Conditions
technology Innovative
adoption technological changes
Competition in market
performance enhancement. The digital marketing capability
and analytics adoption capability of the organization backed by
strong technology leads to electronic market orientation. The
themes emerging from the semi-structured interview also
highlight the importance of social media technologies, machine
learning and innovative mindset for business growth.
Our literature review revealed that most of the studies had
explored the influence of digital marketing on the supplier-side
of B2B functions. Also, in the past five years, scholars had
focused more on topics such as social media marketing, digital
marketing, marketing communications and sales in the context
of B2B marketing. The key contributions of the review are
summarized in Table V.
5.1 Academic implications
The review revealed that almost two-thirds of the research
studies were based in six developed countries, namely, the
USA, the UK, Australia, Finland, France and Canada. Firms
in developed countries often used digital marketing for B2B
marketing (Brennan and Croft, 2012). This presents an
opportunity to study this topic from regional perspectives. The
emerging economies such as India, Brazil and China have
different business environment and technology preparedness as
compared to developed markets. Hence, there is a need for the
study of country-specific factors affecting the adoption of
digital marketing by B2B firms.
Veldeman et al. (2017) found that 40.8 per cent of the IT
companies had a digital marketing strategy as against only
26.7 per cent of industrial B2B companies having it. This is
indicative of the growth potential of digital marketing in
B2B organizations in the coming years. As SMEs constitute
a sizeable chunk of B2B firms (Nandkeolyar et al., 2017),
more research should be conducted to quantify the increase
in marketing effectiveness gained from targeted digital
marketing strategies as opposed to traditional marketing
methods. The growth of B2B portals like Indiamart and
Alibaba, the e-commerce sector is also likely to attract more
research attention. On the basis of this review, we propose
Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing
Volume 35 · Number 7 · 2020 · 1191–1204
the following managerial implications and future research
directions for scholars and practitioners.
5.2 Managerial implications
The study has various implications for managers. First, the
social media strategy should be customized to match the
Business
company’s business priorities. Hence, managers should focus
Performance on developing the right set of KPIs for evaluating social media’s
Enhancement
Brand awareness success, which help company achieve its business objectives.
Interactivity
Return on The prioritization helps marketers to focus on pertinent goals of
investment (RoI)
Improved buyer- organization by reducing information overload. Furthermore,
supplier
relationships
managers should ensure that Web analytics team has sufficient
Sustainable resources to leverage and implement the B2B digital marketing
Value Co-
creation strategy. The KPI for the organizational B2B sales team
members should be linked to the planning and execution of
digital marketing in their sales and marketing efforts.
Second, while determining the CSFs for firms, managers
should conduct a strength, weakness, opportunity, threats
(SWOT) analysis of the organization. The environment in
which firms operate today continuously undergo changes.
Therefore, managers should keep a dynamic view of the firm’s
SWOT to revisit the CSFs.
Third, to optimally leverage the benefits of social media,
organizations should look to revise their human resource
recruitment policies. Social media campaigns from design to
implementation should be preferably handled by those
members of middle level management team who have sufficient
knowledge and expertise in social media. Human resource
managers should revise the job description for employees across
the organization (especially in customer facing functions such
as sales, marketing and so on) and select and train employees to
achieve proficiency in social media usage for professional
purposes. Fourth, companies should infuse digital marketing
through various sales training programs around Facebook,
LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter and blogs. For example,
YouTube can be leveraged by the organization for providing
online solutions for regular product issues faced by the client.
The video may show how to assemble the products and make
minor repairs by watching the given YouTube link. Similarly,
the blog may be used for marketing by showcasing client
success stories and by writing about product efficiency along
with its pictures and videos.
Fifth, under technology adoption, the managers should keep
in mind about the importance of “perceived loss of control.”
The TSM model has identified the user’s perceived loss of
control as a crucial variable for technology adoption. The
managers can conduct training programs for the adopted
technology for the B2B users to make them realize the control
that they have over the technology. Furthermore, as per TAM,
perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use are crucial
factors to adopt new technology. Therefore, managers can
incentivize opinion makers and influencers who can share the
usefulness of the adopted technology to a wider audience.
5.3 Proposed future directions
On the basis of our comprehensive literature review and
interview with the experts (Table IV), we suggest that future
researchers may explore the following aspects in the use of
digital marketing in B2B organizations:
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Neeraj Pandey, Preeti Nayal and Abhijeet Singh Rathore Volume 35 · Number 7 · 2020 · 1191–1204

Table V Summary of key contributions

Type of
S. no Authors Methodology Keywords Country study Findings
1 Michaelidou Survey of 1,000 SMEs of Social media, social networking The UK QualitativeThe study concluded that B2B companies
et al. (2011) the UK sites, B2B brands and SMEs were using SNS for attracting new
customers, maintaining long term
relationship with consumer and to increase
the brand awareness
2 Brennan and Text mining of 10 large Social media, Facebook, LinkedIn, The UK Exploratory B2B organizations are using almost all
Croft (2012) B2B companies blogging, podcasts and thought study prominent social networking sites such as
leadership Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogging
but all companies are not leveraging the
social media data
3 Wang et al. Five case studies based Social media apps, B2B East Asia Empirical The results suggest that communication
(2016) on face-to-face collaboration, communication, testing performance improve the business
interviews with the small and medium enterprises and performance of B2B companies by taking
senior managers/owners media synchronicity theory care of innovation, marketing and
of SME collaboration
4 Holliman From 5 industry 15 key Internet marketing, value, brand, The UK Qualitative For the effective social media strategy of
and Rowley informants of company B2B marketing, metrics and social B2B organizations, the content should be
(2014) interviewed media marketing valuable, appealing, relevant and timely
5 Swani et al. Content analysis of Services marketing, Facebook, The USA Quantitative B2B content strategy is more effective
(2013) Facebook messages from marketing communications, B2B when they include corporate brand name
Fortune 193 companies marketing and social media and avoid commercialization. Counting
advertising emotional sentiments were also very
crucial for effective social media strategy or
to spread e-WOM in today’s scenario as
one like has potential to increase the likes
by 130 times
6 Gruner and Survey from 208 large B2B engagement, digital media Australia Quantitative It says rather than having presence in
Power Australian organizations integration, quantitative large- and the multiple social media sites for inter-
(2017) scale empirical exploration and Netherlands organizational relationships the B2B
social media platform preference company should focus on few specific
social media sites
7 Veldeman Survey of 92 Belgian B2B B2B, social media, technology Belgium Exploratory Results suggest that B2B IT company’s
et al. (2017) companies acceptance model, TAM and study/ usage of social media is higher than
adoption qualitative industrial companies as they find it more
useful then industrial companies
8 Ewelina Survey of 181 users Social media sites, technology The UK and Empirical The findings suggest that marketer’s
Lacka, Alain acceptance model, usability, China testing perception of the usability, utility and
Chong technology adoption and B2B usefulness of social media sites enable the
adoption and use in B2B sector
9 Wang et al. Five case studies-SMEs Social media apps, B2B New Empirical Based on MST (media synchronicity theory)
(2016) collaboration, communication, Zealand testing this study first time examined the
small and medium enterprises and and China relationship between capabilities of SMA
media synchronicity theory (social media analytics) and business
performance in B2B context
10 Habibi et al. Not available Marketing, Social media, Australia Conceptual EMO-(Philosophical, initiation,
(2015) implementation, marketing Paper implementation and adaptation) has been
communication, business-to- used to address the issue in implementing
business marketing, e-marketing social media for B2B. Findings suggest that
orientation each part of EMO consist of different
challenges
11 Virtsonis Content analysis of Brand management, online Greece and Qualitative A framework was proposed to show
and corporate Web pages of operations, printing industry, the the UK website communication in B2B
Harridge 30 UK print suppliers UK marketplace
(2008)
(continued)

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Table V

Type of
S. no Authors Methodology Keywords Country study Findings
12 Wang et al. Survey of 190 business Business-to-business marketing, The USA Experimental Findings suggest that co-innovation
(2016) professionals social media, social influence, and the UK practices in online platforms can enhance
online communities, co-innovation brand awareness in a B2B organization
and brand awareness
13 Johnson 58 in-depth semi- Critical success factors, e-market The UK Qualitative The study reported that each industry has
(2013) structured interviews of capabilities, strategic fit, dynamic its own set of unique factors, which are
senior executives capabilities, buyers and suppliers responsible for e-market success
14 Järvinen and Case study approach Case study, digital marketing, Finland Qualitative The findings suggest that a B2B firm need
Karjaluoto with seven industrial and industrial business, performance to analyze the situation of the firm deeply
(2015) seven service firms measurement and Web analytics and should have clear aim in mind to use
any particular marketing metric systems
15 Min Lee and Face-to-face interview of Technology acceptance model South Empirical The results suggested that combining
Park (2008) wholesalers managers (TAM), mobile technology Korea testing perceived loss of control, user satisfaction
from alcoholic beverage and TAM explains the B2B market
companies performance model in a more effective way
16 Barac et al. Survey of 78 participants B2B, relationship quality, Serbia Quantitative Findings suggest that relationship
(2017) relationship marketing and partner capability, social and analytical PRM
relationship management (partner relationship management)
influence relationship quality
17 Meire et al. Secondary data Social media, business-to- Belgium Quantitative Facebook was found to be most
(2017) business, customer acquisition and and the informative data source to acquire B2B
predictive analytics USA customer and work better with other
websites, which contain complementary
information
18 Swani et al. Analysis on Fortune 500 Business-to-business, Facebook, The USA Exploration The findings suggest that including
(2017) companies’ brand posts marketing communications, social of factors corporate brand names, emotional and
media and word of mouth functional messages and information
search cues enhances the popularity of B2B
messages as compared to B2C
19 Swani et al. Analysis on 289 Fortune B2B advertising, Twitter, The USA Quantitative This study suggested that B2B and B2C
(2014) 500 companies tweets longitudinal content analysis, social media strategy are different from
Message appeals and social media each other in engaging consumers
Note: eWOM = Electronic word of mouth

5.3.1 Machine learning technologies
Research on the use of digital marketing in the B2B sector
should investigate big data analytics and performance
management in terms of customer retention and conversion.
Another important and upcoming area of research that
emerged from the literature analysis and expert interview was
the use of predictive analytics, machine learning and artificial
intelligence for digital marketing in the B2B organizations. The
B2B marketing executives highlighted that digital marketing
campaign management used machine learning and
visualization software for online monitoring of the
advertisement impact in terms of impressions and reach. The
digital marketing managers accordingly change the content or
marketing communication channel to get the optimal campaign
results. The B2B organizations were using Martech tools such
as Google AdWords and AdSense, SalesForce, Google
Analytics, LinkedIn and Hootsuite for engaging clients. The
organizations can also leverage the machine learning tools to
understand past pricing trends and other related variables such
as competitor pricing and customer behavior, to provide
personalized pricing bids to different customers. This has been
a consistent emerging theme in the literature on B2B TAMs,
decision-support systems, social media capability and
electronic market orientation. Future researchers may study
how machine learning technologies were reshaping digital
marketing investment decisions in B2B organizations.
5.3.2 Mapping of social media tools for business-to-business
organizations
Although social media has been adopted by numerous
companies, not many have been able to optimize its use. The
comprehensive mapping of social media tools with specific B2B
problems and type of data is missing like it has been done for
B2C organizations. Firms were not fully aware of the potential
of social media tools for strategic purposes in B2B
organizations (Järvinen et al., 2012; Michaelidou et al., 2011).
Some authors have attributed this to the lack of clarity about
the systematic approach needed to adopt social media
(Karjaluoto et al., 2015). The literature review analysis showed
a growing interest in B2B firms in social media analytics. The
same was confirmed during the semi-structured interview with

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Neeraj Pandey, Preeti Nayal and Abhijeet Singh Rathore
B2B marketing experts who emphasized that it is going to be
one of the critical inputs in marketing investment decision-
making. Therefore, future researchers should consider
developing a roadmap for B2B firms for adopting and
leveraging social media marketing in a smooth and systematic
way. Furthermore, future researchers should explore this issue
further from multiple dimensions such as enhancing product
awareness, brand equity, customer relationship management,
lead generations and sales.
5.3.3 Open innovation in a buyer–supplier relationship
Managing the buyer–supplier relationship is crucial to a
company’s growth. Emerging technologies such as open
innovation, software-as-a-service, Salesforce CRM, cloud
computing, big data and social media, have opened up new
opportunities to manage this relationship (Obal and Lancioni,
2013). In open innovation, the best practices were adopted
from social media, external agency and consortiums, and it was
gaining attention in the B2B sector. The semi-structured
interview threw interesting insights as to how the organization
was innovating using crowdsourcing and co-creating content
with channel partners and moving to next practices in digital
marketing in B2B organizations. Open innovation can offer
various benefits, including a better perspective on competition,
improved R&D efforts and reduced costs (Gassmann et al.,
2010). This has been frequently discussed theme in the
marketing literature, however, there are hardly any studies on it
in the B2B space. Researchers should focus on this topic to help
B2B firms take advantage of the open innovation approach.
5.3.4 Need for comprehensive studies
A comprehensive study should be conducted to understand,
which social networking platform(s) has the highest impact on
B2B sales. A 2017 study (Meire et al., 2017) noted that
Facebook is the most informative data source to qualify
prospects and can be complemented with the other data
sources. The use of Facebook in the digital marketing strategy
also improved predictive performance. However, the study only
analyzed data from one company. Perhaps, if the sample could
be expanded to include multiple organizations of varying sizes,
one can evaluate predictive performance using data from other
social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter and
YouTube. The interview with experts highlighted the need for
longitudinal study across digital platforms involving B2B
organizations. It would help in providing insights about the
effectiveness of platforms and help map it with a particular type
of campaign and B2B problem.
5.3.5 More studies for performance measurement tools
Marketers use analytics to measure customer interaction with
websites. Despite a high adoption rate, prompted by free tools
such as Google Analytics, academic research on the subject is
limited in the B2B domain. As digital marketing in the B2B
sector grows, analytics is likely to play a crucial role in
organizational success to measure the performance. To date,
few B2B firms have managed to take advantage of Web
analytics (Järvinen and Karjaluoto, 2015). Among analytics,
Web analytics is the most important tool to measure
performance. There were other analytics tools such as Tableau,
statistical analysis system, NViVo and so on that are becoming
popular because of fast changing B2B business scenario. For
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Volume 35 · Number 7 · 2020 · 1191–1204
example, with the innovation in social media, new social
analytics tools were being developed by organizations to
measure the social behavior of customers. Michaelidou et al.
(2011) stated that B2B organizations were not actively
measuring the social media performance. Therefore, it
indicates that future researchers have a vast horizon to explore
the opportunities in B2B social media analytics. Furthermore,
these analytics tools have helped in efficiently collecting and
analyzing the data in real time for measuring market
performance. Future researchers may use these big data in
various forms to generate newer B2B customer insights.
5.3.6 Emerging economies context
Given that digitization, internet, and social media are gaining
steady ground in developing countries, researchers should
focus on the use of these technologies in the B2B industry to
understand their region-specific implications. Further, given
the cultural, demographic and behavioral differences between
developed nations and emerging countries, researchers have
ample opportunities to explore how customer needs and
preferences are significantly different across regions. The
experts also highlighted that there were fewer research studies
available on digital marketing practices in B2B organizations in
emerging economies context. Many of the organizations were
replicating the digital marketing practices used by firms located
in developed countries. There is a need for more research on
digital marketing practices in a B2B organization, which may
lead to the development of new frameworks, scale and
performance metrics in an emerging economies context.
6. Conclusion
The focus of this study was to answer the following question:
how much research has been done so far in digital marketing
usage in the B2B domain and what were the potential research
scope for future? To achieve the objective of the research,
various research articles were reviewed regarding digital
marketing usage in B2B. Various emerging themes were
identified and most of them have been confirmed with semi-
structured interviews with the industry experts. Conclusively, it
can be said that academic research in the field of B2B digital
marketing is still in its embryonic state. Also, it is not being
exploited from a strategic point of view but still being used at a
tactical level. The analytics, machine learning and performance
measurement domain are likely to be the most exciting fields for
research in the area of B2B digital marketing. Future
researchers can also analyze the case studies of various
companies to figure out the extent to which B2B digital
marketing has been used to create a competitive advantage for
the organizations.
The study has a limitation in terms of its empirical
dimensions. The future studies may conduct a meta-analysis of
papers on digital marketing in B2B space. The empirical study
may be based on experimental or survey data, which would
investigate a specific digital marketing phenomenon such as
buyer behavior, branding, RoI, attribution model or campaign
management in a B2B context. This new framework on B2B
digital marketing practices can be further improved by
empirically testing with business customer data. Also, the
future study may take into consideration the journal rank and
citations over the frequency of publications for the evaluation of
 Digital marketing for B2B organizations
Neeraj Pandey, Preeti Nayal and Abhijeet Singh Rathore
influential authors in a particular domain. Finally, as each
industry is different with respect to the approach followed to
implement B2B digital marketing, therefore, future researchers
can customize the framework for various industries such as
manufacturing, IT, fast moving consumer goods and
healthcare.
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 Digital marketing for B2B organizations
Neeraj Pandey, Preeti Nayal and Abhijeet Singh Rathore
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B2B e-marketplace: an e-marketing framework for B2B
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About the authors
Neeraj Pandey is an Associate Professor of Marketing at
NITIE Mumbai. He did his Post-Doc at Johns Hopkins
University, the USA in the area of healthcare pricing. He
has authored two books besides publications in reputed
international journals. He received the “Best Teacher”
award by NITIE Mumbai; “AIMS-IRMA Outstanding
Management Researcher Award” by AIMS International
and “Young Management Researcher” award by Higher
Education Forum (HEF). His research interests are B2B
marketing, digital marketing and pricing. Neeraj Pandey is
the corresponding author and can be contacted at:
npandey@nitie.ac.in
Preeti Nayal is a Fellow (PhD) student at NITIE Mumbai.
Her thesis work is on digital coupon redemption in the
entertainment industry. Her research interests are pricing and
digital marketing.
Abhijeet Singh Rathore completed his post-graduation
from NITIE Mumbai. He is working as Senior Consultant at
Intrigo Systems Inc. after stints at Abbott and Deloitte. His
research interests are B2B marketing, CRM and supply chain