In pursuit of an effective B2B digital marketing strategy in an emerging market

In business markets, firms operating in developing economies deal with burgeoning use of the internet, new electronic purchase methods, and a wide range of social media and online sales platforms. However, marketers are unclear about the pattern of influence of firm-initiated (i.e., paid media, owned media, and digital inbound marketing) and market-initiated (i.e., earned social media and organic search) digital communications on B2B sales and customer acquisition. We develop and test a model of digital echoverse in an emerging market B2B context, using vector autoregressive modeling to analyze a unique 132-week dataset from a Brazilian hub firm operating in the marketplace. We find empirical evidence supporting our conceptual framework in emerging markets. Underscoring the importance of a market development approach for emerging markets, the findings show that owned media and digital inbound marketing play a bigger role in influencing customer acquisition. Impressions generated through earned social media complement owned media, but not paid media. These insights highlight the notion that while sources of digital echoverse may remain the same across countries, its components exert a particular pattern of influence in an emerging market context. This is expected to encourage managers to rethink their digital strategies for B2B customer acquisition and sales enhancement while operating in emerging markets.

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