Meanwhile, if you asked those in B2B companies (like I used to work in), they would tell you that not much had changed except for putting up a website. But the convenience of online research was catching on in B2B businesses, where buyers were bypassing sales representatives and trade shows and going to a website instead.
In my case, I joined a startup with a complex product that was pinning their hopes on non-digital channels and weren’t engaging with buyers digitally. Sales started to slip and a few months later, they went out of business. Frustrated and out of a job, I wondered why if all their marketing had hurt their ability to make a profit. Digital marketing platforms hadn’t worked for B2B in early Internet days, but could they?