It's a new year and a new era for b2b marketers.

As the economy begins to improve and budgets increase—particularly for online—marketers say they are entering a new world of marketing in which all things are driven by data, insight and engagement with their target audiences.

To identify the following top 10 trends of 2011, BtoB talked to marketers, ad agency executives and industry experts.

While marketers have gradually been moving more of their budgets online over the past decade, the last two years saw the pace accelerate as companies looked for lower-cost, more accountable ways to reach their audiences during the recession.

At the same time, online technologies continued to improve, offering marketers more effective ways to engage users, from streaming video to virtual events.

This year, 78.5% of b2b marketers plan to increase their online budgets, according to BtoB's “2011 Outlook: Marketing Priorities and Plans” survey (see story, below). One-third of b2b marketers said more than half of their total budget will be spent online, according to the survey. “To me, everything is digital, from media buying to segmentation,” said Mich Mathews, senior VP-central marketing group at Microsoft Corp., which has been moving more of its marketing budget online, particularly for b2b efforts.

The continued shift to digital is driving investments, strategy and creative for b2b marketers this year and is shaping many of the other major trends.

“We all know we are in a period of revolutionary change for the world of marketing overall, which is every bit as significant a change as what the telcos went through with the Internet and the entertainment industry with digital media,” said Michael Metz, senior director-Web marketing and strategy at Cisco Systems.

Metz said this change is driven by the fact that the Internet is the central platform of communications for businesses, customers and prospects. “When we're on the Internet—whether Facebook, or LinkedIn, or an iPad app or Cisco.com—we leave a digital footprint behind,” he said. “This digital stream is a terrific opportunity for marketers to engage with prospects and customers in ways they have not done before, to know their likes and interests, and to help organizations be successful.”

Rick Segal, worldwide president of GyroHSR, New York, declared in a speech in Berlin last month that advances in technology have “rendered the practice of business-to-business marketing totally obsolete.”

Segal said that in a world where executives are always in an “at-work” state of mind as a result of handheld devices and other technologies, marketers need to rethink the ways in which they communicate with business audiences.

As marketers strive to connect with business executives at work and at home, they are getting much more personal and emotional.

“The distinction between b2b companies and b-to-c companies is artificial,” said Marty Homlish, global CMO at software company SAP. “At the end of the day, it is all about business-to-people.”

SAP did significant customer research last year through social media, events and online communities to find out more about what its users want, and the result was a new campaign called “Run Better,” featuring customers such as Harley-Davidson, NEC Corp. and Sharp Electronics Corp.

The TV, print and online ads are energetic and edgy, with much more of a consumer feel, although the subject matter is distinctly b2b.

Other recent b2b campaigns, from United Parcel Service of America's “We Love Logistics” to Hewlett-Packard Co.'s “Let's Do Amazing,” showcase business users but use a more personal, engaging approach.

B2b marketers will get much more sophisticated at mining customer data and making that information the focal point of their communications.

“Our priorities are being shaped by the landscape of our clients, and the way our clients and prospects are consuming information, and the way they are buying,” said John Kennedy, VP-corporate marketing at IBM Corp. “Marketing itself is becoming so data-driven and empirical, it is stepping closer to the convergence of art and science.”

IBM acquired 17 companies last year to increase its focus on data-driven marketing, from Coremetrics (analytics) to Netezza Corp. (data warehousing). “As we roll out and apply new technologies, it will allow us to be that much more analytical and data-driven, in everything from contact selection to our offering selection to the ways in which we communicate,” Kennedy said.

Other b2b marketers agreed it's all about the data. “The opportunity we have as marketers is to mine that data and use that data in ways that increase our ability to have conversations, and interactions and insights about our customers to help our customers be successful,” Cisco's Metz said.

As marketing techniques and data-mining programs get more sophisticated and personal, so do the metrics used to evaluate these efforts.

“We are seeing more and more of our marketing partners extend their Web analytics to include score-card analysis that brings in performance metrics from touch points—such as call center and postal direct response data—that are beyond pure Web activity,” said Gary Slack, chairman-chief experience officer at Slack and Co., Chicago.

Many agencies and marketers are developing new metrics based on customer intelligence across multiple platforms.

BusinessOnLine, San Diego, developed an analytics program for Cisco called predictive engagement score that analyzes data from such multiple touch points as call centers, online registrations and lead-generation programs to predict how and when users and companies will purchase products. “We are trying to connect all the different panels of data, understand where companies are in the purchase cycle and when they are getting ready to buy,” said Amanda Kahlow, director of customer intelligence at BusinessOnLine.

Social media has become an integral part of marketing for b2b companies, with 62.6% of marketers planning to increase their spending on such channels this year, according to BtoB's “2011 Outlook” survey.

Look for marketers to go beyond dabbling in social media (such as creating a Facebook fan page) to making it mainstream in their marketing programs—no longer simply buying advertising on social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn but optimizing their social media content.

“SMO [social media optimization] as opposed to SEO [search engine optimization] will become hot,” said Paul Dunay, global director of services and social media at Avaya Inc.

“After almost 10 years of search engine marketing, keywords are maxed out and people are looking for a good alternative,” he said. “You can use Facebook advertising for b2b; you can target company names; you can target titles within firms; and you can target fans of other pages. It is much more cost-effective than search engine marketing.”

As more and more marketing channels roll out, including social media networks, landing pages, blogs and thought leadership events, marketers must continuously create and maintain content used for marketing purposes.

According to a study published by Junta42 in September, 51% of b2b marketers said they will increase their content marketing budgets this year, and content marketing will make up 26% of overall b2b marketing budgets.

To develop all this content, b2b marketers are turning to ad agencies, hiring staff, and using customers and partners to develop content for blogs, websites and other channels.

“One way we are feeding the content machine is by hiring journalists,” said Mark Wilson, VP-corporate marketing at Sybase Inc. “As all content has become much more social, journalists are really good at being able to write in a more social way than traditional people producing content like white papers and solution briefs. We are also getting more people in our organizations—such as brand evangelists and product marketing people—to write more, and we're pulling content around our products from our customers.”

The role of media companies is also being expanded as marketers turn to them to help develop integrated programs that go beyond advertising to more in-depth content. “Advertisers should start looking at media partners not just as magazines but as content providers, as people are looking for more information and thoughtful content,” said Chris Philip, senior VP-chief experience officer at Doremus, New York.

For example, last fall Doremus partnered with Scientific American to create a thought-leadership content program for client Quintiles, a pharmaceutical services company.

The partnership included a 110-page custom publication by Scientific American called “Pathways,” which explored challenges in today's health environment; an excerpt from “Pathways” that ran in the October issue of The Economist; and a microsite with online videos, blogs and discussion groups around the content.

“If advertisers start thinking about the media as resources as opposed to an advertising source, it becomes a different conversation,” Philip said.

With the debut of the Apple iPad last year and the proliferation of other tablet readers—more than a dozen were announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this month—mobile apps are finally proving to be a valid model for publishers and advertisers.

Business publications such as Forbes and The Wall Street Journal have introduced mobile apps for the iPad and other tablet devices, while News Corp. is readying an iPad-only publication called TheDaily.com.

Some publishers are rolling out industry-specific mobile apps, such as Farm Progress, which last month introduced a Growing Degree Days app for the Android and iPhone that provides crop management tools for farmers. “Producers like the wide array of information they can access, and ag marketers have a rich selection of tools to reach their audience to build product awareness, image and brand expansion in the marketplace,” said Jeff Lapin, president of Farm Progress.

In addition to advertising on the mobile versions of publications, marketers are rolling out mobile apps of their own, such as Bank of America's mobile banking app for the BlackBerry and FedEx Corp.'s tracking app for the iPhone. EMarketer recently projected that mobile ad spending will reach $1.1 billion this year, up 48% over last year.

As content is continuously being updated on social networks, websites, discussion groups and other online destinations, search engines are reflecting this “live” content in results.

In September, Google rolled out Google Instant, which uses predictive technology to display search results as a user is typing keywords in the search pane.

“These developments and continued future moves in this direction will motivate marketers to make more frequent, targeted content updates on their sites and in social media in order to take maximum advantage of organic search,” said Slack and Co.'s Slack.

According to a survey last fall by BtoB and Business.com, 57% of b2b marketers said improving search results is a key goal of their social media efforts. As search technology continues to reflect immediacy in content, marketers will place even more emphasis this year on developing, distributing, tracking and optimizing the huge amount of content going out across multiple channels.