Many marketing trends are gaining steam this year. As the economy continues to expand, several shifts in how brands are embracing marketing are rising to the top. Let’s explore five trends below.
1. Alignment Of Sales And Marketing
Sales and marketing are no longer living separately for many brands. Over the past several years, the business development professionals in our organization have seen a clear shift in prospect engagement when sales activities are supported by marketing and content. For years, our ability to secure prospect meetings was tied to our ability to craft good scripts and make strong sales calls. In today’s environment, prospects want the ability to research and gather information before deciding to spend time with the business development team. Injecting well-designed marketing content and automation throughout the sales process has now become of paramount importance in securing appointments.
“Smarketing" is a term often used in sales and marketing circles and speaks to the proper alignment and synchronization of sales and marketing. According to HubSpot, companies who practice good smarketing generate 208% more revenue from their marketing efforts.
Proper alignment of sales and marketing can begin by creating open communication channels between departments. Our organization has regular meetings that include sales and marketing teams. Our teams share marketing campaign calendars, discuss content ideas, craft call scripts and define processes.
2. A Focus On Brand Reputation
Building brand awareness and trust can help a business secure longer-term customers. I believe that a continuous focus on brand and reputation through digital and physical outlets is going to be vital in the years to come.
With technology advancing, it’s becoming easier for almost anyone to set up a business online. It’s also becoming harder for many consumers to make decisions about products and services due to the vast number of options.
Brands that can own a niche, continually provide third-party validation and establish strong credibility will likely be able to stay ahead.
In the marketing and advertising industry, our organization sees competitors crop up daily — many with very few clients and limited experience. We find that continuing to leverage our strong client base through client testimonials, earn national exposure through major media outlets and maintain a strong brand presence through our digital assets allows us to hold our place as a leader in our industry.
3. Customer Segmenting
Segmenting customers and communicating to each segment through a voice that speaks to the specific cohort is becoming a standard for many brands. With all the data available to businesses, it’s becoming a necessity to perform the proper research on audiences and target customers the correct way. This includes not only segmenting existing customers into proper buckets but also segmenting prospects when looking for new business.
Finding new customers by targeting consumers who are going through major life events can be a unique method of segmentation that can generate a strong pool of new customers. Families moving into new homes are a prime example. Our company has tested new mover segmentation across many verticals for many years. Targeting a tight segment (in this case new movers) and connecting this segment with relevant content produces a significant lift in response rates. With traditional media such as direct mail, our company has seen response rates of over 20% with a very low cost per client acquisition (the average return rate for direct mail campaigns is generally 2% or less, reports Chron). New mover targeting through digital channels is showing similar results.
4. Leaning Toward All-In-One Solutions
With brands like Amazon offering a one-stop-shop for consumers, the trend is now shifting to business operators as well. Utilizing an all-encompassing solution for sales, marketing and company growth is becoming a necessity for many businesses. With companies like Square offering point-of-sale services as well as loans, payroll and inventory management, businesses don’t have to manage as many vendor relationships and can operate in a single interface for most needs.
While consolidation continues and more single-sign-on solutions are becoming available, it’s often still difficult to find total solutions for everything. Being thoughtful about vendor selection can be beneficial as you prepare for future integrations.
5. Data Remaining King
Artificial intelligence, predictive modeling, machine learning — these terms are circulating in the news every day, but what do they mean, and how do they benefit businesses? These technologies all use data to forge a better path for solving problems and predicting outcomes. They aren’t just for Fortune 100 companies anymore, though. Data collection and data capture are becoming a norm for small and midsize businesses as well. Many new tools are coming to market to help drive value from data.
Through our work with local business owners, we’ve seen a significant increase in interest in the data tracking and analysis tools we offer. Our organization uses demographic and sociographic information to help determine audiences for social media to drive the best response. We also employ algorithms to determine which colors work best for specific demographics based on a specific advertisement.
Capturing and storing data is the first step in building a predictive modeling solution. Software tools like Salesforce Einstein, Tableau and many others can then help you manage and understand that data.
As the year progresses, evaluate your marketing tactics and gauge the effectiveness of your strategies. The marketing landscape is ever-changing, and staying focused on trends that are gaining momentum can help when making longer-term marketing decisions.
