With New Year just around the corner, salespeople and marketers are looking towards trends and prospecting channels in 2019 which will allow them to sell better and scale faster. While understanding what the future will bring is a difficult undertaking, typically strategies for the New Year are based on experience and what is commonly known as a “guestimate.”
As the founder of Cloudlead, a fast scaling B2B sales intelligence company, I’ve learned a thing or two about forecasting future trends and of strategies which can bring about an explosion of sales (if done right!). So based on my experience and guesstimate, here are the following strategies and marketing channels that will work in 2019.
Content Marketing (Video + Content)
This is one prospecting channel which will be a big hit in not just the upcoming New Year, but also far into the future – especially video content. According to the State of Video Marketing Survey in 2017, 81% companies experienced an increase in sales through video marketing. Similarly, 85% of businesses would like to create more video content in 2018, according to Buffer. Furthermore, in terms of blogging, marketers will continue focusing on quality content which is personalized towards their site visitors.
It is therefore essential for marketers and salespeople to understand their audience in order to hold their interest. As in 2018 and for the foreseeable future, this will be done by creating content which one’s readers find important and useful. This will lead to your blog becoming a valuable and irreplaceable source of information for your audience.
The key is not to give up. Over the years, the effectiveness of content marketing strategies have been growing steadily with more than 60% of B2B marketers reporting that their strategies are more effective in 2017 than they were the year before (according to Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs).
Direct Marketing (Cold Email)
According to the Rain Group, center for sales research, 80% of prospective buyers prefer to be contacted by email. I have often seen that people assume this is a part of the “spray and pray approach”. What that basically implies is that you throw a bunch of information at the consumer and hope for the best which, more often than not, is actually very annoying.
However, I’d have to disagree. Using and acquiring highly accurate data to supercharge your direct and online marketing campaigns is probably the best thing you can do for scaling sales. Even today, many B2B companies do not use market segmentation to customize their strategies to the needs of their different types of customers.
Read more: How To Supercharge Your Sales With Targeted Data
Social Selling & Marketing
A common term used (but not always practiced) by SDR’s and marketers is “social selling.” Social selling is not messaging or posting on social media, instead it is creating a network and engaging with your audience with focused and useful content. Also, for social selling to work, you do not need to focus on one source, i.e. social media, instead you can target your leads through several mediums such as emails or advertisements to skyrocket your conversions.
Public Relations
In a highly interconnected ecosystem, PR is something that impacts brand image and brand loyalty directly. Activities like public speaking, releasing the right content at the right time and to some extent podcasts, conferences etc., are crucial for personalizing your brand.
Think of modern PR as a part of all your marketing and sales strategies. From showcasing the people behind your team on your social media pages to speaking at conferences, fireside chats etc., everything counts towards convincing prospects that you genuinely care about them.
Bonus Point: Personalization With The Right Data
This is not a tactic, but more of a method which can boost all your strategies tenfold. We will definitely see an increment in how much personalization marketers and salespeople use in their prospecting efforts. For this, I guarantee that the future is highly researched leads for optimal email and outreach results. Augmented information for better targeting can also be used for setting up detailed analytics and tracking. Ultimately, this helps with understanding what your prospects want and how to deliver a highly personalized experience to them.
In Short
While these prospecting channels are bound to impact your brand and sales, they comprise of only the first stage of your funnel (i.e. acquisition). As always, the channels you use should depend on your niche, product and objectives. You can have thousands of visitors through the best channels, but you also have to convert them into leads, and then into loyal clients.
From my personal experience at Cloudlead, I have learned numerous lessons and the most important one is that once you start this process, you have to carry through and remain dedicated. As always, with marketing and sales it is important to understand that targeted sales and marketing is the fastest way to scale your business.
Words we live by: The team at Cloudlead believes in the importance of freshly researched leads with the right analytics and sales intelligence on prospects. We provide B2B data to customers based on their ideal customer profile with a combination of human analysts and machine learning tools – ask us for a demo today!
