Every company needs a marketing strategy to plan for the future. A strategy works as a sort of road map for all of your marketing activations throughout time. But what exactly goes into these strategies? For a lot of companies 2020, automation and personalization of content is going to be the next big step in marketing tactics. Trends change every year, and companies need to understand the next big step. We reached out to a few friends to weigh in on what every marketing strategy needs in 2020.

If you own a business in 2020, you know all about having to stay relevant to your customer base. Whether you want to continue to be innovative or not, the simple truth is that inaction will do far greater harm than pushing your business out of its comfort zone. The best way to transform your business and change with the times is by implementing a digital marketing strategy. Digital marketing is the tool to take your business to the next level and keep up with your audience's expectations.

Outsourcing your marketing department might be the best decision that you can make for your business. Not only does it dramatically reduce your expenses, but it frees up your time to focus on the day-to-day details of your business. But how do you find a marketing agency that’s the right fit for your company? Before you decide on your marketing agency, take the time to do some work on the front-end of things. When you’re looking for the perfect fit, it’s important to know exactly what you want to accomplish, what services the agency offers, and their track record with other companies.

There’s a point in the sales funnel where the prospect is handed off to the next team member. Specifically, this is the point of the funnel where the marketing hands off prospects to sales and sales pass prospects to an account executive. The middle of the funnel is like a valve. At this point, you can expand lead quality definitions to pass a higher volume of leads to your sales team, or even tighten the definitions to give them a more specific segment of qualified leads. In the middle of the funnel, marketing facilitates the hand-off to sales. For this hand-off, content is created to engage and educate leads to identify who is interested in making a purchase. This part of the funnel has the biggest potential for marketing and sales to not completely align, so it requires the most attention. Below, we have some tips for how to prevent leads from going cold in the middle of the funnel.

Staying relevant in your industry is harder than ever. Every industry is overly saturated with companies fighting for the attention of their audience. Each company has its own way to provide value, and it can be really difficult to convince your customers that you provide a more valuable product than your competition. For this reason, you need to be able to set yourself apart from the rest of the pack to survive. Search engine optimisation is a great strategy to not only maximise the visits to your website, but it can also keep your efforts relevant and competitive in a saturated market. Below, we have some of the ways that search engine optimization can benefit the marketing performance of your business.  

For any business, customers are the number one priority. If we continue to look at customers as just a means of bringing in money, we are going to miss the opportunity to nurture a strong connection with them. Loyalty is more than a returning customer and multiple purchases: it’s the line between whether they will refer your company to their friends, engage with you on social media, and commit to advocating for you. No amount of money can buy a customer's trust. 

Are you satisfied with your content marketing practices? Improving our daily marketing tactics is an ongoing, cyclical process that requires a good bit of testing to get right. Content marketing is a great tool for educating and informing your customers, but it’s important to make sure that our content is optimized to perform as well as it possibly can. Below, we’ve got some tips and techniques for improving your content marketing to increase engagement with your audience.

What does the future of marketing look like? The marketing industry is constantly changing in the face of several different challenges, and marketers should be prepared to change with it. Staying ahead of trends is never an easy job, but it makes a huge difference in preparing for the future. As we move further into 2020, take the time to establish what your marketing priorities should be and what steps you can take to meet each priority in the years to come.

Winning over prospective customers is never an easy task. You have to demonstrate that you are capable of delivering on what your product promises. Writing case studies are a perfect way to showcase your company’s ability to follow through on what you provide. A case study examines the customer’s challenge or pain point and what it took to get a solution. They can vary in length, but the case study should measure success using metrics that your client has agreed upon. A well-written case study shows the positive impact your business has on your customer base. Below, we discuss how to write a case study that will attract new leads.

In an omnichannel marketing approach, it’s all about creating a personalized and consistent customer experience, no matter what platform they are using to engage with your brand. This means that the experience should be consistent across all channels: social media, customer service, website, brick and mortar, and email campaigns. Email campaigns are especially important because they are at the centre of your customer’s digital life and can drive the highest ROI among other digital communication channels. Below, we’ve got four benefits of email marketing in an omnichannel marketing approach.