Ready for a new decade? There’s nothing more exciting than looking at the path ahead. But for marketers at small and medium businesses (SMBs), the road ahead may feel intimidating — technology is rapidly changing, digitization is in demand, new channels are arising, and marketing automation is more common than ever.
With that being said, 2020 is the year where humanizing the marketing experience has become a main topic of discussion and putting the customer at the center is the primary goal. To help launch this new year, we’re sharing marketing tactics that will help drive the most growth for SMBs.
Double Down On the Customer’s Experience
Customer experience (CX) is all the rage right now. There’s not a marketer out there who isn’t talking about how important CX is to marketing strategy. In Salesforce’s most recent State of the Connected Customer report, 84% of customers said the experience is as important as the products and services provided. For SMBs, it’s important to build connected relationships with your customers and it’s particularly crucial to provide the best customer experience to stand out from the competition.
To start this tactic, define what a great CX means for your customers. That way, you can incorporate strategies that will help improve the CX through your marketing strategy.
Ask yourself: What does a great experience look like for your customer? Each customer defines a great experience differently. For example, some customers may prioritize efficiency and convenience more than ease to pay, loyalty programs, or human interactions vs. chatbots. Figuring out what a great experience looks like may take a bit of research and surveying, but it will pay off large dividends. Once you define this for your customer base, you can improve what marketing strategies you’ll have in place for your SMB.
Align Sales and Marketing Teams
As we shift our focus to CX, it’s more important than ever to also have a strong alignment between sales and marketing teams. The more succinct the teams are, the better experience your customers will have.
Aligned sales and marketing teams have access to the same metrics, share the same goals and communicate constantly. Working off the same technology platform helps with visibility, allowing teams to work smarter together. This is especially important for SMBs wanting to improve the customer experience throughout the sales process.
Want to learn tactical steps that will help increase alignment between sales and marketing teams? Check out our 5 Strategies for Successful Sales and Marketing Alignment.
Create High Quality Content
As true as this was last year, “high-quality content’” continues to move forward as being important for SMBs. Your content is what search engines reveal when a customer is searching for a product or service, and high quality content can help customers see that you’re the expert on whatever service or products you’re selling.
If you’re looking to re-energize your content, branching out to different content mediums may yield high rewards. Even Google is ranking videos higher on their results pages over text searches. This is a great opportunity for all SMBs that are looking to try something new with their content marketing this year.
Personalize More Than Ever
Customers expect a personalized and tailored experience based on their previous actions and their own demographics. In fact, according to our Small and Medium Business Trends Report, 76% of customers expect companies to understand their needs and expectations.
As an SMB, it may seem challenging to deliver that level of personalization. Luckily, with predictive technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) we can gain insights to help identify the right leads. With marketing automation tools platforms, we can create tailored marketing experiences for each customer. It has never been easier to create such personalized journeys for our customers as it is today.
Learn more about how marketing automation features like AI can level up your marketing strategies and help create targeted personalized messages for your customers.
The Path Ahead
As you look to the road ahead, humanizing the marketing experience is more important than ever. The best part? Technology can actually help you get there. Enhancing the customer’s experience, aligning sales and marketing teams, creating high-quality content and personalized marketing for your customers will set your SMB on the path to success in 2020.
This post is a part of our SMB Success Series. Stay tuned for monthly blog posts to drive your small business growth!
