2018 was indeed a perfect combination of digital and traditional marketing where digital marketing had a bit more big role to play as compared to traditional strategies. As we were closing 2018, most of us already had been spending the last couple of months thinking about the marketing goals that are to be achieved in 2019 and most important, the strategies that will work the best in 2019.

We as marketers are familiar with the fact that strategies and trends change often. If any particular strategy is on the go now, the chances that the same strategy will work even after 6 months or a year is quite low. Audience change, their taste & preferences change and hence it’s very important that you go with the flow. In order to get the most out of your marketing efforts, you need to run with the latest B2B trends so you can get the highest ROI for your business.

There are several marketing strategies available for the marketers to opt for depending upon the nature of the business. Marketers advise trying all those strategies that would possibly work for the business. Seriously?? do we have that much time and budget to try each strategy?? – NO.. If we try doing so, we’d be far behind in the competition. the best way is to follow the current trends.

So let’s look out the for the top B2B marketing strategies I predict that’d run the engine of B2B companies in 2019.

1. Account-Based Marketing

I’ll be candid. I simply can’t imagine the marketing efforts of a B2B business without ABM as its one of the prime marketing strategy. ABM was and will continue to be a core platform for marketers in the martech stack. ABM is no longer a new or a niche concept for the B2B marketers. It now has a proven track record—and businesses are putting more budget into ABM because it’s working for them.

According to research made by SiriusDecisions, In the last three years, the percentage of respondents who say ABM is important has hovered around 90% with an upward trend. 91% of respondents say that ABM has made a difference in the number of opportunities closed and the average deal size.

The global 2019 Data-Driven Marketing and Advertising Outlook report of B2B marketers and their agencies shows that 71% consider ABM important to their organization’s marketing efforts; 4 in 10 companies believe ABM to be at least “very important”. Currently, 37% of B2B marketers are already doing ABM in their company with a further 22% planning to next year.

2. Social Media Marketing

Social media is omnipresent nowadays. The web of social media is increasing at a rapid rate and is constantly changing by bringing new trends, ideas and technologies for the users. According to WeAreSocial’s 2018 digital marketing report, more than 3 billion people around the world now use social media monthly, with 9 out of 10 accessing social media sites via mobile devices like smartphones and iPads.

The best part of social media is that today we have plenty of platforms to choose from. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter etc. are always coming up with user-friendly innovative features that add different dimensions to the platforms and limit the inconvenience of it’s usage.

With so many people using social media actively and making buying decisions influenced by what they see, you need to make social media marketing a key part of your overall marketing strategy in 2019 as well.

3.Video Marketing

Video marketing is a component of an integrated marketing communications plan designed to increase audience engagement through social activity around a given video.

Modern customers spend most of their time watching informative videos about the product or service that they’re interested in or are planning to buy. Your videos are a great source of an educational asset for these active buyers, and in return they’ll think of you when it comes to actually buy.

The best part about video marketing is search engines love videos and these videos will make you stand in front of your audience quite easily with not many efforts.

Here are a few amazing stats about video marketing that prove my point –

• According to a recent study by Cisco, by 2021, more than 80% of consumer internet traffic will be video.
• Visual content is 40 times more likely to be shared via social networks. (Buffer, 2014).
• 43% of consumers would like to see more video content from marketers (HubSpot).
• Marketers using video saw revenue grow 49% faster than those who were not (Aberdeen, 2015).
• 51.9% of marketing professionals in the world rate video as the content with the best ROI (Adobe, 2015).

That is why you should make video marketing a priority for your business in 2019 and make video promotions, Ads, Ads series(if possible), funny viral videos, educational videos, etc. based on your product and the preference of your existing and potential customers.

4. Content Marketing

In 2019, it’s time to get serious about your content marketing efforts. Content is at the core of our digital and social marketing strategies. Content marketing now is more than just creating, distributing and sharing content in order to engage audiences and generate leads.

In 2019, Content will remain to be at the center of the attraction between your brand and your customers. It is either going to open their eyes to pay attention and care that your brand exists, or it simply won’t. I’m sure that many marketers are already working on their plans and likely have a content calendar set for 2019 being populated with content to delight and engage their audiences.

Apprise Marketing Services have proven expertise in content syndication services- Dissemination of whitepapers, E-books and other assets to clients with varied nature of businesses. We successfully generate content syndication leads and MQL’s across all verticals and geographies in the given span of time thus fueling your sales funnel with Marketing Qualified Leads.

In 2019 you must have a proper content marketing plan that’ll help you align your content to your marketing and business goals.

5. SEO/SEM

SEO is the process of making a web page easy to find, easy to crawl, and easy to categorize. It’s about helping your customers find out your business from among a thousand other companies. In order to remain at the top or among the top in search results, you need to work hard on your SEO/SEM strategy in 2019. Things aren’t going to be easy as they were a few years ago. You’ll have to earn your 1st-page spot only with your efforts on SEO/SEM and content quality.

Google’s shaken the world with its mobile- and speed-related efforts. As a result, most of next year’s SEO efforts are expected in this direction. However, some “non-Google” game-changers will also influence how we build our SEO campaigns but as Google is the prime search engine – a majority of the focus will be here.

Google recently has renovated their official SEO Starter Guide for the first time in over seven years. This new Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide is full of useful and interesting information we can all benefit from.

6. Customer Success Marketing

Customer Success Marketing will play a vital role in SaaS businesses in 2019 as well. The SaaS business is expected to grow even more in the upcoming years as compared to the past few years. Hence if you’re a SaaS provider, get ready to hook this strategy in your Marketing plan for 2019.

Why? – because customer experience matters a lot for SaaS providing businesses. Almost all companies pay detail attention towards the customer feedback w.r.t their satisfaction with the results of the use of product or service and their success.

Customer success marketers help maintain a consistent experience throughout the customer lifecycle. Developing collateral and communications with customers at scale, these marketers work to ensure that customers see value in the product, renew or purchase from the company again, and advocate the product to their network.

7. Chatbots for Marketing

A chatbot is a computer program or an artificial intelligence which conducts a conversation via auditory or textual methods. Chatbots have evolved significantly in recent times, thanks to artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing(NLP) that powers them. They’re now extremely sophisticated and versatile tools that can help you automate a number of your business processes.

Aside from being awesome for helping with customer care queries, AI-powered chatbots can be part of your marketing initiatives and help push your customers seamlessly through your sales funnel.

Many marketers predict that usage of chatbots are going to get a boost in 2019 and beyond as AI is been on the rise since last couple of years. Gartner predicts that by 2020 people will have more conversations with chatbots than their spouse. Hubspot presumes Chatbots might be the best thing to happen to marketing yet.

To conclude…

No single marketing strategy is going to help you with all your marketing efforts. Make sure you have a proper mix of marketing strategies and then go for the hunt in 2019.

Remember, all of these strategies lead in one direction – personalized marketing focused solely on the audience and customer. To gain a competitive advantage in today’s information-packed world, you need to have a deep understanding of your customers and prospects taste and requirement as well. Because of the vast information available online, your prospects and customers have higher expectations than ever before.

Contact AMS at info@ams-in.com or visit us on www.ams-in.com today to plan out your B2B marketing strategies and to take your lead generation efforts to the next level in 2019.

Thank you & Happy Marketing!