Each year, we continue to learn, grow and expand our marketing efforts. For me, a lot of my learnings and takeaways stem from my role as a CMO. As with many marketers, we continue to work in an industry that is constantly changing. Whether it’s keeping up with the expectations of the buyer or figuring out different strategies and tactics that work with our specific audiences, we’re all trying to create unforgettable experiences, promoting brand loyalty and ultimately driving revenue.
The constant change will be no different as we head into 2020. For CMOs, in particular, we can expect to see our responsibilities continue to grow. This is due to the fact that many companies are facing the reality that the CMO responsibilities are expanding to impact the totality of the revenue engine and grow a bigger market for their given organization.
Additionally, we’ll begin to move away from marketing qualified leads. Marketing is slowly moving away from passing the typical MQLs to sales towards identifying and sharing leads with proven in-market behaviors. While there is still value in MQL – it is an entry point into the funnel – it is becoming only a mild indicator, one piece of the mosaic. With all of this in mind software that brings to light purchase intent signals from every channel to help uncover and prioritize such demand will become the standard.
These are only a few of the changes we will see in the marketing space. Below, I sought several leaders in the marketing space to get their 2020 predictions on a variety of topics, ranging from SEO to the customer profile.
A Push for Quality Over Quantity
“Modern marketers understand the need to show a return on investment for their efforts. When it comes to the ambiguous metrics of podcasting, they’re laser-focused on how many downloads they’re seeing, instead of worrying about who those listeners are. As podcasts continue to be a rising marketing channel next year, we’ll see more insights into how a show is performing and an emphasis on whether it’s pushing buyers through the funnel. Marketers will be less worried about the number of downloads. Instead, focusing more on how much time is being spent on their brand. With this lens in mind, shows will be created to have a broad appeal yet tailored for their intended audience. In other words, if you want to market to small business owners, your show will be created specifically towards small business owners, negating any question around who is listening. Instead, the focus will be on what do they do next after listening.”
- Rachel Downey, president and co-founder of Share Your Genius, the B2B podcast agency
SEO Expands
“I predict that SEO will continue to infiltrate each job description and title on the marketing level. As a Product Marketer with a background in Local Marketing at a mobile communications company, I see tremendous value in strategic marketing teams partnering with Local SEOs. We’ll see more strategic marketers in large companies asking their SEO counterparts for reports and/or collaborating with them on bigger strategic marketing plays.”
- Brittani Dinsmore, director of product marketing at Moz, the most trusted authority in online search
Email Becomes More Accessible
“Making emails more accessible has been a growing concern for years now, but recently it has become one of the most discussed trends in the industry. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 1.3 billion people worldwide live with some form of visual impairment. In 2020, we will see more brands take steps towards coding emails for accessibility, to improve the email experience for the millions of users with vision impairments and other forms of disabilities.”
- Anthony Chiulli, director of product marketing at 250ok, the email analytics and deliverability platform
Adding an I to the ICP – dynamic list vs static
The secret to creating killer marketing collateral is making sure it hits home with your target audience — because you can’t please everyone. Just like not everyone is a fit for your solution, not everyone will be a fit for your content. Marketers are establishing their Ideal Customer Profile and tailoring messages to meet their buyers’ specific needs to ensure their message leaves a lasting impression with the right people. But, in 2020, we’ll see a push towards tailoring messaging to meet buyers in the In-market Ideal Customer Profile — where they’re actively seeking a solution and ready to buy.
- Latane Conant, CMO of 6sense, the Account Based Orchestration Platform powered by AI
Texting’s Relationship With Email Grows
“Texting will continue to dominate email across all engagement statistics: open rates, engagements, actions, etc. As texting gets more sophisticated with automatic text responses and embedded images with links users will react immediately and will be more powerful than email. Marketers need to think about their low performing email campaigns and think about how they can pivot those campaigns to work for text. However, do not get rid of email; instead, run these text campaigns alongside email.
- Matt Reid is the CMO of EZ Texting, the leader in SMS marketing software for business.
About the Author: Isabelle Papoulias is the CMO of sales enablement solution provider Mediafly. Starting as a sales director, Isabelle quickly transitioned her role to marketing to build Mediafly’s marketing engine from the ground up. She is passionate about partnering with all areas of the organization to drive growth. Prior to Mediafly, Isabelle started her career in quantitative research for companies like Kraft Foods, Sprint and more. From there, she spent the majority of her 20+ year career working for ad and media agencies in global account management roles for Fortune 500 brands across industries like tech, finance, retail and CPG. Outside of her time spent developing marketing strategies and campaigns, Isabelle enjoys her professional hobby teaching dance.