Get Your Marketing Into Shape For 2018

Samantha Davidson, Managing Director of B2B marketing specialists Horizonworks, explains why strategy-led marketing is the key to driving your business forward in the New Year - and helping you to meet your goals and objectives.

Running a business without a marketing strategy is like setting off on a long journey without any directions. A clear and focused strategy is essential to positioning your company effectively in the market and providing a framework for growth. Your strategy will support your business objectives, underpin marketing activities, and shape and integrate tactics to ensure the best return on investment.

Each business is unique and planning your campaign is a fundamental part of the process as there are so many different marketing tactics available. It’s therefore important to ensure that the right tactics are used to help you reach your target audiences. The campaign plan needs to be specifically tailored to meeting your objectives and should pinpoint specific and consistent activities that need to be delivered.

With this in mind, now is the perfect time to review your marketing and ensure it’s going in the right direction. Here are my top 10 tips for marketing trends in 2018:

1) Video Marketing (Live Streaming)

Live streaming can open up infinite possibilities. Ask yourself, what kind of videos would your customer want to see? You could create client testimonials or even staff footage.

2) Marketing Automation

Marketing Automation allows for personalised customer experiences, letting you deliver relevant content and nurture customer leads throughout the purchase journey.

3) Interactive Content

This will help set you apart from competitors. Ask yourself, how can you hold the attention of your audience? Could you create interactive presentations, for example? Doing so will make your content more interesting.

4) Personalisation

Truly listen to your customer and cater to their individual needs. Provide content that is relevant to each unique customer experience. Doing so will encourage brand loyalty and purchase consideration.

5) Account Based Marketing

The idea here is that you can align and target key accounts, concentrating on both marketing and sales. It combines efforts between marketing and sales on the same focus and employs personalised campaigns designed to resonate with each customer.

6) Influencer Marketing

This involves marketing a product or service to individuals that have ‘influence’ over potential buyers. In terms of traditional marketing, this is word-of-mouth communication but on a much larger scale.

7) Sales Enablement

Your sales team should have the relevant knowledge, insights and content to optimise customer interactions. If you have a fully functioning sales team, you can acquire a more comprehensive overview of consumer purchase patterns – and this can be fed into your marketing plan.

8) Strategy

A focused and well informed marketing strategy will underpin your business growth and future success. Not having a clear and consistent strategy can lead to confusion and lost opportunities. 9) Amazing Content Writing and writing well will make a big difference in your marketing approach. Ensure each member of your team can write in a way that not only portrays your business effectively, but will also engage the customer. 10) Analyse, Analyse and Analyse Remember – if you don’t measure the impact of your marketing strategy you won’t know how successful it is – you need to constantly review and measure your marketing activity. Horizonworks specialises in working with businesses from the manufacturing, engineering, automotive technology and innovation-led sectors. We offer marketing, strategy, PR, creative and digital services – all under one roof – to ensure all elements of marketing work together to generate the best results for our clients. Clients who have been through the Horizonworks journey from strategy to delivery include: global pump distributor and manufacturer Tomlinson Hall; contract research and development organisation Arcinova; Sunderland-based asbestos management consultancy Franks Portlock; training provider Seta, wealth management practice Broad Chare Partners and the Advanced Manufacturing Forum.