Amanda Martin, our vice president of enterprise partnerships at Goodway Group, recently took part in Point to Point’s B2B to CLE panel discussion. Alongside fellow marketing experts Joe Pulizzi and Megan Kacvinsky, she shared her thoughts on what a forward-thinking B2B marketer should be doing now to prepare for 2020. Want to be as proactive, productive, and prepared as possible with your 2020 marketing? Here are the three tasks Amanda recommends you do now:
2020 Marketing: Play to Your Audience
Getting quality third-party data is getting harder and more expensive. As a result, Amanda says to never underestimate the advantage of owning your own audience. First-party data is king today and having it and growing it can make all the difference whether your business dies or thrives.
Key To-Do-List Tasks
- Connect with and engage your own pool of current customers and prospects regularly by sending more frequent and personalized niche emails to those already on your list.
- Focus on marketing campaigns, promotions, and events that will build up your first-party data. To improve email open rates and clicks, what do you need? Amanda says work email addresses. Content sent to these in-boxes automatically has a greater chance of being read, simply because the messages that appear here are typically required reading for those wanting to perform well on the job.
2020 Marketing: Embrace the New Privacy Laws
With the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in place and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) on the horizon, some marketers may be anxious about how these laws will limit them and force them to change how they operate. However, Amanda thinks it’s all a matter of mindset.
Key To-Do-List Tasks
- Look at these new laws and regulations in a new light and consider how they will ultimately make your business better. Of course, it’s a bit of a downside to change the way you think about, collect, and use information about your audiences. But here’s a big win: Investigate your use of data; then craft compliant policies focused only on the data you will use so you can create better brand experiences, better user experiences. Amanda says, “It’s all about consumers understanding and valuing what you do with their data.”
- View the upcoming CCPA as a national law rather than a state one and change how you operate accordingly. Amanda says you should act now rather than wait. After all, California won’t be alone for long in how they regulate data privacy, especially considering 17 other states are currently mulling similar laws.
2020 Marketing: Get Full Buy-in Before Launching New Tech
Having the budget is important, of course. But Amanda says one thing is even more so when rolling out new technology: being ready.
Key To-Do-List Tasks
- Rather than getting your technology buy-in just from the leadership team at the top, get it from the entire company.
- Set and manage proper expectations and realistic timelines for launch and rollout. Amanda says this will help ensure the tech transition goes smoothly and the implemented software will be embraced and adopted by everyone.
Want to do more to make your 2020 digital media plan and strategies as robust as they can be? If so, connect with us; we look forward to sharing our digital marketing expertise and can give you the lowdown on all the industry topics, advertising trends, and ad tech tools sure to be popular in 2020. That way, you’ll be going in strong – confident and ready to welcome a stellar year ahead for your business.