In early 2022, Gartner predicted that “CMOs [will] facing a perfect storm of budget cuts, business disruptions and social unrest.”

Your prediction was spot on as we approach the 4th quarter of the year. Unfortunately, the year was full of unexpected complications. Risk levels from COVID-19 have fluctuated throughout the year, with some areas returning almost to pre-pandemic levels of normality while others faced fresh lockdowns. In addition, inflation has increased, leaving businesses and consumers at a loss as to what they can afford.

It’s been a challenging and confusing year for a marketer. Both your employees and your customers have new expectations and challenges to face. So don’t take it personally if you’re struggling to reach your goals.

With effective and flexible marketing strategies, you can weather the storm. You can still see successful revenue growth by sticking to the basics, planning and adjusting the customer journey, and reinvesting in team alignment.

Let’s dive in!

1. Continue to maintain the basics

In times of economic turmoil, the instinctive move is to cut spending. When it comes to inflation, people have to save – whether they want to. While you don’t want to waste money on marketing efforts with poor ROI, you do want to avoid cutting back on marketing spend as little as possible.

The marketing budget can be an easy target for cuts. Marketing is at the beginning of the customer journey, and linking marketing campaigns to direct deals has been a never-ending struggle. The reality is that most B2B customers don’t convert to a purchase because of a single marketing event. If you’ve asked someone why they decided to showcase your product, chances are they won’t mention a specific ad, social media post, or blog article. You could bring up a case study or webinar to pique their interest, but that probably wasn’t the first time they’ve heard from you.

Marketing journeys depend on a multitude of small touchpoints and memories. You can’t skimp on content creation, ad spend, events, and expect your previously powerful email campaigns to still bring in the same number of sales-ready leads.

Let’s say you keep investing in the basics of digital marketing. In that case, you’ll continue to find business and be prepared when the economy picks up again, especially if your competition scales back while you don’t. Continue to follow best practices for:

In their 2022 marketing trends, Hubspot predicts and recommends traditional link building and keyword optimization, using short videos, collaborating with micro-influencers on social media, and continuing to create quality blog content. Let’s dive into these four ideas as tweaks you can make to your strategy to keep your marketing relevant.

Google is going nowhere and Google still uses backlinks to rank content quality. So keep following guest posts and links on high-ranking websites to improve your position in search results. Continue to base content on SEO keyword reports to ensure you’re delivering relevant, in-demand information. Is it slow work? Yes. Will you ever see an instant boost? Unlikely. But if you keep going, you’ll get a boost for all your other inbound marketing efforts.

For digital advertising, you still want Google Ads, but if you’re using YouTube (a smart bet) or trying TikTok (results may vary in B2B), you’ll want short video ads. You only have a few seconds before your audience clicks “skip” or “swipe away.” Let the viewer know your name and what you’re doing within 6 seconds. That’s probably all the viewing time you’ll get, but every ad creates awareness.

With organic social media and content marketing, your focus should be on going viral and constantly collaborating with other people in that space. To increase your chances of going viral, you want your content to be well-researched, unique, and shareable.

Otherwise, consider working with micro-influencers. Micro-influencers are widespread even in the B2B sector. While they have a smaller audience, they have a lower cost of building a relationship. As a result, their audience has a higher engagement rate than more prominent influencers or corporate social media accounts.

By all means, don’t forget the basics of digital marketing and try to sustain as many required or positive ROI campaigns as possible.

2. Plan and customize the customer journey

When you make a product, you have an audience in mind for it. Of course, you may need to adjust this persona over time, but you always have someone as your target audience.

Rather than waiting for your ideal customers to find you, Account-Based Marketing (ABM) has focused on reaching your specific, most suitable customers. By pinpointing the exact companies for your marketing and sales targeting, you can plan and customize the entire customer journey for them. Over 80% of businesses using ABM report higher win rates, larger average transaction sizes, and higher ROI than other marketing strategies.

If you are taking an ABM approach, you should create your ideal customer profile. Your ideal customer should be based on existing and successful partnerships and what you want your customers to look like. Then you can use a contact and company data provider to find companies that match your profile based on firmographic and technographic data.

The infographic below explains why you should consider an ABM approach and how detailed data is essential for ABM success.

Because you know who you’re targeting, why you’re targeting them, and how you’re targeting them, you can personalize the journey for each prospect or prospect segment. For example, depending on the market and industry, you can target individual companies or narrow segments of similar companies.

Either way, you want a small number of high-priority targets to get complete care and attention. These companies can be personalized down to the specific people in the company with purchasing power. Next, select segments that most closely resemble your ideal customers and plan to give them moderate attention and planning, e.g. B. Personalized campaigns for a specific role, industry and size.

They also have a broader audience that’s still personalized at an industry or role level, but doesn’t get the same exposure as the segments above. Suppose you use a data provider with intent data. You can discover prospects at the lowest level who are already interested in your business and take them to the next level of personal attention.

By targeting your messages and being considerate and intentional in your outreach, you’ll cut through the generic marketing noise people are used to and grab the attention of your potential customers.

3. Reinvest in team alignment

Let’s break down what it means to reinvest in team alignment. The last few years have been isolating and rocky. Your separated teams (and team members at home!) are probably feeling more separated than ever. If there isn’t reliable and frequent communication between Sales, Marketing, CX and RevOps, nobody can do their best because they all depend on each other.

Before you focus on getting teams to network, connect, and communicate with each other, you first need to make sure you care about your people. With the ongoing pandemic, employees need new and additional commitment and care from management. Offer remote and flexible working options and ensure no one feels they are being treated unfavorably for working in the way that is best for them.

Chances are you need to build a positive remote company culture. Be flexible. be open Managers probably need to be more aware and curious about their team’s performance. Don’t micromanage, instead have regular one-on-ones and ask questions that go beyond the standard: “How’s it going? I’m fine?” When working remotely, managers can’t spot more subtle signs that an employee needs help, so leaders may need to be more considerate and caring during virtual meetings to reassure their team.

At the team level, you need to build trust between teams. Take the time to educate everyone about the roles of each team and the right processes for everything from passing leads to sales, to customer retention campaigns, to product customization. If someone has an idea or a problem about something outside their area of ​​responsibility, they should know exactly who to turn to and trust that they will be heard.

On the technical side, use your chat and video clients. Provide places where people can talk about TV, sports, music, or other non-work activities. Don’t expect or push to socialize outside of work hours – work-life balance is essential. Instead, take some time off the workday to do something fun, digital.

When everyone is comfortable communicating, they are more likely to collaborate on work projects. Additional time invested in defining responsibilities, how everyone can work together, and setting up communication channels is required when working remotely. You can expect better results and culture as everyone becomes more knowledgeable and comfortable.

Bring everything together

To build an effective marketing strategy in 2022, don’t cut corners and throw away the basics; consider an ABM approach and additional prospect mentoring; and create a positive remote corporate culture. No easy task, but when you make these your priorities, you lay a solid foundation – a happy team, happy customers, and everything you need to keep the ball rolling.

Author bio: Joshua Loomis is a Marketing Specialist partner with SalesIntel. He started seven years ago as an intern for a B2B SaaS marketing team and has taken on every role in the digital marketing toolbox.