Written By: A.J. Rounds
2020 Marketing Landscape
We are now entering the second quarter of 2020. At the time of this writing, you and I are currently under heavy restrictions of quarantines and physical distancing for COVID-19. However, that doesn’t mean that marketing budgets disappear. In many cases, companies are ramping up their marketing spend. The following paragraphs are the top marketing objectives, budgets, and results predicted for 2020.
Top Marketing Strategies and Objectives
Marketing channels most implemented in 2019 and carried through 2020 continue to be email, social media advertising, and blogging/content marketing tactics as reported by Sales and Marketing Management. SEO strategies follow as a close fourth place.
Top marketing objectives for 2020 include converting leads to customers, increasing sales leads, increasing brand awareness, producing thought leadership content, and increasing website traffic. Interestingly enough, SMM also reports that most leads are still found through referrals, trade shows, and events. The percentages are as high as 63% (referrals) and 44% (trade shows) respectively. Print advertising and direct mail are the least utilized at 3% overall.
Marketing Dollars Spent
In support of these marketing strategies, SMM also reports that 56% of budgets are being allocated to digital marketing, 52% of budgets to website development, 36% to trade shows/events, and 27% to content/email marketing.
RevRoad Marketing Initiatives for 2020
This data coincides with current RevRoad and portfolio company marketing strategies. RevRoad is also ramping up our marketing spend online, building home and landing pages to convert that marketing spend, generating more content on LinkedIn, social media, and blogs, while still building person to person relationships (at a socially safe distance). RevRoad continues to invest resources into new videos produced by our amazing video team to promote online.
As mentioned, we will be revamping our website to be more focused on you and other entrepreneurs who’d like to apply. This includes restructuring and formatting content better. Our goal certainly falls in line with converting leads into sales and increasing brand awareness. As a start, we recently launched a services page complete with videos to ‘show’ not ‘tell’ about the services we offer to scalable companies like yours.
Summary
Without question, the largest portion of marketing budgets for 2020 will be allocated to digital strategies. Based on what SMM reports and what we’ve seen at RevRoad, the marketing channels mentioned above produce the greatest ROI.
Good luck with your marketing efforts. Whether it’s a pandemic or other changes to the economy, don’t be afraid to adjust your marketing strategies to accommodate changing business needs. Keep going. You’ve got this!
