Believe it or not, 2019 is already drawing to a close. The fourth quarter is officially in full swing, the holidays around the corner, and marketers and entrepreneurs are working tirelessly around-the-clock to try and close new business to reach sales and marketing numbers by the end of the year.
Additionally, marketers and entrepreneurs are considering their business plans and strategies for 2020. And as technology continues to evolve, improve, and emerge, many businesses are looking to switch or adopt new tools to help them with their business and marketing goals.
In this article, we will review several emerging martech trends and solutions that marketers should consider as they build their marketing plans for 2020.
The top martech trends for 2020
The martech landscape as a whole is expanding exponentially. In fact, survey results have shown that marketers’ commitments to marketing technology are only growing. However, only 24 percent of survey respondents reported that they have all the tools they need and fully utilize them. Furthermore, 41 percent claimed they weren’t fully utilizing the technology tools they have in their current marketing stacks.
All in all, when looking ahead at 2020, there are several emerging trends that marketers should be aware of, and also how martech tools can help better position businesses to embrace those trends.
Better customer experience (CX)
Martech tools have proven to help shape, streamline, and improve the overall customer experience. They can help deliver more personalized support to customers, increase customer engagement, and deliver relevant content that can help to solve customers’ problems.
Furthermore, companies that have successfully adopted and implemented martech tools and upgraded solutions have seen drastic improvements in not only overall performance but also increased ROI throughout the company.
Better collaboration
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has made its mark on many industries and areas of business — and marketing is no exception. Studies have predicted that AI will drive business value and cost reduction by 2022. In fact, many martech tools today already leverage AI in some form, allowing teams to improve customer service.
Furthermore, AI also enables teams to collaborate better. After all, AI has been an important consideration in the creation of new collaboration tools, project management tools, and marketing automation tools. It has also proven to increase team agility as well as productivity.
The design of martech ecosystems
In the last five years, the number of martech tools on the market has exploded. Reports and research show that there are nearly 7,000 martech tools available compared to only 1,000 five years ago.
Although this has presented numerous challenges for companies that are trying to keep up with technology and trends, it has also provided them with the opportunity to develop martech tool ecosystems.
For example, design firms, agencies, SaaS tech companies, and other businesses spanning across various industries are investing in martech tools to help improve their sales and marketing strategies.
However, many are discovering that individual technology solutions aren’t always the right answer. As a result, many marketers and businesses are investing in an open platform to serve as a foundation for their strategy. Then, they augment that platform by integrating other apps and tools that fit their needs, ultimately designing a complete martech ecosystem.With over 7,000 #martech tools now on the market, keeping track of the hottest new #marketing solutions can be tough. See why we think these three tools are a must consider for 2020! Click To Tweet
3 Martech tools to consider for 2020
Now that you understand the importance of martech tools, and how they will continue to play a crucial role and support the emerging trends of 2020, which martech tools are worth considering?
Whether you are a marketing manager, content writer, or designer, here are the top three martech tools to consider building into your martech ecosystem for 2020:
1. Lucidpress
Assuming you’ve got a great content creation team, and you’re looking into tools like Uberflip to help get the content out there, you may be concerned that others in your firm are creating content that doesn’t follow your brand guidelines. Perhaps you’ve got eager salespeople who are spinning up their own sales collateral but butchering your logo, trade dress, and company colors in so doing.
This is where Lucidpress is making strides. As a great complement to the slew of talented business content writers here on ClearVoice, Lucidpress allows you to take expertly crafted content and put it into a library that you have full control over.
With this solution, you can lock in how your logo should be used, what colors are available, the content that can be placed into a document, etc. From there, you can give the keys to the kingdom (a better controlled and managed kingdom) to the creative geniuses throughout your firm, knowing that the content they’re publishing is following your content plan and brand guidelines.
If the name sounds familiar, it’s likely because you’ve come across their first product, Lucidchart, which allowed you to create diagrams and data visualizations like a boss. This new offering, Lucidpress, will allow you to get more out of your creative content while still keeping the masses to the guidelines they should have been following all these years.
2. Uberflip
One focus for marketers is to produce and provide content to the right buyers, at the right time. Uberflip is a tool designed to help marketers do just that. Uberlfip describes itself as a “content experience platform.” It pulls your entire content inventory or library, including all your blogs, ebooks, white papers, videos, newsletters, and more, allowing marketers to organize, categorize, and optimize a truly tailored content experience for your buyers.
Uberflip allows marketers to build content hubs, organized by topic or category, which helps buyers find content or answers to their problems or challenges. Not only does this allow you to get your content in your buyers’ “hands” faster, which helps to improve the customer experience, but it has also proven to help boost lead generation. As a result, Uberflip is one tool to consider building into your martech ecosystem for 2020.
3. HubSpot
If you have been in the marketing space for any length of time, then you have likely heard of HubSpot. I’ve written about it several times, but I continue to see them making large movements and new product introductions, so I’m also including this more established solution on the emerging list. HubSpot is a comprehensive marketing suite, complete with tools and features to help with content management, sales and marketing, customer support, data and analytics, and social media publishing and advertising.
Designed with the inbound marketing methodology in mind, the purpose behind HubSpot goes way beyond simply building and promoting a website; it provides marketers with the insights and tools needed to boost conversions.
HubSpot now also offers pop-up and chatbot features that can be set up and added to any website, which can help streamline and improve the customer experience. The good news is marketers and businesses don’t have to use other third-party chatbot tools to set this up.
HubSpot integrates with other third-party collaboration tools and apps, such as Slack and G Suite, enabling teams to improve and streamline communication internally and externally. HubSpot can also integrate with hundreds of other third-party apps and tools, allowing marketers and businesses to easily build or expand their martech ecosystems.
What does your business look like in 2020?
As we mentioned above, there are over 7,000 martech tools available on the market today, and this number isn’t expected to decrease anytime soon. Of course, this might be overwhelming for many marketers and businesses, however, this also presents a unique opportunity to build a marketing strategy for 2020 that successfully drives more conversions and sales.
By focusing on tools that help improve the customer experience — or deliver a tailored content experience — improve collaboration, and build a well-rounded martech ecosystem, marketers and businesses will find themselves in a better position of maintaining a competitive edge, reaching buyers and customers on a personalized and individualized level, and also increasing sales and conversions.
Does 2020 spell out success for your business? Following these top marketing trends and consider the best tools to add to your martech stack or ecosystem is a step in the right direction.Does 2020 spell out success for your business? Following these top #marketingtrends and consider the best tools to add to your #martech stack: Click To Tweet
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