It’s September. Marketing teams are eyeing the calendar as year-end approaches, with aggressive revenue targets for their sales teams to meet. Teams are focused on ads, promotions, email campaigns and media coverage with messages aimed at closing sales. But what about top-of-market activities, aimed to fill the pipeline for Q1 2020 and beyond?
There’s a great opportunity to get a jump on competitors by organizing aggressive campaigns timed to start now and deliver results starting in January. Here are a few ideas to ensure your marketing program for 2020 starts with a bang.
Digital Marketing
Plan email campaigns designed to refill the pipeline starting in January. Tools like HubSpot enable marketers to plan and organize activities in advance, including improved targeting, pre-header, text, call to action, personalization and other strategies.
Content Development
Draft and place contributed articles in October/November, timed to appear in January and February. Often, it is possible to draft a body of content and then edit for vertical industry, channel and other media, streamlining the creation process.
Media Relations
Push one or more new industry themes to media starting in November, with the goal of securing coverage starting in January. Among these should include end-of-year wrap up and 2020 prediction themes. Many media prepare these types of stories that run in the December through January timeframe, and reaching out to them now and shaping your wrap-up or predictions to fit their interests will help ensure coverage.
Social Media
Whether your organization is B2B or B2C, organize social campaigns to gauge the mood of your customers, channel and other partners. Posing questions, organizing provocative posts, creating Q&As and other campaigns that elicit feedback from targets can provide valuable market research.
Strategy & Positioning
Create and leverage additional content. In addition to posting new blogs, ask to post a guest blog on a customer or partner’s site or invite one or more customers and partners to post on yours. Draft one or more longer form LinkedIn articles to accompany your regular posts, and have these ready to post right after the New Year.
Don’t fall into the trap of being so focused on closing sales in December that you neglect your pipeline for Q1. With a little advanced planning and an aggressive team, you can do both!