Social Media trends for 2019 that can improve your business

2019 has arrived, and with a new year comes new trends. Social media has been on the rise as one of the main ways people spend their free time with, so it’s important to stay on top of current trends that can set your business up for success. Social media marketing is crucial for businesses in today’s society, and it’s not hard to figure out why.

Here are the top 4 social media trends you should be thinking about this year, with tips on how to implement each!

Video Content

Video content has been a major part of social media these last few years, and 2019 will be no different. With Youtube and IGTV on the rise, it’s important to hop on the bandwagon to make sure you are creating content that people want to engage with. Short videos about your company’s products or services are a great way to tell prospects what you can offer them without taking up too much of their time. (Bonus: if you make a fun and compelling video, they will most likely share it with all of their friends).

Vertical videos are huge on social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook, and if you want to target to those consumers, you’ve got to change the way you present your content. Creating vertical videos is actually a lot easier too, as you can just start creating videos on your smartphone!

82% of consumers have been encouraged to take action after watching a business marketing video.
90% of consumers watch videos on their mobile.
74% of consumers said that they have been convinced to buy a product or service after watching a brand’s video.

(Wyzowl)

E-commerce

A lot of brands are now looking to social media to sell their products. With sites like Instagram that allow brands to tag their items right on the post, the buying process has become a lot easier and more straight-forward for the consumer.

Buyers are always on their phones, so it makes sense to market to them there. Creating video content and visual ads through your social media can kickstart your e-commerce business.

Mobile e-commerce sales were projected to make up 63.5% of total e-commerce sales of 2018.
Product videos can increase conversion rates by as much as 144%.

(Social Media Today)

CRM Utilization

CRM software can improve your sales through tools such as templates, campaign management, and marketing automation.

One way you can utilize a CRM, such as Salesforce, is through social media marketing automation. This tool is great for customer service because it can provide consistency for your posts and responses can be quicker. Consistent content is crucial for keeping customers engaged, so utilizing AI and automated messaging is a great way to stay connected even when you’re sleeping. You can also add personalization through these automated messages, which help your customers feel valued.

74% of businesses using a CRM have acknowledged that they have improved customer relations.
CRM software can improve sales by as much as 29%

(Hosting Facts)

User-Generated Content

Sharing content created by your social media followers is not only a great way to stay engaged, but it’s also an avenue that helps your company stay relevant without having to take the time to research and create content on their own.

Not only will you save time and money, but you will also foster brand loyalty. Sharing user content is also a great way to seem genuine in your marketing approach as you connect with your audience and acknowledge their content. Social channels and blogs are a great place to share user content, and the more you share, the more likely your customers will share!

68% of millennials are receptive to information shared through social media
86% say that user-generated content is representative of brand quality.

(TINT)

Social media is always changing, but acknowledging these trends will help your business have a successful year. Videos are a great way to have interesting and digestible content and allow creative freedom. With videos and user-generated content, you will be able to keep customers engaged and willing to purchase your product. A lot of companies don’t have the time to leverage digital marketing experts, such as us at Corrao Group, but we have a full-service digital agency to get you started.

Utilizing a CRM can make this all easier through automation and organization of customer data, and with 10+ years of experience in this realm, we can help!

Preparing for Salesforce Success in 2019

At Corrao Group, we are part of the Salesforce ecosystem and work with our customers to tackle some of their most pressing needs to maximize their Salesforce investment. At Dreamforce, some of the hottest topics included analytics advances, data quality, Lightning migration, and 360 degree customer views. We hosted a webinar featuring our technology partners Skuid and RingLead to shed some light on these topics. Whether you are preparing for 2019 or later, the content on this webinar is applicable to you as long as you are trying to make the most out of your Salesforce investment. After viewing the webinar, you are eligible for a Salesforce Health Check offered by Corrao Group with support from our technology partners Skuid and RingLead.

Field Service Lightning Explained

Part of Salesforce Service Cloud, Field Service Lightning (FSL) is designed to improve the first-visit resolution and onsite job management using a mobile solution with access to job schedules, van inventory, and more – with or without the internet. Additional features of FSL include the ability to quickly create work orders from any case, intelligently assign and manage jobs, increase first-time fix rate and stop problems before they happen.

Corrao Group Partners With Data Management Leader

We’re excited to announce our Platinum partnership with RingLead, the leader in data management, with over 300 million protected records worldwide. RingLead is dedicated to creating the most productive, feature-rich, easy to use platform to consistently improve lead quality, allowing sales and marketing teams to operate more effectively. RingLead provides tools to help prospect new leads, standardize contact records, cleanse your database and more.

Know Thy Customer: Buyer Personas

Only .75% of B2B leads generated become revenue through a traditional marketing strategy (Forrester). Why? One of the many possible explanations is due to a batch and blast email campaign approach where marketers don’t take the time to identify who their audience really is, leading to a quick unsubscribe. Your clients expect personalized marketing these days, and if you don’t know who your customers really are, you won’t be able to personalize the content to what they’re actually interested in, and keep them engaged in nurture programs. While you may still be sending generalized content, your competitors are doing their research and using personalized content. That personalized content is seeing 6x higher of a transaction rate than content that is not personalized to the prospect (Marketing Land).

Salesforce Campaigns versus Pardot Campaigns: Which one to use?

If you’ve used Salesforce’s Sales Cloud prior to using Pardot, you’re most likely familiar with how Salesforce campaigns function. They are objects used to manage and track outbound marketing campaigns, ranging from a simple email campaign to large, in-person conventions. Contacts and leads can be associated with multiple Salesforce campaigns as part of a multi-touch outreach. Pardot campaigns are similar but think of them more as the first outbound marketing campaign that the prospect (contacts and leads are called prospects in Pardot) interacted with from your company. Prospects can only be associated with one Pardot campaign; acting in more of a ‘source’ field type of way here.

Overnight ROI and Sales Alignment with SalesHood

Imagine an environment where sales managers don’t have insight into how each individual on their sales team makes the company pitch. Managers don’t have the time to attend every sales call, leaving them to only hope that the company’s onboarding program paid off. This causes problems such as disconnected sales, overall company value not being communicated effectively, and many others.

Enter SalesHood, a sales enablement tool that reinforces your sales team’s knowledge by allowing them to share and collaborate on content, including their sales pitches. SalesHood allows you to train, test, and certify your team to ensure everyone is on the same page. It even has a large library of videos to view ranging from Sales 101 to advanced selling techniques. In addition to the video library, SalesHood allows your team to create their own videos to enable feedback from your entire team.

Take a look below to see what our team has to say about SalesHood!

The Benefit of Salesforce Dashboards

Salesforce dashboards are a data visualization tool that displays real-time metrics and executive KPIs for a company. They’re implemented company-wide, displaying data from your Sales Cycle, Marketing Campaigns, CSAT scores, and much more. Dashboards are crucial for a company to grow and succeed as they give real-time insight into how your departments are performing, aligning some departments along the way (e.g. Sales and Marketing).

Great dashboards take time and patience to perfect as they require collaboration within your company. At the end of the day, you’ll want your entire company to love these dashboards so much that they keep them open all the time. This post contains dashboard characteristics that will guide you towards doing just that.

New Feature: Salesforce Engage Team Reports

Salesforce Engage

Salesforce Engage allows users to be first, be relevant, and be productive with their clients. Why is it important to be first? “50% of Sales go to the Rep that responds first”- InsideSales.com. With Engage, your Sales team knows the moment their prospects interact with their emails. Be relevant with personalized, Marketing approved templates to send to prospects as “78% of B2B buyers expect Sales Reps to send personalized interactions based on information from their online activities” – IDC, 2015. Gone are the days of purchasing lists and expecting an ROI from it.

Stay Ahead in Account Based Marketing with Einstein Analytics

account based marketing

84% of Marketers are seeing higher ROI with Account Based Marketing (ABM) than other Marketing programs. Source: ITSMA

What is Account Based Marketing (ABM)?

Account Based Marketing applies time-tested B2B Sales and Marketing principles to the selling cycle by going after company accounts, or decision-makers instead of individual sales leads. This results in spending your time with more qualified prospects. If you would like to learn more about what ABM is, or how to take it a step further, view our past blog post – Go Beyond ABM with Account Based Management.

Category: Updates