Author: Franz Malten Buemann

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You spend a lot of time, effort, and marketing budget generating valuable leads for your business. But what do you do with your leads once you’ve got them?  Having a plan in place ensures all that effort and money doesn’t go to waste. And making sure your marketing and sales team are aligned is the…
The post How to Hand Off Marketing-Generated Leads to Your Sales Team appeared first on Benchmark Email.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Right?
In a recent Glimpse survey I ran for the HubSpot Blog, 78% of marketers said they were already facing one of the biggest lemons of 2023 — recession.
What’s more, almost half were already seeing negative impacts. On top of that, one in three think a recession will have an even bigger impact on marketing than COVID-19.
While we can’t predict the future, our data hints that brands that focus on the right opportunities can still grow. But, what exactly are those opportunities? Read on to find out.

Tips for Marketing Growth a Recession
1. Use data to connect with customers.
Feel like you might not be in touch with your customers anymore? You’re not alone.
Our research shows that over half of marketers don’t know crucial information about their target audience. And this is just one of three signs your company is facing a Crisis of Disconnection.
This disconnect isn’t at all shocking. Our lives have all changed drastically over the past three years. 
As the recession progresses, customer relationships with brands will continue shifting — and it’s up to companies to keep up.
The first step is gathering holistic, real-time data on consumer attitudes, preferences, and behaviors.
Ideally, you get data, known as first-party data, directly from your customer. This is especially important as data privacy regulations are becoming more strict and things like third-party cookies are on the way out.
Once you have data, use it to understand your evolving customer and pivot your marketing efforts and messaging in a way that aligns with what they’re experiencing. This helps your brand create meaningful connections.
Unsure where to start with your data strategy? Read this guide.
2. Don’t let low social media budgets stifle your creativity.
A recession means your marketing budget will likely be in a pinch — our economic trends survey from Oct. ‘22 found that 37% of marketers are already seeing budget cuts.
And according to marketing leaders, paid social media content is the channel most likely to be cut in a recession.

Luckily, there are a few highly effective places for your brand to turn.
User Generated Content
User-generated content is all about your satisfied customers sharing their experiences with your brand on social media.
Sharing and interacting with UGC on your official page will deepen connections with your customers and incentivize others to share their stories too. This is a great way to promote your brand in an authentic and credible way.
Organic Social Media Content
Tapping into organic content on social is a no-brainer when budgets are tight. Instead of spending money on paid ads, create content tailored to the interests of your audience and let the algorithms do the rest.
The best part is you don’t need anything fancy to succeed on social these days – authentic and relatable content wins over polish and high production value any day.
Create a few fun pieces of content, analyze your results, lean into what’s performing best, and sit back as  your audience grows.
New Platforms and Features
Nowadays it seems like new marketing channels pop up every month, and the good news is they’re usually free.
Leveraging new social media features and trends like live audio could also enable your brand to be the first to enter or master an exciting space.
BeReal is a great example of a new social platform that blew up this year, offering a chance for brands to reach their audience on a platform that isn’t yet saturated with ads.
3. Lean into the brand loyalty you have.
While consumers suggest that brand loyalty will matter less in a recession, marketing leaders are still confident brand loyalty and trust will play a role in purchases during the recession.
We asked 500 marketing leaders how they expect consumers to react in a recession, and 39% believe shoppers will stick to brands they are most loyal to.
It makes sense that people might continue to invest precious dollars in products from brands they know and love, rather than risking money on a poor experience or bad product quality from a new company.
You can use this as an opportunity to reward your most loyal customers and build deeper connections with them.
Whether you offer a discount code to your most frequent customers or send them a personalized card thanking them for their loyalty, little tokens of appreciation can go a long way. This could combine the benefits of cost-effectiveness and customer loyalty.
4. Keep growing your audience.
There’s another side to the coin — 28% of marketing leaders also say that, in a recession, consumers are more willing to try new brands. While this might be less common, there’s still an opportunity for marketers to grow their audiences and market share.
For example, if a customer is frustrated with a competitor’s service, the experience they provide, or lacks trust for the brand, they might be less willing to spend the hard-earned pennies they’ve saved in an uncertain time. But, if your brand catches these ex-customers with great marketing at the right time, they might be willing to try investing in you. 
5. Promote low-cost or high-value products.
If you sell fairly affordable products, there’s another factor at play that could help you meet new targets during poor economic times.
46% of marketing leaders say consumers will simply seek out cheaper alternatives to their usual purchases in a recession, which aligns with earlier consumer research.

If your products are cheaper or provide better bang for the buck than competitors’, focus on gaining market share from customers who previously swore by pricier options.
Meanwhile, luxury brands can focus on marketing the added value customers get for shopping with them. For example, a brand selling hand-stitched leather wallets can position itself as a longer-lasting alternative to a discount wallet.
6. Save time and money with AI and automation.
When it comes to shrinking resources, nothing’s more important than saving time and money. Luckily, that’s what automation is all about.
AI and automation can help you trim your budget in a few ways.
First, you can automate repetitive and manual tasks, from email marketing to social posts and ad campaigns. This not only saves you time, but prevents you to work heads-down on heavier-lift high-impact projects.
AI can also help you optimize your marketing efforts, improving your targeting and bringing down costs.
Lastly, automation and AI can help you give customers a more personalized experience. Ultimately, making it easier to reach audiences with the right message at the right time.
While convenient, this type of technology can seem hard to implement at first. Luckily, software like HubSpot can help. For example, many Marketing Hub and CRM features already bake AI or automation in to make onboarding, implementation, and usage easier — even for those who are less tech-savvy. 
Remember: It’s Not Your First (or Last) Unprecedented Time
While recession news can make anyone nervous, remember that you aren’t alone.
And, if you’ve been a marketer since 2020, you’ve gained a lot of training in pivoting, adjusting to minimal resources, and meeting customer needs in unprecedented times.
While we’ve created the list above as a starting point for recession planning, you’ll want to analyze your industry, customer base, and performance to determine how things could shift and what to prepare for next.
Now that you’ve read our data-based predictions on what tactics might help you, learn how marketers at all levels are already pivoting during this time to compare, contrast, and identify even more ways to retain and gain audiences.
And, keep checking out the blog for more data, expert insights, and guides on how to navigate all the marketing pivots that might be headed your way.

AI has gone mainstream, and it’s slowly creeping into the day-to-day lives of marketers.
Although this technology is still in its early stages, it’s already changing how we work. With the help of AI-powered tools, marketers can automate a variety of tasks, from drafting email subject lines to scaling entire marketing campaigns.
If you’re curious about where AI is going — and how you can leverage it — we’ve listed six AI predictions to watch in 2023.

1. AI will give content marketers a significant lift.
Sure, artificial intelligence isn’t close to writing the next New York Times best seller. But it can streamline many content marketing tasks. Specifically, it can give marketers a lift in the writing process.
For example, picture a content marketer stuck in the content ideation stage. Instead of waiting for inspiration to strike, she inputs a prompt into an AI chatbot — such as, “Provide a few blog ideas about TikTok marketing” — and receives a list of ideas to get the ball rolling.
AI tools — like ChatGPT, Jasper, and HubSpot’s content assistant — can also do much of the legwork when it comes to research. These tools use complex algorithms to gather, analyze, and interpret information from across the web, identifying patterns and trends in a matter of seconds.
For example, suppose you need to write a video script to promote a product. To get started, you paste hundreds of customer reviews into an AI chatbot and ask it to summarize the key takeaways. Then, you use its output as a rough draft. In the end, you have a new ad highlighting everything your customers love about the product — and you did it in a fraction of the time.
Ultimately, we predict that AI will assist content marketers by executing tedious, repetitive tasks — like coming up with ideas, writing rough drafts, and summarizing large amounts of data.
2. Consumers will demand more personalization, and AI can make it happen.
78% of marketers say personalization has a “strong” or “extremely strong” impact on customer relationships.
While it was once extremely hard to create these experiences with older marketing techniques and technology, AI has opened the door for more pinpointed personalization opportunities.

Right now, AI is primarily used to help us “get things done,” but it has the power to help marketers scale faster, personalize more, and find target audiences easily.
We’re already seeing heavy AI personalization in the marketing industry. For example, many tools allow brands to send marketing emails with names and personalized information based on contact list information. In retail, consumers regularly get emails or e-commerce recommendations for certain products based on what they’ve recently viewed or purchased.
With evolving technology and our ability to capture data on prospects and customers, it’s not shocking to think that AI-based personalization trend will grow stronger in the near future. In 2023 specifically, expect AI to be used more and more to create solid one-to-one personalization.
3. We’ll see an influx of mediocre content generated by AI.
Because AI can churn out content at lightning speeds, some marketers may ramp up their content demands too quickly. As a result, we’ll see an influx of AI-generated content that’s far from perfect.
This leads to an important point: AI is better left for the first draft, not the last. For example, AI-written content may look flawless on the surface, but it lacks critical human elements, like humor, empathy, and cultural context.
Copying and pasting it’s output into your marketing isn’t enough. You need to add your own brand voice and perspective.
On top of that, generative AI works with limited data, so the information it uses may be outdated, incorrect, or even biased. To get around this, marketers must put guardrails in place to maintain quality.
4. Companies will embrace “Responsible AI.”
To state the obvious, AI systems rely on data to make decisions. This data comes from various places, including social media posts, online databases, public records, and general online activity (e.g., posting a review on Yelp).
While this process seems harmless enough, it can reveal a lot about a person’s life. What’s more, consumers may not be aware that their information is being used to make decisions that can affect them.
Currently, companies are expected to self-regulate when it comes to using AI. But as privacy concerns continue to mount, we predict more companies will implement their own AI guidelines.

For example, Microsoft has developed its own Responsible AI Standard which relies on six principles: fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, inclusiveness, transparency, and accountability.
Ultimately, data is the fuel for most AI systems. The problem? If consumers don’t trust AI, they’ll keep a safe distance. Therefore, accountability and transparency from companies will go a long way in 2023.
5. AI will become a secret weapon for SEO strategists.
We predict SEO strategists will reap huge benefits from AI in the coming year, thanks to its ability to automate time-consuming tasks.
This type of self-driving technology can identify relevant keywords, conduct competitive analysis, and optimize webpages, such as fixing broken links, duplicate content, and incomplete meta descriptions.
For example, Campbell’s Soup uses AI-powered SEO automation to compress 75,000 images in a single day. This allows the brand to rank on page one of SERPs for 4,000 keywords within a few weeks.
The best part? AI is helping human SEO marketers rather than making their jobs obsolete. AI technology allows SEO experts to get results that aren’t possible without machines. Not worrying about a mountain of SEO-related tasks frees them up to work on more intensive projects.
Because it benefits web traffic and results, expect the investment into AI-powered SEO tools to grow.
6. AI will fit more naturally into the daily lives of marketers.
AI is already having a huge impact on the marketing industry. That said, many marketers are still exploring AI and its potential.
Those who embrace this technology — and integrate it into their workflow— can maintain a competitive edge while saving time in the process. 
As AI tools get more user-friendly, eventually they’ll becoming so natural to your work that you don’t notice it. As John McCarthy, one of the fathers of AI, once said, “As soon as it works, no one calls it AI anymore.”
Back to You
It’s 2023, and AI has gone mainstream. There’s no denying its potential to transform a variety of industries, and marketing is no exception. It can help companies create more, scale faster, and build more personalized experiences. But to pull it off, marketers must stay agile as they embrace and innovate with AI.

Every year, consumers spend differently than the year before. This is because their preferences are evolving, their priorities are shifting, and their behaviors aren’t quite how they were before. So how are marketers supposed to meet their expectations in the new year? By making data-informed predictions.
To help marketers and business professionals prepare for the road ahead, we conducted a bi-annual survey of 600+ U.S. adults in January 2023 known as the State of Consumer Trends Report to learn more about the latest consumer trends and data. Here, we’ll share our top three biggest consumer behavior predictions based on HubSpot Blog Research.

Consumer Behavior Predictions for 2023
1. Consumers will buy products on influencer recommendations over alternatives.
HubSpot Blog Research found that 17% of social media users bought a product based on an influencer’s recommendation, and this number goes up to 32% among Gen Z. Additionally, 27% of social media users follow virtual influencers.
Online word-of-mouth marketing is infectious, and brands that acknowledge the power of influencer recommendations have a lot to gain in 2023.

For example, Olipop, a new soda alternative company, has a large presence on TikTok. Using the strategy of influencer marketing, the newly popular brand has amassed over 180,000 followers, stemming from the positive reviews of the company’s product flavor range, and health benefits over choosing traditional soda.

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Consumers want to trust the recommendations of people they relate to, so if they see people with similar interests, tastes — or even appearance — rave over a product, they’re more likely to want to give it a try.
2. Consumers will engage in social media platform shopping more.
And it’s not just our data indicating this trend. Social media usage as a whole is growing with users spending more time everyday on these platforms. It’s only logical to expect that shopping or increased interest in brand content will result in more online purchases.

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3. Consumers will be pickier with which companies they buy from.
The three biggest concerns social media users have when it comes to making purchases on social platforms are that the companies aren’t legitimate (54%), that they won’t be able to get a refund (48%), and concerns about the quality of the products being sold (44%).

We predict that more consumers will be shopping on social media, however, the brands they’ll buy from will have to prove their legitimacy, quality, and policy before they expect buyers to click purchase.
Brands with a social media presence will have to refine their brand identity to be more trustworthy and set realistic expectations for followers about the image and features of a product.
Keep an Eye on Consumer Behavior
Consumer behavior will change as the year progresses, and marketers should try to understand using informed decision-making. While these are only predictions, you should study your target audience for any changes in their behavior that you can prepare for to keep them loyal.