10 Marketing & Sales Trends You Can’t Ignore in 2022

There’s so much that’s changed in the last two years — how can you build (and execute) a solid strategy that’s agile enough to adjust to how work is changing in 2022 and beyond? I wanted to know, too.

1. How We Work Is Changing ICYMI, the way we work is completely different now.

According to the 2021 State of Conversational Sales, 65% of sellers say their sales productivity increased, which makes sense — there’s less travel and in-office distractions, so there’s more time to focus. It’s not like someone’s going to pop by your cube and see what’s new or invite you to grab a coffee.

For marketers, though, it’s been a mix. About half said remote work has made them more flexible, but with that, 41% had to onboard new tools and 39% had to onboard new talent.

How to deal with this? It all comes down to flexibility.

That means starting with the right technology that supports collaboration, creating a hiring strategy that fits the new way to work, and creating achievable, realistic goals for employees to set them up for success.

Psst. Want to dig into the data around even more sales trends? Download your copy of the 2021 State of Conversational Sales here.

2. How We Engage Is Changing It’s not just how we work that’s changing — it’s how our buyers buy, too.

Buyers now expect B2B companies to act a lot more like B2C companies. This shows up in a 26% increase in demand for personalized buying experiences and a whopping 64% increase in demand for immediate responses online.

2022 marketing and sales trends

People want an answer when they want an answer, and that means now.

Sales teams really feel the heat of this — 36% say that their audience is frustrated by the lack of self-service. That means your website has never been more important.

You need to be able to identify your visitors and greet them with a personalized, red carpet experience:

Using chat to deliver lightning-fast responses Simplifying navigation menus so it’s easy for customers to find what they need Creating buyer-centric user experiences It’s one of our mantras here at Drift: Whoever makes it easiest to buy wins.

3. It’s Time to Treat People Like People People are people, not lines on a spreadsheet.

“But that doesn’t scale!”

A great customer experience > scale every time.

That’s what’s going to set your company up for success much more quickly than churning through leads, because…

20% of buyers are frustrated with accessing basic business information 25% of buyers are frustrated with website navigation 27% of buyers are frustrated with forms 47% of sellers say that buyers are frustrated by a lack of personalized website experiences and resources 2022 marketing and sales trends

If you don’t deliver a great experience, your buyers are just going to try somewhere else.

To do this, you’ll need to align your sales and marketing teams at the very top to build an integrated campaign approach that meets the needs of buyers and sellers.

4. Buyers Want DIY Journeys Your sales team interacts with buyers for only 5% of their buyer’s journey.

2022 marketing and sales trends

So what are you going to do about the other 95%?

You’ve got prospects coming to your website, attending events, and reading your content. How can you make those experiences not just better, but more cohesive? To deliver on buyer expectations, you have to:

Identify the people coming to your website Tighten up your target account universe to deliver the best experiences to the most important people in your audience Use intent signals to understand why someone visited your website in the first place and build that personalized experience Whether or not your buyer talks to your sales team, they’re still a buyer. They just need to choose you.

5. Static Channels Fall Short for Marketers For a long time, marketers were obsessed with performance marketing.

But it’s time to bring your brand to life.

That means focusing on dynamic customer intelligence rather than static channels. According to the 2021 State of Conversational Marketing Report, more than ever, marketers are using real-time engagement to move customers along the funnel:

47% increase in live chat usage 36% decrease in email usage 2022 marketing and sales trends

Marketers are becoming more agile — creating authentic, problem-solving messaging in real-time in dynamic channels like Slack, chat, and other messaging systems that drive connection and community.

6. Sellers Embrace Digital But Need to Focus Digital is here to stay.

Your customers won’t have a single model of engagement any longer. Some will be back in the office. Some will be 100% remote. Some will have a mix of the two.

In the last two years, we’ve seen sellers embrace digital tools — but all of this change makes it difficult to focus. That’s true for marketers, too.

2022 marketing and sales trends

The biggest opportunity this year isn’t a hot new channel or tactic. It’s the focus.

Marketers are distracted. Buyers are distracted. Sellers are distracted.

It’s up to you to cut through that noise.

What would it look like if marketers actually focused on specific audiences and sellers actually spent time managing their most valuable accounts? 59% of sellers frequently spend time following up just to schedule sales meetings with buyers. Instead of having sellers update CRM records, transcribe notes, or copy and paste links to call recordings, they should spend that time building relationship.

Virtual Selling Assistants are AI-powered automated chatbots that talk to your site visitors like your best reps at all hours of the day, in multiple languages, helping you build the qualified pipeline you need to hit your number