For marketers, planning is in our DNA. So, as we review our campaign triumphs and tribulations of the past year, where do we need to focus in 2017? What improvements can we make? What new and exciting directions should we follow? Lisa Bennett, Vice President of Marketing at Kaltura shares the top 5 priorities with fellow marketers for the year to come

As the New Year approaches, we are all filled with the urge to look back upon the last year. What lessons have we learned? What were our successes and…less-so successes (hate to say failures)? Finally, for those of us who are always looking to the future, what should our focus be for next year? Where do we want to improve? What new and exciting directions should we go in?

As a marketer and fail-proof optimist, I am happy to share 4 priorities that I feel are important for any marketer to delve into in 2017. Here goes:

1. Account Based Marketing

If you work in marketing and have not yet heard the term ABM, then you better get cracking. While this is not necessarily a new concept—the idea of focusing on “target accounts”, “named accounts”, “strategic accounts”, or whatever your company chooses to call them, has always been around. However, now marketers are realizing very quickly that there is much more that can be done on the marketing side for Account-Based strategies than ever before. With new technologies focused on this area and measurable methodologies emerging, ABM is proving to be a critical part of the marketing strategy in today’s day and age. As we are all fighting for people’s attention, we need to hone in on our specific buyers in those top accounts in an effective and trackable way.

2. Closer Coordination with Sales

At the end of the day, the vast majority of businesses are in it to make money. Shocking, right? If you’re in B2B marketing, one of your key goals is to feed the sales team with qualified leads and opportunities. You are charged with ensuring that the top of the funnel is overflowing with great leads for the sales team to dive into and drive business. But the devil is in the details—all too often we see marketing and sales teams working in silos. Marketing could be bringing in loads of leads, but if the sales team has shifted its strategy, or decided to put specific focus on certain products, buyers, or even geographies, you might be throwing time, money, and effort away. Make sure to maintain close synchronization and open communication with the sales team, and always dive into the specifics to be truly effective.

3. Analyze, Analyze, Analyze

Marketing is getting more scientific by the minute. Put a strong focus on your marketing data in order to further understand how to spend your budget—define which KPIs you’re trying to achieve, and then take a good look back at last year’s activities to see which campaigns drive you closer to your goals. What worked? What didn’t?

Tap into to ALL of the data sources that you are using—make sure to leverage video marketing that plugs into your marketing automation system, social tracking, and more. Still, don’t go overboard and bog yourself down with so many stats that you end up lagging on actual campaigns and marketing activities.  Focus on the key stats that you can truly learn from, and take action accordingly. Having said all that, don’t let too much data shy you away from taking risks and betting on cool new technologies and tools that could be the next big thing in marketing.

4. Tap into Today’s Hottest Digital Trends

Modern marketers should immerse themselves and their marketing activities into the digital trends that are rapidly taking over so many facets of our lives—specifically, mobile, social, video, personalization and eventually VR and beyond. Take video for example (full disclosure, I run marketing for a video technology company), which has quickly become the medium of choice for communication nowadays. Marketers have been using video for years, but now is the time to ensure it’s treated properly as an additional data type to enable lead scoring, adding calls-to-actions within the videos, interactive features, and more. Marketers need to tap into emerging behavioral patterns and digital trends to increase their effectiveness

5. Find the Balance Between Art and Science

I like to think of marketing as a great blend between Art and Science. The Art side is all about the less tangible items in the marketing mix—PR, awareness, branding, etc.—while the Science side is primarily the nitty gritty trackable lead generation campaigns and activities. Finding a good balance for your organization between the art and science will help ensure that you’re getting the company’s brand in the right places, positioning your executives as thought-leaders, which no doubt impacts the success of those very specific measureable marketing campaigns.

It will be interesting to see what 2017 will bring as our world continues to evolve and change so quickly. From futuristic innovations like Amazon Go and VR, and at least one device in all of our pockets, marketers have a rapidly growing amount of data, channels, and mediums to reach their audiences. It’s time to get to work.