This article was updated on March 4, 2026 with an up-to-date FAQ section.
There are a lot of exciting new trends to focus on this year, such as, account based marketing, predictive lead scoring (Saleswings) and live video streaming. Do you know which B2B marketing trends you should be focusing on this year? If marketers want to achieve more success in 2018, they should start by looking at sales. At the end of the day, the key to success in any business is generating revenue. By leveraging today’s top trends to support sales, marketers can help their organizations achieve more success than ever before.
Make Sales and Marketing Alignment a Priority
For most marketing teams, the number one goal is to generate leads for sales. It’s then up to the sales team to handle lead follow up to turn those leads into customers. However, the traditional marketing to sales handoff of new leads is becoming a thing of the past. In recent years, many sales and marketing teams have become more aligned, sharing responsibilities and working together to achieve a common goal. To be successful in 2018, you need to analyze and tighten up the sales follow up process by aligning your sales and marketing team. Saleswings levels up your sales follow up tactics with lead scoring and easy automations that effortlessly push leads through your pipeline. Put an end to the sales and marketing divide, and become one high-functioning team!
Collaborate With Sales for Content Creation
Find out what kind of content your sales reps need to be successful, and what kind performs best. Utilizing sales and marketing insights makes for more relevant, high-quality content that can be applied to every stage of the funnel.
Create a Content Library for Sales Enablement
Great content is only useful to salespeople if they know it exists, and where to find it. Create a content library to organize and store existing content, and make it easily accessible to both teams.
Use Social Media to Help Sales to Be More Like Educators
Salespeople need to demonstrate their expertise within their industry if they want to build sustainable and trusted relationships with prospects. Help sales get started on social media by providing them with best practices, and encouraging them to share content, join groups, engage with industry influencers.
Master Personalization With Data
One of the biggest themes in marketing and sales is personalization. Highly-targeted, personalized campaigns resonate with buyers because the content is more relatable. The secret to having success with personalization is data. Using data enables marketers to customize content within targeted campaigns, so the right message gets to the right prospect at the right time. Start leveraging data for each unique persona, then work together with sales to develop content that’s “personalized” to meet the buyer’s needs.
A.I. Can Help Conversations, Not Replace Them
A major trend in 2018 is the use of article intelligence in sales. These sales “robots” are used to help manage early correspondence with buyers. We use one at Saleswings to get to know visitors to our site, and to help them find what they’re looking for.
They’re there to help support sales conversations, not replace them. As sales bots grow in popularity, it’s going to become increasingly difficult to tell the real sales reps from the robotic ones. Encourage sales reps to show some personality when they reach out to buyers. Doing so will help them stand out from bots as well as competitors. Online messages that have a more relaxed, conversational tone make the person who sent them seem likeable, relatable, and approachable. Try using the same language online as you do in real life, but stay true to your company vision, mission, values, and brand.
Adapt and Improve Marketing Efforts With A/B Testing
To do this, marketers need to run several test campaigns known as A/B tests. A/B testing is a way to test all the different elements of a campaign, such as web content, to sales messaging, email campaigns to banner ads, and see which ones performed better than others. Any, if not all of these marketing tips can make a positive impact on sales, and increase sales success. The key to ongoing success is finding out what actually works best as a promotional and marketing strategy so you can continue to make adjustments improve upon it.
Once marketers are able to make this determination, they can combine the best elements, as well as try to add entirely new ones to achieve better results. Ultimately, it’s the organizations whose marketers continue making improvements and increasing effectiveness that make the biggest impact on sales team success.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How do I align sales and marketing?
- Can AI help sales conversations without replacing reps?
- What makes lead handoffs actually work?
- Is predictive lead scoring worth it for B2B teams?
- How do I do personalization with data without overstepping?
- Which A/B tests should demand gen teams prioritize?
- How do I build a sales content library that gets used?
How do I align sales and marketing?
Sales and marketing alignment works best when you share definitions, handoff rules, and a feedback loop that both teams trust.
Start by agreeing on what a “qualified” lead means, who owns each stage, and how fast follow-up should happen after key behaviors (like demos or pricing-page visits). Then make it measurable: track lead acceptance/rejection reasons, time-to-first-touch, and what content actually influences progression.
Tip: document the handoff as a simple SLA and review it monthly with sales leaders using this sales and marketing alignment guide.
Can AI help sales conversations without replacing reps?
Yes; AI helps most when it handles early triage, routing, and resource discovery while keeping human reps responsible for discovery and persuasion.
Use it to answer common questions quickly, qualify intent (“Are you evaluating this quarter?”), and route prospects to the right rep or content. The handoff is the key moment: reps should see the transcript, intent signals, and recommended next steps so the buyer doesn’t repeat themselves.
Tip: if you’re modernizing your marketing automation approach, compare your roadmap against these Marketing Cloud and automation trend insights.
What makes lead handoffs actually work?
A strong lead handoff works when reps get context, timing, and a clear “next best action,” not just a name and email.
Your handoff should include key intent signals (recent pages, campaign touches, event attendance), the persona/account tier, and a recommended first outreach angle. Pair that with automation that routes leads instantly and prevents “lead limbo” (no owner, no action, no follow-up).
Tip: run a weekly “lost-leads” review with sales to fix routing, messaging, or scoring rules before volume increases.
Is predictive lead scoring worth it for B2B teams?
Predictive lead scoring is worth it when you have enough clean data to rank intent reliably and improve sales focus.
Compared with purely rules-based scoring, predictive approaches can spot combinations of behaviors and attributes that correlate with conversion, then continuously adjust as patterns change. To make it practical, start with one pipeline goal (such as meetings booked), validate against historical outcomes, and give sales a simple “why this lead” explanation.
Tip: pilot predictive scoring on one segment (like mid-market) and compare acceptance rates and conversion to your current model.
How do I do personalization with data without overstepping?
Personalization works when it’s relevant to the buyer’s job, and subtle enough that it doesn’t feel like surveillance.
Use data that the prospect expects you to have (industry, role, known pain points, and declared interests) then personalize the message around outcomes and use cases. You can save sensitive inferences (like “we saw you read X three times”) for internal routing, not customer-facing copy.
Tip: build personalization by persona and funnel stage first, then add account-level layers only where it improves clarity.
Which A/B tests should demand gen teams prioritize?
Prioritize A/B tests that change buyer intent signals or sales outcomes, not just vanity metrics like clicks.
Start with high-leverage points: landing page headline/value proposition, form length, CTA language, email subject lines, and nurture sequencing. By tying tests to downstream metrics (lead-to-meeting rate, opportunity creation, pipeline velocity), “winning” variants are truly better for revenue.
Tip: run fewer tests with cleaner hypotheses, and don’t change multiple major elements at once if you need a clear learning.
How do I build a sales content library that gets used?
A sales content library gets used when it’s organized by selling situations and easy to find inside the tools reps already live in.
Build categories around common objections, industries, personas, and funnel stages, then attach “when to use” guidance and a short talk track. Remember to remove outdated pieces, label the top 10 “go-to” assets, and add simple tracking so you can see what’s used and what’s ignored.
Tip: ask top reps to co-design the structure, then review usage monthly and retire anything that doesn’t support active deals.
Schedule a demo with Philip if you would like your sales team to close more deals by using our website and lead scoring tracking.
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