It's hard to imagine that we will be missing FABTECH 2020 this year, among many other cancelled trade shows. Last year, leading up to FABTECH 2019, we covered the market drivers, upcoming trends, and widespread changes in the advanced manufacturing markets. This year, despite the cancellation, sales and market growth continues.

Another year at Photonics West, the leading event for photonics and laser companies, is in the books! With over 5,000 presentations and 1,300 exhibiting companies, the consensus so far is that traffic was down and quality was up. After months preparing client booths, websites, collateral pieces, and campaigns, we're excited to share a few favorites!

In our planning and strategy sessions we always center the conversation around data-driven decision making. So, we decided to dig up 20 sales stats to help you build your sales plan in 2020. Want to talk to an expert about hitting your sales goals in the new year? Contact us for a free consultation.

Sandy Sloane | Solutions by Sloane

For this post we talked with Sandy Sloane, the President of Solutions by Sloane. Her business serves as an extension of her clients’ existing internal training, employee engagement, special events, and public relations teams, complementing and enhancing what they are already doing or what they simply don’t have time to do. Sandy works closely with Nextcorps Luminate, a 6-month intensive accelerator program located in Rochester, NY, the imaging capital of the world.

As we gear up for FABTECH 2019, we'd like to take a step back and look at the market drivers, upcoming trends, and widespread changes in the advanced manufacturing market. Our experience last year told us that we would see growth in additive manufacturing, automation, and artificial intelligence (AI). The jury is still out on the numbers for specific growth in these areas, but we have certainly seen some market indicators over the past twelve months.

Whether you’re a startup working through a product launch, or a large enterprise operating a small division, there will probably come a point where find yourself in the catch 22 of business growth: You need more accounts to fund a sales team, but you need more sales from your current team to get there. It’s through these growing pains that efficiency is paramount in your sales process. We’ve been helping companies overcome challenges like this for over 30 years, and we’ve got some tips to share from this experience.

This year HubSpot improved the Google Ads integration by allowing users to upload contact lists for targeting, monitor the performance of ads, see improved reporting, and edit various ad settings, all directly in the HubSpot user interface. With this new level of integration comes a whole new level of questions about setting it up and making it run smoothly. See below for a basic overview of getting started or send us an email with questions. We’re always happy to help.

Not sure if you should be using Google Ads at your company? Check out our other post, Is Google Ads the right fit for your B2B Marketing Plan?

It's safe to say that in 2019 we are exposed to thousands of ads per day. Because of this, many Americans implement an ad blocker into their browser, causing an estimated $9.1 billion in missed revenue in 2019 alone. Getting inundated with intrusive advertisements is bad enough for consumer trust and attention, but when you add on annoying marketing tactics, it's clear why 72% of people dislike online popup ads, and 43% dislike native ads.

With the rapid advancements in head up display (HUD) technology in the automotive industry, the futuristic Hollywood depictions of holographic windshield screens are quickly becoming reality. Augmented reality (AR) windshield HUDs are becoming a large focus for mainstream automakers and suppliers to the point where it is expected that the market for HUD components market is expected to grow more than $5 billion in the next four years, becoming an $8 billion industry.