6 things Marketers must do to make their marketing more exciting, relevant and career enhancing
1. Ban spreadsheets from your marketing function
Most marketers went into marketing because they liked the variety of customer environment, the mix between art and science, the educational enjoyment and stimulation of an ever changing environment and skills set. The problem is most marketers spend 30% of their time spreadsheet juggling and undertaking forensic lead analysis. So what’s the answer?
We think you need to do 2 things:-
1. Ban spreadsheets in the marketing process (we have- and it works well)
2. Introduce a Marketing Automation (MA) platform (we did this too). An MA gives you the ability to integrate inbound, outbound, online and offline in one database for a true 360° view of your prospects and customers, it just makes so much sense. We are big fans of Act|On Software , Pardot, Silverpop and Eloqua.
2. Think about the balance in your marketing funnel
The sad thing about B2B lead generation marketing is that 90% of the spend is on awareness, and so leads are handed over way too early in the prospects buying cycle. This activity is a great way to alienate your sales team and your prospects in one go.
So map out your campaign in two dimensions. Think about lead gen from both an outbound (email, phone, DM, events) and inbound (WOM, PR & Social Media). We balance both and it really does work. Equally, build depth and stages to your marketing campaigns. Awareness is fine but so too is Engagement; check out our own marketing funnel and ‘buying stages’ process for inspiration and then build and develop your own.
3. Develop a buyer’s journey, a lead scoring process and a Shepherd mentality
Once you have developed a model like the one above you can build a lead scoring process. We think this is vital for ‘load balancing the funnel’, you need ‘prospects at all stages’ and not ‘all prospects at the same stage’ and yet too many marketing initiatives conform to the latter. You also want predictable funnel behaviour, mapping content to each stage and encouraging prospects to move on when they are ready, not when you need them to be ready.
4. Get reading!
Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy was so last year. Give yourself some time and if you read just two books this year make them Steve Woods’ Digital Body Language (Digital Body Language Blog) and Inbound Marketing by Brian Halligan. Steve is CTO of Eloqua and Brian is the CEO of Hubspot. They are very insightful reads and balance the concept of Outbound Marketing and Inbound Marketing really well. They might just be the best £30.00 of marketing investment you make.
5. Make your website a marketing hub and not just a pretty brochure
Your website is your reception area, I am sure you have invested in making it pretty, friendly and relevant. But do you know who is visiting and what they are looking for? If you think Google Analytics is enough, you haven’t read the two books above.
6. Make time for innovation, content and creativity
The sad reality is that most marketers are too busy juggling spreadsheets and actioning the list of things to do to be innovative.
We can tell if a company hasn’t got time for true creativity or is stuck in sales promotion by the number of Apple promos they run. Win a shuffle, win a nano, win an iphone, ipad…….you get the picture.Try to stop working the to-do list, put down the mail, forget the concall, definitely forget the ipad promo and instead take some time out to be relevant and creative.
Speaking to customers and prospects is often a great source of inspiration as it this time of year. So go on hug the trees, sing to the birds, walk on the grass and go get some creative inspiration.
