From reactionary to revenue-generating, discover a smarter marketing approach
Are you feeling uneasy about your marketing strategy for this year? Overwhelmed trying to understand which technology will best support your goals and growth? You’re not alone.
Too many times we see companies spinning their marketing wheels, relying on outdated marketing tactics, producing one-off pieces of content, trying to figure out SEO, and failing to review metrics and use customer insights to drive their plans. Marketing is no longer a cost center. There are crucial components to put in place to transform your marketing organization from reactionary to revenue generating.
If you’re not executing on a well thought-out marketing strategy, automating time consuming tasks and measuring results, then how can you know if your efforts are ROI positive, or negative?
Here’s the good news: whether it’s inbound or outbound marketing, SEO, email or social media messaging, you don't have to guess at which parts of your marketing efforts are actually contributing to your bottom line and helping you grow. Let’s look at some key components that you should be thinking about when it comes to your marketing programs.
Beginning with an intelligent plan, driven by customer insights
Do you know who your ideal customers are? At the most basic level, your ideal customers are those who have a problem or need that you can solve. But there’s more to understanding your ideal customers than knowing their pain points. Ask yourself - what are the characteristics of the people you want to do business with most? Defining criteria that makes up your best customers will let you zone in on a specific group to target, instead of marketing to the masses. Now you need to understand what makes them tick. How do they search for solutions? What drives them to make buying decisions? Which online channels are they using most? Once you have a deeper understanding about your ideal customers (by defining your criteria, researching and building buyer personas), you can begin to map out ways to communicate with them more effectively.
Now that you have a better understanding about your target market, you can begin to plan your marketing strategy, taking into account all the moving parts. There are several elements that will drive your marketing strategy, such as:
- Your brand—develop a compelling brand with marketing messages that clearly communicate how you want to be viewed by your target audience.
- Competitive analysis and market research—knowing what the competition is up to can help you find gaps in the marketplace, which you can then fill with your product or service.
- Content - once you deeply understand your audience, you can craft content pillars to focus on so you educate your customers and help them solve their problems. Key here is to position yourself as a trusted advisor, not a company that interrupts with irrelevant messages.
- Online channels - by deeply understanding your audience, you will select channels that your ideal customer goes to for information.
- SEO—search engine optimization strategies should be addressed upfront, rather than being putting off as an afterthought. People are educating themselves online. When your website is found in response to a search query, you’re in a position to effectively shorten an otherwise lengthy sales process.
- Budget—begin with a firm number you’re willing to spend on each particular marketing effort. Once you begin execution you want to get a clear picture on what tactics drive revenue and adjust accordingly.
- Analyzing metrics—extract the data from past marketing successes (and failures) to continually improve and ultimately increase your bottom line.
- Sales alignment - make sure you have the mechanism and processes in place to manage the interest you generate from your well thought out plan.
Using technology to automate processes and make data driven decisions
Modern marketing automation platforms can be used to show you precise revenue from each marketing dollar spent. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many more benefits to implementing or optimizing a platform like HubSpot:
- Automate time consuming tasks to get more out of your teams
- Find out which campaigns and tactics are performing best
- See the exact sources that are driving customers to your site
- Use data to continually evolve your plan throughout the year
- Capture leads and have them flow seamlessly between your marketing and sales systems
- Understand which messages resonate best with your audience so you can do more of what works
- Make outbound efforts more intelligent, like calling people who you see have interacted with your website, instead of cold reach out
- Track each and every component of your marketing strategy and clearly report on your efforts
If you have implemented a solution and are not getting these benefits generally we have seen that your technology may still need to be optimized or your strategy needs to be revisited. We can help with both!
Bringing it all together
The most important thing to know is that your strategy and technology work hand in hand. You can’t expect that the technology will solely market your business and your strategy can’t be executed efficiently or measured without the technology. Knowledge is power. The sooner you can gain clarity on where your marketing dollars are going, and how effective your campaigns are, the sooner you can pivot and adjust those strategies to maximize your ROI. With the help of technology, your marketing plan becomes more fluid, continuing to evolve to focus more of what works, and less on what doesn't. And remember - marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. There is no quick fix but laying a proper technology foundation and spending time on the plan will put you on the path to success, helping you improve month over month, saving you more and boosting your bottom line.
The marriage between technology and strategy doesn’t have to be scary. We can help you navigate marketing in the digital age. Book your complimentary consultation now!
