Remaining Modern with Your Marketing
Many marketing teams are looking into the future wondering what marketing will look like in the “new normal”. Questions may be arising like “Should we be skilling up in new ways?” or “What other ways of operating should we be trying?”
Sure, reflecting on those sorts of things do have a value. And thinking about how your business has changed makes it worth exploring how to optimize your team’s efforts. But there is good news in where we stand now though too — some activities will continue to remain important moving forward.
2020 brought many changes to the ways that we work. Despite that though, there are certain mainstays that can be expected for 2021 and beyond. Specifically, the areas of content, social channels, and insights-driven marketing for personalization and consumer resonance will continue to have a place. Here’s how:
Content
The role that content plays within your marketing strategy should remain central. It will continue to have the power to speak to customers and prospects in ways (and at times) that your team may not be able to. And the need for scalability and flexibility are paramount. That is why it makes sense to set your team up to have a strategy that is enables them to have content that is ready-to-use and can be deployed within a short amount of time. Setting things up in this way can be a game changer for helping them to act quickly, remain agile, and be better armed when unexpected needs arise.
Social Channels
It is not news that marketing based on unsophisticated demographics like age or geography will no longer move the needle for a business. It is also not news that using generic channels is an outdated strategy. But it may be surprising to consider that consumers will still continue to have preferred channels for finding information or simply spending time online. More and more consumers will come online in the future, and this will provide an opportunity to transform the ways that you reach them. Fully utilizing social channels can help to move your offerings from the status of being a “good-to-have” consideration to one that is a “must have”.
Insights-driven Marketing
We live in an era where consumer expectations are high. They have the most information about your brand and company than was ever possible to have historically. But also, they are savvy — especially in the context of interacting with a brand digitally. When they are considering a purchase from your company, they also know what options are available through your competitors. They have had experiences in the past through various sales and service channels that have created a certain set of expectations for them. They are informed, so they know what they want without necessarily needing to communicate with your sales staff. And, more importantly, they know what both good and bad service feels like along their path to purchase as well as afterwards too.
These factors make up part of the reason why it matters that your company nurtures the practice of having insights-driven marketing. By doing so, you can do things like build effective customer journeys and maximize the efforts of your teams into the right areas (for example, helping to avoid silly mistakes like sending an offer email again to someone who already utilized it a few days ago). So how can you get there? Being careful about your choices as you build out your martech stack can help. Deboleena and I recommend Salesforce marketing tools (i.e. — considering Marketing Cloud or Pardot, and Datorama for your Marketing Intelligence activities). These tools provide powerful ways to measure the impacts that your marketing efforts are having while simultaneously gaining insights about your customers that will help you serve them better and better over time.
As technical marketers and Marketing Champions, we (Deboleena Bhattacharyya and Mahogany Beckford) hope that our perspectives and market observations can help you and your team. Perhaps you have already made some adjustments or perhaps you were seeking inspiration. Either way, we hope that this post provides food for thought and tactical insights.
