Marketing is everything when it comes to business success and prosperity.
A brand may be announcing the must-have piece of technology of the year, or a theatre the must-see production of the season, but it’s all in vain if nobody knows about it.
We know that employees can be your company’s biggest brand champions. Every interaction any employee has with somebody external contributes to the brand’s reputation.
And an interaction isn’t just a phone call or an email – it’s a tweet, a LinkedIn post, or an entry on the company’s blog. These interactions are all marketing, but it’s unrealistic for the marketing team to manage them all.
To enjoy the highest level of efficiency, marketing teams need to focus on certain areas to both maximise impact and prove its contribution to the wider business.
Part of this means identifying where other teams can take control and handing over the baton.
Modern marketing teams have to focus their efforts on understanding buyer behavior to make sure every interaction they have with a customer is relevant to that individual. Leveraging data is essential to doing that.
Consumers are leaving bigger data trails than ever before, offering marketers access to a whole new world of information and invaluable insights into content which resonates well with them. Marketers need to make the most of the information that’s available to understand their customers’ behaviour and create more relevant and meaningful dialogues with them.
A recent review by GlobalDMA and the Winterberry Group found that more than three quarters (77 per cent) of marketing professionals are confident in the opportunity data-driven marketing offers for future growth. Modern consumers operate cross-device and require different content on different devices.
Those brands which give consumers the content they want at the right time, on the right device, and in the right formats are the ones which will come out on top. Marketers investing in data-driven strategies have the best opportunity to understand their customers. The clearer image of their journey they have, the more effective marketing will be.
Data is the key to keeping competitive. According to a recent survey by Turn and Forbes Insight, 74 per cent of marketers were able to maintain a competitive advantage in capturing customer engagement and loyalty, while less than a quarter (24 per cent) believed they were able to do the same with strategies led through limited data.
To have the most success,marketers need to identify how buyers are behaving within the market and take data analysis one step further to see how they behave throughout the buying journey.
Once marketers establish a solid understanding of their customers’ behaviour, they have the greatest opportunity to convert successful leads. Leads result in revenue, which in turn proves its contribution to the wider business.
In order to focus efforts on gaining the most detailed image of customers, marketers need to ensure the IT team is in control of sourcing and implementing tools and solutions to improve efficiency. The more efficient the team can be, the more opportunities they can pursue and convert.
Working alongside the marketing division, an IT department’s investment in data storage solutions, for example, reduces unnecessary expenditure by scaling to both gradual and rapid growth and streamlining solutions. Marketers need to be prepared to hand over control. Once they’re happy to do so, they can focus on the most important activity for them.
Similarly sales teams need to be in control of representing the brand they work for. While it’s important to ensure collaboration between sales and marketing teams, sales professionals need to proactively take the time to understand marketing goals, develop a plan and take it upon themselves to deliver on commitments.
They need to ensure there’s no room for miscommunication so the relationship can thrive and business results can continue to grow. Once this solid, trusted relationship is established across business functions, marketers will have the greatest opportunity to succeed.
